Silk Naturals

First of all Karen, your Spring release is just AMAZING! I don't know how you do it.

But there is an oddness with the site... If you click on Lips in the left column, then go down to the Filter Products and under Finish select "Sheer" it says there are 24 products. But only 12 come up. If instead you go to Tone and select "Neutral" it says there are 93 products, but only 48 show up. If you select both Neutral and Sheer it says there are 18 products, but only 9 show up.

I'm concerned that you could be losing sales.

I've noticed that too. But mostly it is when I am looking for a specific product, I will select a category that it should be in and it doesn't show up, I then select another possible category, and it still doesn't show. And then I just end up searching for the name. I can't remember which products this has happened with, but perhaps some products are not linked up to any categories or something...

I help maintain my company's website as part of my job, so I've been paying close attention to the Silk Naturals site too and have been keeping a list of strange things I've noticed. I'm glad you pointed this out!

I'm not at home so I don't have my 'master list of strange things' in front of me, but here are a few off the top of my head:

+ Clicking on "Eyes" (side nav) > "Eye Shadow" (side nav, NOT link in the middle of the page) brings you to a 'splash screen' style page with an extra click to see "All"

+ The Product Comparison Page for eyeshadows lists many colors that are not on the site anymore. I imagine this might be the same case for other comparison pages as well.

+The Conditions Page is still a template (but let's be honest, how many people click on this?)

+ View All Products could do with some much-needed house cleaning and reorganizing, but it's probably not affecting many people.

As for suggestions, I have loads!!!!

+ Reviews : I absolutely love how one review is given the "spotlight" treatment on the side column. I've learned about so many products this way. However, I'd love it even more if I'm able to click the name of the product being reviewed so I can see its product page.

+ The Articles page is a huge, huge missed opportunity. This could be a TON of fun!

+ Application and Recipes is another missed opportunity, and a bit of a misleading one at that. The focus of the page is on mixing your own foundation, but if you're like me and still new to this whole "holy crap my eyeshadow is a powder" thing, I anticipated this being a one-stop-shopping page to learn all kinds of application things. This could be a great place to host tutorials and other things that really showcase SN's glorious catalog of products.

I probably could come up with a ton more, but like I said, this is off the top of my head. I actually spend a lot of time thinking about these sorts of things!

One of my other favorite places to buy skincare products is Garden of Wisdom, and while I absolutely love them, I really hate navigating their website. I think the Silk Naturals website is leaps and bounds beyond theirs, but there's always tons of room for improvement. I find my browsing experiences here to be kind of like Wikipedia--one I start clicking, I fall down a rabbit hole and suddenly find my wish list *way* longer than before. I think trimming up the dead-end links and adding some fun features can be a great way to engage new visitors and keep regulars coming back for more.

"+ Reviews : I absolutely love how one review is given the "spotlight" treatment on the side column. I've learned about so many products this way. However, I'd love it even more if I'm able to click the name of the product being reviewed so I can see its product page."

+1. I have the same thought. When I read a review and want to go to the product, I have to type the name into the search bar to get to it. A lot of people won't do that. I bet sales would jump if people could link to the item from the reviews spotlighted on the side column.

shiny wrote:I bet sales would jump if people could link to the item from the reviews spotlighted on the side column.

If anything's for certain, I can tell you my impulse purchases might increase a bit.

Thank you! It wasn't linked to the categories properly, and it thought we had twice as many lippies as we do for some odd reason. In order to filter them all you have to click on the all lippies link and then the filters will pop up.

Good points on the rest of it...some of it I can do, and you're right about the reviews. That is annoying- and it's bugged me for a while too. Hopefully DH will be able to help me with it a little tonight, and solve it?? With ecommerce packages you have to work within the limits of the software, so that's a sticking point sometimes. I've looked into a few others, but they still don't make one that will read my mind, and just work correctly all the time.

Ohhh, I didn't realize you were working with an ecommerce package! That explains a lot.

I just went back to my master list of things I was keeping tabs on, and it looks like all the major things that were broken I noticed have been fixed since then!