Turnkey Web Tools has announced that they are working on a new version of Sunshop, their shopping cart product.

Here is the release link.

It’s another ‘from the ground up’ rebuild, which means the upgrade path will be rocky at best.  Here are some thoughts:

1.  No release date or feature list has been announced, so assume at least 5-6 months before it’s here.

2.  When you rebuild software, ALL the functionality has to be re-tested.  That means there is the potential for bugs in features that currently work fine.  So the initial release of the new version will likely have a lot of bugs (hopefully little).

3.  In that vein, don’t chomp at the bit to upgrade – let the first wave of users be the guina pigs.  After a few weeks / month, they will release an “update”, to fix all the bugs found by the first wave of users.

4.   If you are a 4.x user, consider if you really *need* to upgrade.  If the software is doing what you need, you can keep using it until you decide it’s time to revamp the store.

Here’s a study by Jakob Nielson:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

This study is over a year old, but I think there are a few takeaways.  One is that the success rate of people with “touch” phones is 75%, which is pretty high.  Given that smartphones seem to be going more toward the touch screens, this bodes well for regular websites.  The other is that mobile users are highly “search” reliant – so search engine optimization efforts will continue to matter quite a bit.