After launching FREE SHIPPING* for all orders of $75+, more changes are on the way. The next steps on the table are reorganizing products, expanding and more. A huge task!
#1 - Shop by colour
Originally, a choice was made to offer visitors 2 fun ways to shop: by design and by colour. I figured when people shop for mid century modern home decor or accessories, they'll probably have a preference for one design more than the others or will be looking for a specific colour. Those features allowed you to chose products in the same style or mix and match products in the same harmony. Many visitors loved it. For the "shop by design" feature, everything worked fine. As for "shop by colour", there was a bump along the way.
When choosing a colour collection, the resulting page showed up the "orange" variation of products. That's because options of the same product were grouped under one roof. Since the Shopify platform does not make variants available separately, it always shows the first variant of the group, which was organized to be the orange one. That made impossible a "shop by colour" feature. But hey, I'm a graphic designer, impossible never stops me...
As a workaround, I created an extra image for each product group, like TikiMaze Mug with 6 colour options. The added image had coloured dots in the bottom to show available options. Bingo! It really did the trick and... for a while. Until one day, the site was reviewed online by our manufacturer's marketing team. At first, I was so excited!! They had great comments on the overall look and feel of the shop but they also noted how awkward the "shop by colour" feature worked and turned out results in "orange" only, even with coloured dots for available colours. It felt bizarre... When you shop for pink stuff and click on "pink" category, you expect pink products, right? Of course, they were right. I temporarily removed the feature, leaving only shop by design. But I missed it and customers too. The products are so colourful, retro and fun, there had to be another way. So I decided to make a big change...
After debating what to do and evaluating different routes, I'm now in the process of extracting every single product variation to give each one a dedicated page. In the end, the "shop by colour" feature should finally worked as intended. But none of the options I considered was perfect, and I had to make a compromise. In the next few weeks, you'll probably find in the "shop by colour" feature a mix of independent products (one for each colour) alongside some of the old groups. Let's hope for the best...
#2 - Photos
When transferring products on separate pages, I realize that I need to upload more pictures for each, now that all those variants are gone. Maybe even short clips, shot in context. This should give you a better idea of how products look in real life. It will probably be done a few items at a time.
#3 - Expand product lines
After the gigantic task of separating products and adding photos, the plan is to start an evaluation process to add many more product lines to the store. When launching the shop, I already had in mind products like duvet covers, placemats, glassware, coasters, etc. I decided to stick with a single manufacturer for simplicity and quality but their products lines were very limited.
This transformation should be a game changer and will take time but I have to admit, more and more customers are asking for more than throw pillows and mugs. I completely agree! Diversifying manufacturers is a huge endeavour since the whole store is built around one single provider, which made things so much simpler for a beginner. Now that I'm more savvy about the nuts and bolts of it all, it should be less of a pain to accomplish. Keep an open eye for new products, hopefully in a few months...
* Free shipping for all orders of $75 or more, no code required. Automatic at check out, calculated after rebates. Applicable customs fees still apply.
