The video comparison: responsive shop template vs. single page e-commerce web app

As I recently mentioned in a post shop merchants often approach me and ask about the difference between a shop with responsive templates and single page web apps like the ones we offer at CouchCommerce. Because written explanations are not exciting and cannot show all the differences in usability and app feeling we recorded a short video that I like to share with you.

The setup was an iPhone 5c connected to the 3G network. Using this smartphone we are opening the best RWD template available for Shopware and the latest demo web app from CouchCommerce. Both share the same inventory and products.

This was the exercise: open the shop via bookmark, navigate into the categories “Genusswelt” -> “Edelbrände” and select the product “Cigar Special 40%” to add it to the cart. Then go to the checkout and stop at the point where you start to enter personal information as a new customer.

Here is the result:

You can see how responsive shop templates behave compared to a single page web app. The gesture support and speed of single page web apps is, even though they run in the browser, as good as you know it from native apps that need to be installed from app stores. To the contrary responsive templates work like every other website and need to request next pages from the servers on every click. This fundamental difference causes the huge timing difference in our video.

During this test we had good 3G reception. But as soon as you are on the go and have interruptions and slow downs of the connection the difference will be even more significant. Single page web apps even keep working in case you lose the entire connection. You will never see a “404 page not found” error.

A list of all the advantages single page web apps provide can be found here in this German post.

And here are the links to the test shops: RWD Template / Single Page Web App