Reviews about new RAPHAEL theme??

Jasin555

Jasin555

Member
Hi,

Anybody using Raphael theme? I am using Rembrandt theme at the moment, but I want to change it.

I like the product page UX of Da-Vinci (Good for conversion) while other themes don't have those placements. well not in the new RAPHAEL also. Moreover, its homepage (daVinci) is totally messy. I like some elements of Davinci page like below:



da-vinci.JPG


..
.
I don't want to switch to woocommerce as I have to add all products from scratch, and those broken links fatigue.
.
I am using Rembrandt and have a high bounce rate (atleast with my site). Conversion is really poor with campaigns. I really need to make store ready for Christmas, with a high conversion rate.

So, I want to ask people using Raphael about its reviews. It has tiny fonts, but I can enlarge them in CSS if it's worthwhile to switch to.

So, please provide sincere reviews about RAPHAEL theme. Do you feel any change in Conversions after using? etc.
- Is it compatible with add-ons? (countdown timer, recent sale popup etc.)


Thanks with Regards!
 
F

Fassbender

Member
Jasin555 said:
Hi,

Anybody using Raphael theme? I am using Rembrandt theme at the moment, but I want to change it.

I like the product page UX of Da-Vinci (Good for conversion) while other themes don't have those placements. well not in the new RAPHAEL also. Moreover, its homepage (daVinci) is totally messy. I like some elements of Davinci page like below:



View attachment 6115


..
.
I don't want to switch to woocommerce as I have to add all products from scratch, and those broken links fatigue.
.
I am using Rembrandt and have a high bounce rate (atleast with my site). Conversion is really poor with campaigns. I really need to make store ready for Christmas, with a high conversion rate.

So, I want to ask people using Raphael about its reviews. It has tiny fonts, but I can enlarge them in CSS if it's worthwhile to switch to.

So, please provide sincere reviews about RAPHAEL theme. Do you feel any change in Conversions after using? etc.
- Is it compatible with add-ons? (countdown timer, recent sale popup etc.)


Thanks with Regards!
Click to expand...

I have personally got conversions with michelangelo and raphael theme. The top selling points I find are the mobile menu and clean UI. They arent really that appealing on davinci and rembrandt theme. I mainly rely on FB ads so over 95% of my visitors are mobile users. The theme menu plays a big part I believe. The only thing davinci seems to excel at is its loading time.

The product pages of raphael theme is what is the most appealing to me. Also, it looks good on desktop. With WP Rocket, it also scores very well on gtmetrix.

If you do switch, one thing I would recommend you is to redesign the logo to suit the theme. Overall, I would rate it 9 out of 10. 1 taken away for speed compared against davinci.
 
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Jasin555

Jasin555

Member
Fassbender said:
I have personally got conversions with michelangelo and raphael theme. The top selling points I find are the mobile menu and clean UI. They arent really that appealing on davinci and rembrandt theme. I mainly rely on FB ads so over 95% of my visitors are mobile users. The theme menu plays a big part I believe. The only thing davinci seems to excel at is its loading time.

The product pages of raphael theme is what is the most appealing to me. Also, it looks good on desktop. With WP Rocket, it also scores very well on gtmetrix.

If you do switch, one thing I would recommend you is to redesign the logo to suit the theme. Overall, I would rate it 9 out of 10. 1 taken away for speed compared against davinci.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the review. I admit Raphael theme looks cleaner. and my main concern is about the product page UX, where visitors land while running campaigns.
The text beneath description has way tooo long sentences (not good for readability) with that tiny font on desktop, I should shorten or break the sentence or think something about it. Otherwise, i will test it once if countdown timer is compatible with it it.
 
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E

Ekaterina Sayapina

Guest
Jasin555 said:
Thanks for the review. I admit Raphael theme looks cleaner. and my main concern is about the product page UX, where visitors land while running campaigns.
The text beneath description has way tooo long sentences (not good for readability) with that tiny font on desktop, I should shorten or break the sentence or think something about it. Otherwise, i will test it once if countdown timer is compatible with it it.
Click to expand...
Hello Jasin,

Countdown Timer is compatible with Raphael. Please feel free to use!
 
G

Geo

New Member
Can Raphael be customized with some front-end builder tool such as Elementor? Anyone tried it?
 
E

Ekaterina Sayapina

Guest
Geo said:
Can Raphael be customized with some front-end builder tool such as Elementor? Anyone tried it?
Click to expand...
Hello Geo,

You can make changes to Raphael using our built-in Customization options. It is not compatible with third-party solutions.
 
G

grba

Member
Geo said:
Can Raphael be customized with some front-end builder tool such as Elementor? Anyone tried it?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, home page not. Product page for example yes...

to make home page editable missing content area. Someone has to add the_content function into the page template's code


With Rembrandt page was possible


"Sorry, the content area was not found in your page. You must call the_content function in the current template, in order for Elementor to work on this page"
 
W

Wizardius

New Member
Theme is good, but it's kinda still raw.
What i would like to see is and ability to enable/disable sidebar and full control of main menu.

At the moment mega menu not working properly (have some tabs not loading images) and would like to customize them (products or just images and url).
Don't know why but i don't have 'More' button if there is a lot of menu items.

Made mobile button visible for all screens for now. That why i want sidebar, because navigation and to find something is bad.
 
E

Ekaterina Sayapina

Guest
Wizardius said:
Theme is good, but it's kinda still raw.
What i would like to see is and ability to enable/disable sidebar and full control of main menu.

At the moment mega menu not working properly (have some tabs not loading images) and would like to customize them (products or just images and url).
Don't know why but i don't have 'More' button if there is a lot of menu items.

Made mobile button visible for all screens for now. That why i want sidebar, because navigation and to find something is bad.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the theme!
Please feel free to send me a pm with your WP credentials so I can check what might be wrong with the More link.
 
sharonmay

sharonmay

New Member
Jasin555 said:
Hi,

Anybody using Raphael theme? I am using Rembrandt theme at the moment, but I want to change it.

I like the product page UX of Da-Vinci (Good for conversion) while other themes don't have those placements. well not in the new RAPHAEL also. Moreover, its homepage (daVinci) is totally messy. I like some elements of Davinci page like below:



View attachment 6115


..
.
I don't want to switch to woocommerce as I have to add all products from scratch, and those broken links fatigue.
.
I am using Rembrandt and have a high bounce rate (atleast with my site). Conversion is really poor with campaigns. I really need to make store ready for Christmas, with a high conversion rate.

So, I want to ask people using Raphael about its reviews. It has tiny fonts, but I can enlarge them in CSS if it's worthwhile to switch to.

So, please provide sincere reviews about RAPHAEL theme. Do you feel any change in Conversions after using? etc.
- Is it compatible with add-ons? (countdown timer, recent sale popup etc.)


Thanks with Regards!
Click to expand...
I tried the Raphael, it look lovely but it was so slow 26s so I got rid of it and went back to Davinci. Davinci is 10s still slow but faster than Raphael. Sites these days should 2-3s so I don't know why they're slow. I thought Raphael wasn't suitable for my menus as well. I agree with you that Davinci has a messy frontpage.
 
E

Ekaterina Sayapina

Guest
sharonmay said:
I tried the Raphael, it look lovely but it was so slow 26s so I got rid of it and went back to Davinci. Davinci is 10s still slow but faster than Raphael. Sites these days should 2-3s so I don't know why they're slow. I thought Raphael wasn't suitable for my menus as well. I agree with you that Davinci has a messy frontpage.
Click to expand...
We'll check Raphael loading speed and see what we can do about it. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
What can be done to improve the menu structure?
 
F

Fassbender

Member
sharonmay said:
I tried the Raphael, it look lovely but it was so slow 26s so I got rid of it and went back to Davinci. Davinci is 10s still slow but faster than Raphael. Sites these days should 2-3s so I don't know why they're slow. I thought Raphael wasn't suitable for my menus as well. I agree with you that Davinci has a messy frontpage.
Click to expand...

Thats not true in my case. You have to start optimizing the site for maximum speed.

I get davinci load time to be around 1.6 seconds and raphael gets 2.4 seconds on average on gtmetrix. Overall I get over 85% speed grade on gtmetrix and google pagespeed insights.

Here are my optimizations:

1. Get a faster host
I used GoDaddy before but have switched to FastComet to take advantage of their Varnish Cache and other speed boosters available. I use their SpeedUp Plan which costs $9.95 per month at this moment and get apcu, memcache and opcache bundled with high resources on my plan. They also have cloudflare built into their cpanel so take advantage of the free plan and it really does make a lot of difference.

2. Get a cache plugin
If you are not using it I suggest you do so. Get something that minifies and combines the files. There are free plugins such as WP Total Cache and WP Fastest Cache. I use the paid plugin WP Rocket, really does make a lot of difference. Also, use the lazy load feature of this plugin and turn off the in-built theme lazyload. In case you do end up using this plugin, add //connect.facebook.com/en-US/sdk.js to the excluded javascript files. It will stop the problem caused with facebook widget being shown on footer. Also, if you are having problems with currency add ADS_CUR to excluded inline Javascript.

This above options does offer a 45 day money back guarantee so I would highly advise that you give this a try. No improvements, just ask for your money back.

3. Optimize images
The images must be optimized. This reduces page size up to 70%. I use ShortPixel to overcome this. Make sure you optimize the thumbnails also. There are free plugins available such as resmush.it but I prefer the efficiency and compression level of ShortPixel.
You must host the images in your server as it wont optimize images served through aliexpress cdn. To do so, head over to Alidropship > Aliexpress > Settings. Under product images check all the boxes and click update. This will significantly increase the image load on your website and also increase the inodes usages. Make sure you have the necessary server resources before you begin. The SpeedUp plan gives me 500,000 inodes and I seem to have used over 280k. I would advise to to ask any host you may switch to about their inodes count of the package. The higher the better for you when you start importing more products. The space is not a big issue, the file count is. Check the stats on your current Cpanel dashboard to see how many inodes you have.

4. Use Image CDN

Photon is free cdn by Wordpress.com, use it. Download Jetpack plugin and enable it. As easy as that. Before you do so, make sure you optimize the images first or else you will get stuck serving large images.

5. Reduce bloat

Decrease the amount of http requests per page by limiting the number of reviews shown per product. Under your Wordpress Setting > Discussion. Enable threaded comments and break the comments per page to 5 or even less.

The final recommendation is to reduce the number of gallery images per product. Some seem to have almost 7 main gallery images and various other variation images. Reduce it. 3 is optimal I believe. Also, get rid of any plugins that are not native to Alidropship Original. Use the ones created by Alidropship developers. With regards to security plugin, use one your server can handle.

Use SVG for logos and other images. This keeps the quality perfect and also reduces the picture size by almost 90%. Use JPG for page promos on homepage. Optimize databases when you can.

I hope this helps you.
 
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P

prymus

Member
Hi.
Could you please explain more about ADS_CUR ?
If i am using caching plugin the currencies will work normally or need to exclude file from caching?
If yes which file it is? Where is located?
Where i should add ADS_CUR ? in the excluded js files or in some file?
Thanks.
 
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