Core Funded Feature - Shops uplift (grid view, categories navigation, UI revamp)

Product Development
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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:

  1. select OC

  2. select veggies category

  3. view veggie box page

  4. add 1 veggie box

  5. go back to shop by using the breadcrumb navigation

  6. view potatoes page

  7. add 5 kg potatoes

  8. go back to shop by using breadcrumb nav

  9. 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!

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Using Product Categories/Taxons
2

@tschumilas @dthomas just discussed the Cow-op use case with Mario as UX was a feature of their needs - please share directly with them for any feedback if you think is relevant? I’d suggest framing this as the aspirational view of a delivering a modern web design for users > 4-6 months. As a next step we are doing rough estimates to break down prioritisation/logic to plan the first developer iterations - will discuss next week at stewardship in any event. Great work mario !

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Thanks both - sounds good! The AAFC funding we are bidding for would be dispersed over two years, and Cow-op are down for the long haul … so I think we need not be too concerned around timelines, as a two year project would allow us to take a few bites at the Cherry

I’m starting work on a proposal, and will check in to ensure we are all aligned on viability of the timelines etc, prior to submission

cheers!

1 Like
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I have started a new topic on product categories, because it seems to me there have been a number of slack discussions related to categories since we started this shop uplift process. I started this so we don’t lose track of the slack threads (that are already showing up in different channels…)
Discussion is here - please change and add…

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