2016: The Tale of the New Logo & Updated Design
Oooh, something looks a little different! After blogging for 10 years, it was time for a fresh look and feel! Our new logo was designed by the very talented Tara Esposito (highly recommend her; she was fantastic to work with, creative, and even the initial comps were all logos I could have seen used). From there, we spent the last three months working on an updated design with a lot of changes to the code itself. The redesign process was focused on two aspects: 1) improving the user experience on mobile (and small devices), and 2) improving consistency across style and elements across the site. Temptalia is a lot more than just a blog, and we recognize that it can be completely overwhelming, especially for readers who are newer to the site!
For mobile, we tried to address the following: 1) more important information within the first screen as much as possible, 2) reduce scrolling, 3) minimize unnecessary space on left/right/top/bottom to maximize what you see one each screen. When it came to consistency in styling, it was primarily about using the same terminology more consistently throughout the site along with simplifying product badges and then using different sizes. It was also about further prioritizing what actions are available and where, and being more in sync about what pieces of information are most important on the blog, compared to the Dupe List or the Foundation Matrix.
As always, please let us know of any errors either in this post or if it seems like a larger issue, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Nick at nick[at]temptalia.com.
Below, I’ll discuss some of the larger changes made:
Reviews
One of the largest and most visible changes to all users will be how we have set-up reviews and images for reviews. The change was initially driven by trying to make it easier to view and read through posts on mobile and tablet (smaller screens), but we also felt that there was real value for desktop (larger screens) readers as well. Occasionally, I have received a comment about readability of a review or how it flows, as a shade’s rating and photos are both separated from the text portion of the review when there are multiple shades being reviewed. There’s also the issue that we call the “sea of dupes” when they’re written in paragraph form, along with it being harder to have multiple paragraphs (so instead, one long paragraph).
For the majority of reviews, the review ordered in the following way: images (in a slideshow), shade name, written review, list of dupes, and rating information — for each shade. We hope that this helps organize the review and make it flow in a more orderly fashion.
The slideshow takes advantage of the gestures on touchscreens, which should make it easier to “scroll” through photos and skip over the shade(s) you’re less interested. On larger screens, like desktops, it makes it easier to compare and contrast photos–e.g. comparing how a product looks in the pan (or tube) compared to swatched or a lip swatch in direct light compared to indirect light as we went for larger thumbnails, so you would get a good idea of each photo and whether you wanted to see it in full-size. It will also allow you to easily read the review, compare what I’ve said (“it’s patchy”) and see the photo right above it without having to scroll through several other reviews and/or upwards of 15 photos! For an eyeshadow palette review, where each individual shade may only have two photos, you won’t see a slider but will find all the photos at the end of the post (as it was in the past)–we felt like that was the point where the slideshow lost its value and became ornery and unnecessary.
By creating more defined headers, like the shade name, it will make it easier for to split paragraphs and improve readability. We found that the bulleted list of the dupes seemed to be the most efficient (in terms of space) and easiest to read as we went through several renditions of how we might display them. The Glossover’s only change was placement, so the system, scores, and the like are the same as before.
Product Database
We wanted to make it easier to search through our product database of reviews/photos/swatches to find what you’re looking for. You can still search for a specific shade or formula, but you can also browse by type (price and availability) or brand. When you search by type, say eyeshadow under $20, the results page has been improved to give you more results for each screen. When you search by brand, you’ll be directed to the brand’s overview page, which includes stats like average ratings, most wanted and most loved by the community, as well as recent reviews.
Other changes:
- Added Ingredients field; will display when ingredients are available
- Palettes/Shades from Palettes have better visual representation when relationship exists
- Improved image slideshow for shades
Palette vs. Palette
We have adjusted how Palette vs. Palette works by focusing on giving similar shades, even they might not be dupes, while highlighting actual dupes (that are in our database of dupes). It will also go shade by shade to pull in similar shades (which are based on how I have classified each swatch for color, undertone, and finish), which should give you a little more overlap between palettes than if we only showed you true dupes.
LOVE the changes!
Glad to hear it, Al! 😀
I’m on my desktop right now as my phone is charging but I can’t wait to pull up the site later and see how it does on mobile! My phone really struggled in past with your website (mostly I think it was a problem with loading so many big photos) so I’m eager to see the changes!
Will there always just be like the top three dupes listed from now on? Also, is there still the option to see either “all swatches” of dupes versus side by side comparisons with the reviewed product? I guess I was one of those people that liked the paragraph with all the dupes, it helped me quickly see without going to another page if I had similar products 😛
Hey Cat!
No, it won’t show every dupe, but it is supposed to show just the top 10. The prior design also capped out at either 10 or 15 (I don’t recall, but it might have been closer to 15). If you click “View Swatches,” you would see all swatches in a gallery format (not the two side-by-side but all of them together). If you click “View All Dupes,” you would see it on The Dupe List, so everything would be in the original vs. dupe side-by-side format. So they are the same two links as before!
GORGEOUS! The care you put into what you do is obvious. Thank you!
Thank you! 🙂
OMG THE NEW LOGO IS BEAUTIFUL! I love it!! 😀 xoxoxo
I love it!! I felt a bit bad, because our lovely designer did some really cool stuff but I still ended up with flower and pink, haha.
Oh I forgot to say, new logo looks great! It’s elegant and straight-forward! And I’m glad there’s still some pink!
Thank you, Cat! 🙂
I absolutely love the upgrades and new logo. Job well done!
Yay!! tHANK YOU, rAEANNE!
Hi Christine!
I’m loving the new changes to the blog! Right away from the first two posts, the convenience of the photos now as a slideshow, than description and rating is symmetrically easier on the eyes! Not to mention everything flows a lot better now. Keep up the amazing work!
Trang
That is great to hear, Trang! 🙂 I know it’s a HUGE change, and internally, we fought and pulled and haf-killed each other over what to do, but in the end I was convinced that there was real value for even desktop users making images into a slideshow format.
I have to admit I’m already used to the new design, it’s refreshing. Thank you a lot for all the hard work you put in your blog!
Oh, I am so glad 🙂 We’re all over here with our hearts in our stomach for feedback, LOL. (Or you know, the whole site to come crashing down!)
Thank you, Marielle!
Looks great so far! I’ll have to explore the rest of the site on different devices but glad to see the review-pic separation thing addressed.
One small critique is that currently, the “Recent Looks” box has each thumbnail grayed out unless moused over. I think this kind of defeats the purpose of that section, especially since in grayscale, some looks which are different can look identical. The point of being able to see the look at a glance is to see if it appeals to you and be able to make a quick decision on whether or not to click through and see the product list/tutorial. I’m not sure if it is also grayed out on mobile/tablet, but if it is, that would be another issue that forces people to click through on a thumbnail before they can see an accurate depiction of the look—which takes more loading time and data, especially if it turns out the look wasn’t what they were expecting.
Hi Eliana!
Thank you for the feedback!
Recent Looks has actually been grayscale for awhile! The reason is that the colors can be really different from photo to photo, and it can be distracting against the photos/swatches (as well as because we have ads running near to it) in the content so we went with grayscale when we launched the widget originally (it didn’t change). I can double check on mobile to see if maybe having colors on mobile would make more sense as mobile is single column (no sidebar).
Thanks for the swift reply! Woops! I guess I haven’t been paying attention, then, and only noticed it because of the cleaner design. (Which is better!)
And of course! Love what you do here, and the changes so far look great, and I think will really highlight the work you do.
Congrats on the new logo!
I still appreciate the feedback! And I understand ya – there are a lot of things going on the site, and we definitely get that, “I didn’t know that existed!” reaction more often than we want, lol! (Which is on us to fix!)
Hi Christine and Team! I love the changes, especially the logo. I liked it before, but it’s definitely more “modern” looking now while still being reminiscent of your old logo. I also like that the whole page is cleaner and more streamlined overall on the desktop version. I haven’t had a chance to view the mobile version yet, but it sounds like you’ve addresses the issues that I experienced, mainly loading time because of all the images and trying to find the ratings at a glance.
Thanks for all the hardwork you put into this blog, and keep up the great work!
Awesome! That is how I felt – it was updated, fresher, more modern but still felt right and true to the site.
I scoured the mobile site to try to find ways to reduce descriptions to less lines, reduce title sizes, and little things like that to just try to minimize vertical space to reduce overall scrolling – but obviously not remove ALL space since we want readability, too! There are a few more areas that I know can be improved upon, so we’ll keep working on that, too.
But please let me know any feedback on the mobile design when you get a chance to look at it!
I love the tweaked logo. Looking forward to testing the mobile site, it does seem like that will be easier. I also do like seeing the swatches on the homepage. Great job!
Thank you, Ginny! Fingers crossed that–at a minimum–mobile browsing is better, but hopefully much improved!!
Very nice, well-thought-out upgrades and gorgeous, fitting logo!
YAY! Thank you, Di!
BEAUTIFUL work as always, Christine/Nick/Tara! Congratulations 😀
Thank you, Celia! 🙂
So far on desktop it feels very natural and intuitive. Like the classic site but with more modernity and streamlined sleekness. It won’t be a shock to old-school users like me, which is always good haha. Instead it’s pleasant, easy, and feels like home.
That is awesome to hear, Celia! Pretty much what we were going for 🙂
I love the changes made to your website!
I was wondering, would you consider coming out with an app? I would totally download that and binge read forever!!! <3 Your blog is my favorite!
We might someday, but we have to really fine tune and get a better handle on mobile use/experience for the site first 🙂
Wonderful facelift for this amazing site. Tried foundation matrix and swatches, very easy to navigate on the phone??
Congrats on completing 10years
Thank you, Div! 🙂
WOW I love the new layout & improvements made! Your blog is just getting better & better with every change 🙂
Thank you, Karen!
Wow! What a surprise! Liking it so far. I’m not squinting as I scroll through text so that’s awesome (not that I can remember if I did before, but it’s easy on the eyes right now) 🙂
It is larger, and it’s a serif font, so that might be why! The line-height (space between each line) is also bigger than it was (there’s a happy medium between too little and too much space).
So, happy to hear it is easy to read so far!
The new logo looks great! And so does the site redesign, from where I’ve poked about so far. I even pulled it up on my trusty ol’ S3 and it loaded quite quickly, and everything was easy to use/find.
Cheers and thanks to you and your team for all your hard work (and a pup treat to Mellan too!).
That is great to hear, Brynn! Thank you so much for checking it out on your phone 🙂
Oh hai there, gorgeous new layout and logo!! I LOVE the changes you and your team have made to Temptalia, Christine — they look great, and I definitely feel like the site’s useability has improved! There’s a lot less scrolling and searching now, which is a huge help on mobile.
As for the logo… I think it’s perfect. It really feels like it captures how Temptalia has changed and grown, and I love that you still have a pink flower in there ? You guys couldn’t have done better!
So pleased to hear it, Rae! That’s really what we wanted, so it is nice to know that we are on the right track!
This is so fabulous Christine!
Thank you, Nicole!
I like it so far! It loads faster on regular computer and mobile.
Woohoo!
Love your new logo, you guys did a great job!
x.
Thank you, Liesbeth! 😀
Switched over to mobile to check it out. The biggest thing I’m noticing is that my screen isn’t jumping all over the place as different parts of the page load at different times. I always had trouble with the dupe images on mobile before this. Sometimes they overlapped other parts of the page or got mixed up. It’s much cleaner now!
The slideshow both on the main page and then on the review page is leaps and bounds nicer. It lets me know very quickly whether I want to click on the post (not that there is ever really a post I don’t click on).
Great job on improved mobile experience from what I can see.
Thank you, Jaime, for your feedback, especially about mobile being better! I hope you continue to see other areas where it is easier to use as you see more pages 🙂
Looks great, and it also looks like it will be easier to use on my iPhone as well as my computer and iPad. Great job, LOVE it!
Fingers crossed! 🙂
Can’t wait to try out the benefits of Temptalia 2.0. Just looked at this first post. It’s clean, navigable, streamlined, terrific. You clearly give so much thought to all aspects of your work. Always said you had the best frontal lobe in the entire beauty community…. and this proves it! Congratulations to your team on the tech update/revamp. Beautiful. Glad the logo has font modernization, but kept the pink flowers…. it’s part of your theme and references the old logo, which we associate that with you….and your T earrings. You have had one fabulous decade. Think of it, from beginner blogger to the acknowledged world authority. In ten years! I think much of that is due to your thought process, to your honesty, and to your hype-proof integrity. Your parents and family must be so very proud. PS: on going Mellan and future sibs is a must.
Aw, thank you for your support as always, KJH 🙂
I’m very happy with the logo response – it is one of those things that can go wrong very easily, lol! But like you said, it is modern but still familiar while being new.
Christine, I love the new design, logo and changes. I can access Temptalia on my mobile without any problems now (it kept reloading on my Samsung in the past). Congrats to you and your team !
OH that is fantastic to hear, Nicole!
LOVEEEEEE IT!!!
YAY! 🙂
I love the new look and logo, very romantic and classy!
One observation though is that the serif body font makes the text hard to read and sort of strains my eyes a bit..
Thank you for the insight, Daphne! Do you think it is the space between the lines or actually the serif font? Part of how we gather what changes or sizes to use is by looking at other larger sites, and the trend definitely seemed to be toward using serif within fashion/beauty.
As an slp and former ld/reading person, I had always read just the opposite. That serif fonts led the eye more easily to the next letter, and hence, were more readable, from a visual perception POV. Serif fonts had more visual cues embedded. Sans serifs were more truncated and less fluid. That said, always loved the sans, like Optima. They are cleaner and leave more white space. Also, can anyone name a newspaper (if you’ve seen or heard of one in the past five years) that uses sans fonts? I don’t recall one. Not arguing, just saying.
The trend seems towards serif for paragraph text, sans for headers, and then sans for smaller text (in general, like subheaders or a button). When I was reading about readability (that sounds funny), modern devices have better screens overall that you can get away with both now but for awhile, I believe sans serif was actually considered better for web but serif has always been king for print.
I’m obviously more familiar with digital stuff, so while a mix is most prominent, I definitely see all serif and all sans serif, too.
Hi kjh – exactly as you said, the serif font reads like a newspaper to me. I don’t really compare reading temptalia posts to reading newspaper articles because for me, a temptalia review post contains more information in text form (numbers, statistics, percentages, etc.) than an article written to read like a story.
In my opinion, when the text is mixed in with the other numbers and symbols (i.e., the “dupes” part of a review post), that is when it gets hard to read. Maybe it’s just this particular serif font with the edges and that the numbers don’t line up top/bottom (my OCD), or perhaps the increased white space from the font switch is what caused the eye strain, lol.
Either way, it’s not a deal breaker for me, just a personal observation (I may be the only one that feels this way) for someone that reads temptalia on a computer. By looking at other comments though, I’m very happy to see it’s more read-able to everyone else. 🙂
I love how you’re always improving. The new logo is so pretty too!
Thank you, Monica!
Awesome Christine, Love it!!!!!
Yay! Thank you, Lily!
I love the new layout Christine!!! it’s so classy and very “temptalia”
I also wanted to say thank you, i don’t know if you actually changed the font. BUT it seems more spaced out and bolder, and with my dyslexia it’s SO much easier for me to read on mobile!!!
The body text font changed to serif from sans serif (like Times New Roman is a serif font), so that might be why! It is a bit larger, I think, and the spacing between lines is greater (we are still considering reducing it slightly – most sites in fashion/beauty seem to be at 1.6, we are 1.8).
Ooooh!!! Okay!!
Thank you!! I’m on desk top view now, and it’s 100% easier for me to read without getting all jumbled up!!
That is really great to hear, Shannon! Thank you so much for letting me know that it is better for you on mobile and desktop 🙂
You guys did such an amazing job with the new design! Normally I’m the kind of person who’s sort of technologically challenged and has a bit of trouble figuring out how to navigate something once it changes, but this is SO well done that none of that applies. Congratulations on a wonderful change!
Also, the logo is gorgeous.
Well, that is music to my ears, Nicole! 🙂 Thank you!!
I really like the changes! Looks great, loads faster and I really love the slideshow, it’s so much better!! The only thing I would say I miss is seeing the whole list of dupes in one shot. I’d rather that than having to click to see the entire list.
Hi Ariella!
Thank you for the input! The list of dupes is actually not much different – it was always limited to 15 (with “view full list” as a link added at the end) in paragraph form. It’s limited to 10 now (the 10 most similar), which is reduced from before by about a third!
This is awesome!! And everything looks so great!
Thank you, ACP!
Wow! I was on here this morning, and when I came back to check what you’ve posted today everything is so different! That being said, I really like the changes! I checked on my phone, and the website looks beautiful there as well! Keep up the good work, it’s obvious you put your heart into running this website, and it shows! Thank you for your dedication to your blog, checking Temptalia is one of the highlights of my day.
So glad to hear it, Courtney! Thank you so much 🙂
Love the new logo!!
Awesome! 🙂
I love the changes especially the way the photos shows in reviews 🙂
I really love the new logo too ! xoxo
Yay! Thanks, Claire!
The new logo is lovely!
Thank you, Alix!
Ooohh this is very much appreciated as I find myself more often than not trying to play catch up with Temptalia on the go.. so I’m either on my phone or my iPad. I love the slideshow feature because it pulls everything into context and greatly reduces the amount of scrolling: this I particularly notice on my smaller devices which load much more slowly so the scrolling gets to be very tedious. Kudos to you guys! Can’t wait to check out the other new features. Love the even cleaner lines with the new Logo, and bold text which helps for older eyes like these. The fonts are highly readable for me as well. Thank you!!!
I hope it continues to work better for you on mobile! We thought we were addressing some mobile issues last time we designed, but we really did not – and I am hoping this time goes much, much further and is more dialed in (but there is still room for improvement!).
Love it! I appreciate the attention to detail you gave (and have always given) to the site. It looks great!
Thanks so much, Nadiya!
Loving it so far! I access the site primarily through mobile, so any adjustments in that direction are appreciated.
Great, Lacey! We hope it continues to be better for you on mobile!
Haven’t tested all the changes yet, but I like what I see so far, thanks for all the hard work!! Curious how long it took you to do this?
We started in mid-July (the logo was done much earlier) but there were a few projects in-between then and now that delayed the redesign. Though you can’t see it, the whole site is on an updated framework, so there was some recoding in there, too!
Because I am literally STUCK on my mobile device, with my beautiful, very expensive desk top in boxes presently, these changes are fantastic and much appreciated! It may just relieve my “text thumb” issues a bit! Great work! ?
Oh, great, Nancy 🙂 And do let me know if the way palettes are shown still works or not – we are not using the slider for the shades within things like an eyeshadow palette (I didn’t want the slideshow to be annoying, and with only two photos per eyeshadow, that seemed annoying!). So you’ll still have to scroll, and one wonders whether in reality, people would rather slide than scroll, two photos or ten!
This looks beautiful, Christine!
Thank you, Aline!
This is so much cleaner. Thank you.
My only issue now is the search bar. I used it to find your recent Best Brushes guide and got nothing. I think it works well to find products, but not to find general posts.
We did not change anything about the search functionality, so I’ll have my team look into that! I just tried, and it shows me 12 pages for “best brushes” but nothing shows up – that is definitely an error. We are looking into it now!
Desktop: flawless. Mobile: fantastic. 1000% praise hands here for you and the update. I’ve been a reader/fan/believer for six years now, so I’m nostalgic thinking about about how it used to look v now. Also nostalgic about how much more money I had before I started reading…
One concern/comment: I use Feedly to follow your site. The new layout translated to that platform is not the best. (All the pictures up-front, lots of scrolling, weird spacing around the Score) Whereas the last layout flowed, the new one is a little clunkier. I think it’s how Feedly interprets the new layout. Are there plans to fix that?
Thanks for the love and making me want 87 lipsticks I would never wear!
We’ll have to look into what Feedly reads and doesn’t read and see if we are able to easily (and quickly) make any adjustments (if it is very time consuming, we might not be able to do much about it).
Thank you, Chelsea!
loving all the changes!!
Thank you, Allison!
This is incredible! The update looks amazing. Not gonna lie, I was seriously confused when I opened the site today, but it definitely helps so far on mobile.
lol! I can imagine there’s a moment of, “Wait, am I on the right site? Did they get hacked?!”
LOVE all the new changes 🙂 Great work.
Thank you, Ame!
Yay to positive changes! I love the new logo, and the website is MUCH better now on mobile! I had many issues before but now it’s good :). Great job Christine!
Glad to hear it! If there are any pain points on mobile we didn’t address, please don’t hesitate to let me know!
I’m extra excited about the palette comparison. Thank you and your team for all the hard work!
Thank you, Grace!
I LOVE IT! And I’m not just saying that. Intuitive, easy to nav. Well done and thanks!
Aw, thank you Linda!
It looks ah-mah-zing!! Very nice job! ??
Thanks, Amy 😀
I like the new logo! It’s really pretty!
Thanks, Kelly!
As an “oldster”, I don’t do well when things on my computer change (we just had a minor and temporary “change” at work that is a stop-gap, quick fix that will then be changed when the larger problems are sorted out) but already, I’m starting to get used to this. Now I have to see if the “add to Vanity” icon will appear every time (it’s so weird and I think we’ve discussed this before – there are some items that ARE in my Vanity, but the little icon doesn’t show for them). Off to check it out now….
Hey Mariella!
Temporary changes are a bummer, since you have to get used to that but know something bigger (and better!) is coming.
Let me know specifically the item and place where you feel like they are not syncing up and then we’ll try to recreate on our end, then work from there.
Christine, I just checked and it looks like the logo is now working on those “mystery” products. Off to do one last check (MAC Posh Pedigree quad, which, for the longest time, did show the “Vanity” icon and then, suddenly, didn’t! Oh, the mysteries of technology!)
Oh, that’s fantastic! 🙂
Congratulations on the new update! It’s so sleek now, and I’m finding that it’s loading much faster too! I appreciate all the hard work that goes in the background to running a website like this – your team did an A+++ job!
Really thrilled to hear it is faster for some readers! Thanks, Stephanie!
Great job Christine! I love the new design and layout; looks very fresh. I’m really into font styles and I like this one as it is very easy for someone that is vision challenged (like myself) to see. Thank you! 🙂
Happy to hear it is more readable, Tammy! 🙂 Thank you!
The changes are so great! I love that the description/ review is right by the photos, and the palette comparison tool is so much better. Everything just looks fantastic – it must have been so much work, but you guys did a fabulous job.
I’m so happy to hear it, Emi! Thank you 🙂
I LOVE the new logo! What web framework did you switch to, and from what? Also, one slight nitpick: the text appears to be a very very dark gray, rather than a black. In parts where there’s a gray background, e.g. Temptalia Asks You, I find it very slightly difficult to read the gray-on-gray. But that might just be my eyes. 😛
We just upgraded to the latest version of Bootstrap (I think it’s 4). The text is #333333 – when I tried to seeo what color was good for paragraph text, #333333 was most popular (I also saw #222222 and #444444 often). I don’t have the reference sheet for grays used, but there might be a lighter gray for the body of the Temptalia Asks You post.
Surprised I’ve never heard of Bootstrap, though then again the only web frameworks I really knew existed were React, AngularJS, Django, and Ruby on Rails…. But just reading up a little on all of these, Bootstrap seems by far the best suited to your needs, as far as I can tell anyway. This is more Nick’s area of expertise anyway. 😛 Cool! 🙂
Ok, that makes sense with the grays. I’m heavily biased towards #222222 or lower, all about higher contrast, and not at all into what’s popular, I guess. 😛
I know Angular is used in a lot of places, like Swatch Gallery, Foundation Matrix, etc. but we don’t use the other ones that I’m aware of!
It was at least the scale of grays I saw most commonly used on fashion/beauty sites, but it might be more contrasting on other genres. I figured the best place for me to look for inspiration and get a sense of what is (or isn’t) used was to look at retailers within fashion/beauty along with some of the larger publications that probably have 25 people making sure their sites are well done, haha.
Oh coooool!
Love the new logo, but I can’t stand slideshows. Scrolling up and down is so much easier than left and right.
Thank you for your feedback, Kirsten! You should be able to click (or tap) the left and right arrows rather than scroll as well!
Sorry. I just don’t like them. It’s personal taste. I’d prefer seeing all the images at once without having to click on each one. I feel the same when places like Refinery29 and all those sites do it. Maybe in the future you could add a “show all” button like some of them do?
Also I noticed on the most recent Mac post, when I was checking it out, that as I clicked on images in the slideshow, the slideshow would move out from under my mouse, up and down, depending on the size of the picture above it, then I’d have to scroll my mouse and screen up or down to get to the slideshow again. Is this a bug or will it stay like that? (I’m using Windows and Firefox). Thanks.
Hi Kirsten,
The slideshow is aligned so that the photo always stays at the top line (where it says 01/06 and has < >), but the images themselves may be different heights, so the thumbnails (below the full-size image) will move up/down if the full-size image is larger or smaller than the one prior. What is your resolution size? I can have Nick look into it tomorrow for that particular resolution size. I’m looking at it on 1024 and 1280, and I’m not having any issues where I have to actually scroll up or down to go to the next image if clicking the thumbnails to move in the slideshow. That might occur on something like a photo of ingredients if it ends up being a really tall image (but I’ll likely be removing those from the slider manually) – most photos are 760×760 or 760×625 on the widest layout view. We did design is based on using the top line, as that was the easiest and most intuitive place to put the < > arrows and allow for different height variations without forcing the slideshow to be a really unnecessary tall height for 5/6 of the photos.
My resolution is 1600×900. I have a screencap that illustrates it, if you’d like me to send it somewhere. I don’t have to scroll the screen (Sorry, I think I misspoke about that) but I do have to move my mouse to get it over the slideshow again just to navigate to the next picture.
Oh, I see a bit of the confusion now. I thought you were talking about arrows on the ends of the row of thumbnails– that’s what I was referring to as a slideshow– not the individual pictures. I was talking about the thumbnails moving out from under my mouse so I have to move the mouse to get to it again to navigate and I was looking for arrows at the edges of that- there aren’t any so every time I’d click there, the thumbnails would move up and down. (Now maybe you can see why I dislike these things!) I think the height of the thumbnails is good, but it’s not very good to use for navigation because it moves.
Yes, we designed it with the idea that most people would slide (fingertip or you can slide with your mouse on desktop) or use the < > arrows above the full size photo.
It sounds like we are talking about the same thing, though! We will do some testing and checking into that res – it is definitely a super wide res, and with only 900px, I could see the image + thumbnails taking up most of your real estate even at maximum width (because you are getting the full sized, 760px photo).
When you say you like Refinery29’s ‘see all’ button – I get a pop-up that overlays the images, but it still requires me to click whatever one I want to see – but you prefer that? Just want to clarity before I talk to my team tomorrow 🙂 I do not know if or what we may do, but I am always happy to consider new ideas.
Refinery29 might not do it. I know some slideshow sites do though, like these:
– https://www.popsugar.com/beauty/MAC-Cosmetics-Nutcracker-Sweet-Holiday-2016-42518523 (link in upper left)
– http://beauty.about.com/od/celebrityhairstyles/ss/Hairstyles-2014-The-Years-Top-20-Trends.htm (“Show all” link at bottom center of article)
– http://www.businessinsider.com/best-burgers-in-the-us-2014-5 (“View as one page” link at lower right)
Great, thank you! We will look into it.
AWESOME JOB. LOVE THE NEW FORMAT.
IT LOOKS GREAT CHRISTINE!!!!
Thank you!
Looks great Christine! Kudos to you and your team; all that work is definitely appreciated!
Thanks so much, Susan!
Congrats! I love the new look.
Thanks, Dua!
Best blog on the internet! Love the new changes!
Thank you, Anne!
I love how nicely the new website plays on mobile! My favorite part is the slideshow for the pictures. I really appreciate that I don’t have to open a million new tabs if i just want to glance at swatches.
Yay! Thanks, Kayle!
I really appreciate how well thought out all the updates to your site are. I can’t imagine managing that much information, cross referencing, etc. Thank you. Oh, and the new logo is lovely 🙂
Thanks, Susie!
You and your team are legends! Thank you so much for your hard work and everything you do is greatly appreciated. Well done!
Thanks so much, Genevieve!
Your new logo is great and I appreciate all of the thought and effort you put into the site’s layout and usability! The slide show at the beginning of reviews is great and for palettes I love that there’s a pic by each product score. It’s much easier to determine the review for each color.
Thanks for everything you do Christine! Love, love, love your site!
Thank you, Bonnie 🙂
That logo is GORGEOUS. Love it!!!
Yay! Thanks Sarah!
Love the new logo/design; fresh and feminine, and still very Temptalia.
Thank you, Marlena! 🙂
Love the new layout and design mark! Fabulous update, you and the team should be super proud. 🙂
Thanks, Nicole!
Very elegant and clean design. I’m look forward to playing with all the new upgrades but it’s already clear how much thought about usability and readers’ needs has gone in. It will be fun to explore.
My only challenge is the 1-3 minutes it takes for each page to load on my laptop; never a problem before; perhaps more of the ads are now video? (I suspect it’s less that than .my cable company aka extortionists — I wouldn’t put it past them to be choking the service in bid to up my bill; they’ve done before.)
Anyway — wonderful redesign!
That is odd! A few users are reporting faster load times. The ads were not changed, and we didn’t add another unit or anything like that – some were shuffled around in general, but the max per page hasn’t changed!
This is a great change for upcoming year!! Awesomeness! Love this new logo, very elegant.
Thank you, YL!
I love it! I usually visit on my iPhone and I love the slideshow! I can get to swatches right away and see if I want to dig deeper. Brilliant! Congratulations on a job exceptionally well done.
Thank you, Rina! 🙂
I have been reading your blog since 2010!!! my, time does fly!
What can I say that you have not heard before? your blog is just awesome 🙂 I blame you for maaaany many purchases made in the past lol and now that I am in an almost-no-buy phase I still enjoy popping in once a week at the very least
My only teensy weensy suggestion is that you review more drugstore products 🙂
Oh and I would love to read a post about your views on the way the beauty community has evolved since you started blogging, I sometimes miss the simplicity of the old days, when the beauty gurus filmed their videos in bad lighting, sitting in their kitchen or on the bed, now it all just seems…….too profesional, too staged, U know what I mean??
Thank you for the suggestions, Monica! 🙂
These improvements look great, Christine! I love your attention to detail and how committed you are to us, your readers.
I have one comment, something I’ve been meaning to write you about for a long time. I find it so hard to use or search bar. If I type, for exemple, “velvet Nars”, because I saw a review a couple of weeks ago, I would expected to find the most recent posts that would have those two words. I feel that the indexing in the search is not good, I get super old posts, sometimes not related to what I search for. I’m not sure if I’m the one doing something wrong, but I use the search bar as I use Google, so I really think there is room for improvement here.
Please don’t think I’m ungrateful or non-appreciative of all your amaaaazing work, because I am. I’m just making a suggestion 🙂
Hi Camila,
I’m not sure what search result you are trying to get? When I search “velvet nars,” I get NARS Velvet Eyeliner, NARS Velvet Lip Glide, and NARS Velvet Shadow Stick Set as the first three results, which are all new, relevant results? The search is looking through our product database, as most people are searching for a review, so it will look to see if there is an associated shade or formula. It also looks through blog posts and there is an emphasis on recency. Could you let me know what you are expecting from search?
Hi Christine,
I didn’t know the search was looking at the database. I was expecting to find the reviews. I wanted to find the Nars Velvet Lip Glide review. I get a result that actually shows the Velvet Lip Glide, but when I click it, it’s not the review, and it’s hard to find the review, even going through the database.
I’m just one person, so if the readers love the way it works today, no problem. But I now find myself going to Google and writing the name of the product + temptalia, which usually takes me to the most recent review.
Hi Camila,
So when I click Velvet Lip Glide, I am taken to a page that shows all of the shades, and then I can click any shade that I want to know more about and see the rating and a button that says “read review.” But there are multiple reviews so there’s no way to link to just one review (and imagine trying to link to all MAC Lipstick reviews!) since the review is linked to the shade. If I type in “velvet glide review,” I get the reviews showing up on the first page of results, but it is designed to pull up the product listing first, since we do not know whether you are looking for a review on shade A, B, or D. This lets you pick exactly the shade you wanted as readers gave us feedback that they felt we wasted their time making them scroll and sift through review posts for one shade. The search looks at everything on Temptalia – product database as well as blog posts, but it will prioritize matches found in the database if they score high enough.
I will definitely keep your feedback in mind! It is, unfortunately, the opposite of what we found people looking for last time we worked on search 🙁 I will do some thinking on it, though. Any change to search will probably take us awhile as we sort through other things that we need to do to button up the new layout. Thank you for your patience! I’m so sorry!
Christine, what you says makes more sense. I’ll start using the search bar as you suggested. I’m not the best with the product database or the gallery, sometimes it takes me a while to find what I need, but I’m pretty sure it’s just my problem, I’m not searching it right.
Thank you!
We believe it SHOULD be easy to use, and that however you use, it should work! I do have an idea, but I have to talk to my guys to see if it’s doable (and if it is, what will take, etc.).
Thank you again for your feedback!
Just wanted to let you girls know that I have exactly the same issue as Camelia (also wanted to ask about it for a longer time!)… If I want te re-find a review I use the google search machine and it leads me to the right page on the Temptalia website. But I do understand that it’s a product datebase and not a review database. So I might need to start using it differently. Thanks!
Not that I like having to give instructions (because it means we failed, as you can’t give a how-to to every person who uses search!), but the site is designed to create individual pages for every product and shade, which are like summary pages; they show the swatches/photos, provide links to reviews, dupes, etc. Like if you search for “MAC Show Gold,” it will show up in the drop down, you select, and it takes you to the overview for the shade – there is a black button that says “read review” that goes back to the original review. So that’s how it works now, based on feedback from readers, but I will keep thinking about how I can answer both sides.
So far, I’m liking the upgrades. I’m on my phone right now, and the new font is so much easier to read. I don’t even need my glasses. The pages are loading a lot faster, too.
That is great to hear! Thanks, Rachel!
The new layout is so so good! The logo is gorgeous and the overall layout doesn’t feel overwhelming at all. The slideshow definitely makes reading your reviews a lot easier. And I love how you’ve also considered not using the slideshow for a large-scale review. And headers!
Overall, huge thumbs up for improved accessibility from this spoonie. <3
Thank you, Ryou!
It seems like it will be more tedious to have the slideshows when it’s a UD palette with 20 eyeshadows (eyeshadows, specifically, in palettes almost always only have 2 photos – the pan and the swatch). I’m also afraid that it makes the review itself very, very long when I imagine many will skim through a palette review and zero in on the shade(s) they’re most interested in. We’ll still have the Glossover under each shade, so the review will feel longer in that sense, but hey, it DOES show one of the two photos, eh?
But I’m open to feedback to that! I have a blush duo review going up today, and I felt like even with three photos, the slideshow still made sense, because there were only two shades.
You are very very welcome!
I checked out the review that I think you mentioned (MAC Miss Cupcake/Tomato). I really like the system with the multiple slideshows! the review does feel longer but it’s much easier to look at the photos while reading the review now. I’m also really liking how the dupe list are in bullet points now.
All in all, it feels very accessible to me, so good job and thank you. <3
Thank you, Ryou!
Do you feel like you’d still want the format of Miss Cupcake/Tomato for an eyeshadow palette (or set) with say, 10+ shades? Where the slideshow would just be two photos for each shade? Let me know 😉
We are actually really blown away by the amount of positive feedback on the image slideshow!
I’m not entirely sure on that yet, personally, although I have a feeling I’m going to like it fine. After all, this means better structure between images and reviews and I won’t say no to that.
One thing I’ve always liked is how your sneak peek posts are structured. It’s nice to be able to see all the shades in one palette side by side like that.
You guys did an amazing job and I am very impressed by how much you care about our experience with the website. Thank you. <3
Thank you again <3
I’ll probably deal eventually, but the change in how the images display is kind of frustrating for my laptop. (Or maybe just my computer?)
The images are so big I have to scroll up or down to click the next image and scroll back to be able to see the whole image in my screen. It’s just kind of slow compared with just scrolling down through the images.
I like the aesthetics of the logo change!
Hi Ae!
What is your resolution? In general, the site responds based on “breakpoints” which are usually more of a width constraint (e.g. the site is different on mobile,, due to the small screen, compared to a giant monitor.
We will definitely look into it further, but for now (while we look into it and see if we can do anything to alleviate it), have you tried using the left and right arrows (< > ) above the slideshow – it should say 01/06 on the left, then < > on the right!
Just got off work and I love how you tried to keep the flow the same but it’s such a perk that it now a mobile responsive website which is quite an undertaking for such a large site content wise even with the information being pulled from a wordpress.org database structure.
Also new font families and a little JS animation in the nav once you hit mobile size. lol 😉
The logo will grow on me because my first thought is I want to play with the kurning of the characters more (love the font choise and floral logo though 😉 ).
Thank you so much! 🙂 It is great to hear it is better on mobile, because that was a huge driving force of the redesign.
Absolutely love the slideshow function! The redesign is amazing, and I think it’s kept it’s personality as well. So exciting to see these changes make mobile easier to use!
Yay! 🙂 Thank you so much, Madeleine!
I like the new layout it’s such a clean crisp look. Very easy on the eyes. The new logo is nice and more memorable .
Thank you, Denise!