21 May, 2010
Dear Sephora,
We know you are touted, and tout yourself as the Alpha & Omega of Makeup, the one and only place toget the highest quality makeup with tips and tools to get the most out of your makeup. This is only partially true; its true of your stores, the brick and mortar shopping experience.
Anyone who's ventured in a Sephora for the first time is immediately inspired/overwhelmed/excited, especially if you live somewhere more rural than not. Music, lighting, rows and rows of makeup, it all is very fun. You can try on makeup, wipe it away with a makeup remover and repeat all day. You can ignore or accept the help of the Sephora consultants. They'll do your makeup too, of course. The aisles and aisles of makeup let you try this or that shade without having to buy it first. Mirrors and makeup applicators abound. They carry many brands, and you can browse them all. They have a hair care section, a skin care section, and many 'best buys' and 'highest rated' products are displayed prominently at the store entrance and throughout the store. Almost always an enjoyable experience, Sephora has clearly invested a lot of time and research into developing these little makeup meccas.
This is... if you can find the store. Thus begins my tirade known as Sephora, your website is useless! Let us go to Exhibit A. Sephora's "Store Locator." Sephoras are now in many metropolitan areas. If you're in or near a city, you probably know where it is and can get there with ease. But what if you're Mz. Smith of California traveling to New Jersey for the first time on business, and you have a free weekend. Well it is winter so Smith doesn't want to go to beach at Seaside Heights so she thinks about going to a Sephora. So she pulls up the internet, and goes to the Store Locator.
"What?" she says
"They don't just let me type in my current zip code? This is less than acceptable in today's society. Preferably I either enter the whole address (and then the subsequent results will map out all the locations nearby, then click one and it spits out directions) or I can enter my zip only for quicker results. This is the way of the internet."
But Ms. Smith is on Sephora's site in 2011, not a regular up to date site. She sees this inexplicable DROP DOWN MENU (UGH!!!) and then proceeds to gamely pick her state from this.
"Ok, New Jersey, fine." Then what?
 |
| Exhibit A |
It lists the locations of Sephora stores in Jersey. This is unhelpful. Mz. Smith looks but doesn't see the small NJ town she's currently in listed on the drop down menu. Of course at this point she could google map each of the 20 or so locations and then compare that to where she currently lives, but who has time for that??
"F it!" she says.
"I'll just go to Atlantic City, at least I can map that."
Mz. Smith goes on to spend her life savings, her parents retirement fund, and her kid's college fund all in that weekend, and she goes home a broken, bitter woman.
If only Sephora let you put in your zip code, this tragedy would not have occurred.
This concludes Exhibit A.
Exhibit B (the last exhibit) is the other half of the equation. Call it sorting, drilling down, browsing, or just plain old shopping; it is hard to do on Sephora.com. You'd think Sephora would want the purchasing of makeup, the deciding and browsing, a fun part of the experience. Makeup shopping shouldn't be a chore, riddled with drop down menus from the late 90's. Makeup shopping should know who you are, remember your preferences, and suggest things for you to try based on that. It should be a complete, customizable experience.
The closest thing I've seen in my browsing past is at Zappos, where you can choose exactly the kind of bag or shoe you want based on your criteria.
 | |||||||
| Exhibit B: Zappos sorting. (A joy to navigate! I can even choose Polyester as a fabric!!!! :) :) :)) |
At its most basic, browsing/shopping on the internet can be a drill down type of event as seen with Zappos. Pick among a whole bunch of criteria which matter to you, and end up with what you like. Sephora's makeup site starts out that way:
 |
| Exhibit B Continued, the basic, uninspired drill down link navigation system. |
You pick skincare: face: visible pores. So far so good. But from there the shopping experience deteriorates quickly. Once you've gone that far, common courtesy demands you have the path you have traveled thus far listed at the top.
 |
| I'm clicking, I can highlight, but I can't navigate. |
Sephora has this, but the navigation isn't clickable. So if you just want to go back to face, well you're SOL and need to click the back button instead of what is clearly marked "Face.". See #1 in the image below.
How simple is this? Common navigational courtesies like this should be law, like using a turn signal.
 |
| annoying complex setup |
Then, #2, they have "Narrrow by Brand" and "Sort By". Instead of keeping the same website structure they revert to terrible, awful drop down menus.
First, "Narrow By Brand" yes, very nice you let us do this. But why is it in a drop down menu instead of another drill down menu? Why are you inconsistent Sephora? Why?????
Then you have "Sort By."And there aren't even any compelling criteria. What if you don't know what brand you are looking for, you just want the highest customer rating makeup for eyes that is for oily skin, is oil free, and not tested on animals. Not going to happen.
 | |
| Very impressive, we can narrow down by brand. But what if I like "gasp" two or more brands? |
#3 if I click that I want to View All results, it will work for that page and all the other pages of the search I've just done. However, if I make a new search all that data is lost and I'm looking at 12 results per page again until I go and select View All again. Unnecessarily evil!
 |
| This second 'search by brand' menu takes you off your current search altogether, adding further aggravation and complexity. |
So Sephora, how can you possibly place your name on a website like this? Is there any way to correct this? What are the next steps?
I will make it easy on you. First, go over to Zappos, Ebay, ebags, whoever, and hire their entire web development team. Then make the browsing experience enjoyable for all of us, please!
Sephora's Great 8 Suggestions:
1. Your customers have accounts from orders, just use that to make it more customized. If we give you the info, store our skin type, age, gender, hair type (straight, or curly - and if curly, what type of curls from 2A - 4c?), natural hair color, if we dye our hair, etc, etc. Keep all that info and you can use it to 'suggest' products to us on the margins, and to enhance our search experience. If I am 60 and don't want to always see tiger striped eye makeup and the latest in glitter nail polish, let us "like" or "dislike" the little suggestions and you can learn about us (a la facebook ads). You get our free customer data! (just sayin) and we get a more relevant browsing experience.
2. If we want to see 5,000,000,000 results per page just remember that from one visit to the next, not just within one search.
3. Add these search criteria categories:
- Average Customer Review (can't believe you don't have that one.)
- Skin type if applicable
- Coloring (warm, cool, neutral)
- Cruelty Free/Not Tested on Animals
- Ingredients (desired). If there is a new ingredient out there that we want to try in our makeup, let us search for it.
- Ingredients (undesired). If we have allergies or don't want something in our product, let us search for things that don't contain this ingredient. The next few are ingredients that are common (infamous) enough to warrant their own categories. People can ignore them or sort by them. Or better yet choose this in their preferences for ALL FUTURE SEARCHES!
- Oil Free
- Paraben Free (haircare)
- Sulfate Free (haircare)
5. A product comparison side by side would be nice. Let us choose three different lipsticks and then compare them side by side. Highlight the ingredient differences if we want. Let us, the consumer figure out what formulations work on our own skin. Let us educate ourselves and we will have a more democratic, equitable & progressive makeup industry at our beck and call, falling over themselves to do what the consumers want, not dictating to us what we need. You could change the industry instead of bowing to them.
6. Let us see the demographics (if shared) of other reviewers. If I have dry skin I don't want to see the reviews of a moisturizing cream from oily-skinned individuals. Save other reviewers with similar classifications as myself (age, skin type) as Sephora Friends, and be alerted whenever they try something and write a review.
7. Please let us search by zip code for the nearest store, it's not that hard. Get with the times.
8. keep it FUN! It's MAKEUP!! If we want to spend 60 hours a week just browsing let us do it on your site. You'd rather be the website we all go to. We'd rather have a one-stop-browsing-shop.
There are many other things that you could do Sephora, to make your website better besides these suggestions. But at least they are a start. There are probably Sephora employees reading this and nodding, saying "I know, I know.." but somewhere, someone is holding up progress. Let's take it to the next level Sephora. Turn your site intowhat it could and should be. An online makeup mecca worthy of the Sephora brand.
This has been for your own good.
Sincerely,
this blogger
