Anthropologie website redesign…initial thoughts

First and foremost: congrats to everyone behind the redesign! I’m sure this was no small undertaking and it looks like much of the site has been rebuilt (both front-end and back-end). The CSS in particular looks like it’s been overhauled and that will help a lot with SEO. Hooray to you all!

I have been poking around the site for awhile and thought it would be fun to highlight some of the cool new things. So here’s Roxy’s completely unsolicited list of things I like about the new site.

1. Product Reviews — FINALLY!
I have longed for Anthro product reviews for a long time — it’s a contributing reason why I started this blog in the first place. Maybe this blog will go the way of the dinosaur in terms of usefulness now that you can give your direct feedback on the site. I already submitted a review for the New Idyll Dress ($148) and it’s already live. Oddly even though I submitted it as roxy it says “Anonymous Reviewer.” Not sure if that’s a bug.

The review mechanism was put in place by Bazaarvoice or their toolkit and I think it’s pretty magnificent. I love that you can submit not only a text review but also a pic and/or a video. Wow, how huge is that? I don’t know how many people will use the video option but I’d love to see some snazzy stars emerge. You can fill out as much information or as little as you want but you have to have an account to review. That’s good for Anthropologie — they can track your actions better when you have an account.

One point of interest for me will be how many negative reviews get published. It’s important that they aren’t filtered out entirely but it’s easy to cross the line from product criticsm to unrealistic whining. I highly encourage everyone to review any products they’ve tried on or bought! I know I will be…and it’s gonna take awhile.

2. The text is a lot cleaner and easier to read.
I could be wrong but I read Anthropologie’s new text direction as librarian. The blister ‘cards’ below each product say Dewey Decimal to me (or possibly scientific specimen given their love of winged things) and the Courier font, though an odd choice is at least easy to read. I like that everything seems to be a pixel or two bigger than it was on the old site. Makes it much easier to read on my iPhone.

3. The “sort by” and “shop by size” dropdowns.
I love the idea of filtering down to mediums only; or 6s only. (Of course it would help if sizing was consistent but Anthro is still 100 times better than J.Crew who is just one in-house brand yet still ridiculously inconsistent from piece to piece.) The sort by price feature is also pretty handy. Hopefully they will continue to expand the offerings here.

That’s my initial list and I’m sure I’ll have more to add soon. And of course there are some things I don’t like but I would like to take some time to get used to the site first. What do you like about the redesign? Dislike?

13 Comments

  1. July 16, 2009 / 12:40 am

    Roxy, my review for the scarf-tied oxfords also says "anonymous reviewer" even though I did it under musingsbyjacquelyn.

  2. July 16, 2009 / 1:34 am

    I love that now when you click on an item, you can right-click and "Open in a new tab"…I like to open up new tabs for each item I'm interested in while online shopping (so much easier to compare) rather than looking through one item at a time.

  3. July 16, 2009 / 1:45 am

    Thanks jacquelyn. Most likely a bug then. And so very exciting that you can finally open items in a new tab! I can't tell you how much easier that's going to make organizing products when I'm writing reviews. 😉

  4. July 16, 2009 / 2:14 am

    What a cool blog! Feel free to use the pic from my site and link back. Thanks for asking.

  5. Anonymous
    July 16, 2009 / 2:49 am

    So far I love the site redesign. Plus, tons of stuff was marked down this morning so it was a great Anthro day all around!

  6. July 16, 2009 / 5:32 am

    I love the reviews! They have been doing it on the Urban Outfitters site for a while now, I wondered when it would end up on Anthro too!

  7. July 16, 2009 / 4:24 pm

    They must have fixed the glitch–the reviews are no longer anonymous. If you run into one written by artgal987, that's me!

  8. July 16, 2009 / 4:31 pm

    Mine still says anonymous, but I'm sure they're dealing with a bunch of bugs. Launches are always fun like that.

  9. July 16, 2009 / 7:14 pm

    I love the reviews!!! The site seems a lot slower though.

  10. July 16, 2009 / 7:25 pm

    I agree, Blondmoma, the site does seem a lot slower now.I also miss being able to see the new arrivals by type rather than as a group of various categories. With the site redesign I am holding out hope that they might turn next to fixing their mailing list issues. I'd like to get a catalogue! After so many requests I now have Cs who mails one to me or sends it UPS. Even though she has investigated I can't seem to get a catalogue the old-fashioned way.

  11. July 17, 2009 / 4:05 am

    I love it!

  12. July 18, 2009 / 5:38 am

    I like how it looks but am having the worst problems checking out. 🙁 Every time I try to order something, the whole site locks up and I can't get anything to load. Very frustrating!

  13. July 18, 2009 / 1:13 pm

    Ack! That's no fun Melanie. I don't see a "report a bug" feature on the site, but you could try using the contact us and choosing "general information or feedback" from the dropdown. Then tell them as much detailed information as you can — what operating system (i.e. Windows XP), what browser (i.e. Safari), what product you were trying to buy and what step of the checkout keeps locking up for you.Site users are the best testers!! Hopefully whatever issue you ran into will be resolved soon.


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