Hi all,
We have started to explore an update to how the shops are displayed and behave. This is based on the feedback received in 2025 from folks using OFN, and is using part of the funding received from the Macdoch Foundation in Australia.
This piece of work is aligned with the 2026 OFN global software roadmap. You can find more info in slack and a slide deck here.
The first half of 2026 we are mainly going to focus on the shopping experience, specifically from when a shopper loads a shop page, through browsing for products, managing cart and purchasing.
Right now we are NOT going to focus on the discovery side (list of shops, producers’ map, other directories). This requires some further research and analysis to figure out the way forward, and will be likely explored in the second half of the year.
What we will be able to include in this uplift is still under consideration, but some mandatory elements include:
- being able to display products in a grid
- being able to navigate using categories
- being able to upload multiple images per product
- product details page
- some lightweight ways to customise the look and feel of your shop, although this might actually be addressed within the above
- being more mobile optimised
With the precious feedback of some of you in the dedicated slack channel #frontshop-uplift, I have created a first moible concept that presents ideas for the above.
You can find the prototype here.
It is not fully interactive, and requires you to take specific steps to explore different elements and interactions. Here’s the steps:
how to interact:
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select OC
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select veggies category
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view veggie box page
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add 1 veggie box
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go back to shop by using the breadcrumb navigation
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view potatoes page
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add 5 kg potatoes
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go back to shop by using breadcrumb nav
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select Potatoes button to see a shortcut way of adding variants to your cart
This is not strictly what’s going to be developed, but it’s a conversation starter with the community, the users that are keen to get involved in the process, and the development team that needs to build within the tech and budget limitations.
If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback feel free to post here or join us in the slack channel #frontshop-uplift.
We are also looking for admin users (producers, hubs..) keen on reviewing this and providing further inputs that can inform more specifically what are the higher priorities and if this is going in the right direction or not. If you can think of someone, please reach out to me so that we can discuss how to work with them.
Thank you all!