A big thank you to all of the 800+ people who took the YLF survey last week. It was a fantastic response, and over this last weekend we spent many hours poring over your answers and suggestions.
Some of what we saw was not surprising to us.
- Blog, Forum, then Finds: The Blog has the broadest appeal, the Forum has the most participation, but Finds is also gaining in popularity. We even have a few users who focus on Finds and seldom use the blog or forum.
- Style Advice: The most popular posts on YLF revolve around style advice and trends. “Detailed style advice posts” are tops by a long way, and “Wardrobe capsule posts”, “Ensemble posts” and “Posts about trends and seasonal trend reports” were in a following group that was quite a bit ahead of anything else. By the way, some people were worried that we’re looking to cut certain types of posts and that isn’t the case. We’re just trying to figure out what is most popular so we can better focus future efforts.
- Mobile in the Minority, but Gaining: Most people still visit YLF using a desktop or laptop computer, but phones and tablets are closer behind than ever.
There were also a few surprises. For instance:
- Ads Are OK: An overwhelming majority of people are happy to use YLF with ads. Only 3% said they would prefer to pay for an ad free option.
- Morning People: YLF visitors have an overwhelming preference for visiting in the morning. This is when 38% of people normally visit. “No particular time of day” was at 34% and evening followed at 15%. Midday, afternoon and late were single digit percentages.
- youlookfab.com: Relatively few people who responded follow YLF anywhere other than on the website. Pinterest was most popular, but less than 10% of people often follow YLF there.
We didn’t have many preconceived ideas regarding the question about products people would consider purchasing from us, but the answers were very interesting. The most popular option by far was the “DIY style refresh”, followed by eBooks and physical books, with style advice videos being least popular.
The answers to the open ended questions were very thought-provoking. More than 450 people took the time to write to us. We really appreciate the time and thought that went into this and the three of us read every single word that was written. We will be drawing from this input for some time to come, but I would like to highlight a few things that came up about the website itself, and what we plan to do about them.
A very common piece of input was that the front page design made it hard to follow recent posts. We agree. It is harder than it should be to make sense of the post order beyond the most recent 2 or 3 posts. We have a few immediate changes to address this.
- There is now a “Most Recent” block near the top of the page that lists all of the posts over the last week or so.
- The “browse all posts” link in this block will take you to a traditional blog view (i.e. posts in reverse chronological order).
- There is a date on each post’s block in the grid layout.
- I neatened the grid layout and lowered the word count to reduce the visual “busy-ness” of the page.
We will certainly continue to improve the front page design, but hopefully these initial changes solve some of the problems many people were having.
Another thing that came up often was the inadequacy of our current Google-based search function. We agree with this too, and while we don’t have a quick fix it is something we’re working on.
In several cases people mentioned specific technical issues they were having, like pages not loading on a particular phone, having to log in repeatedly, having trouble with uploading pictures to the forum, or not being able to use the Finds collector. In all of these situations we can almost certainly help, but we need to investigate your particular situation. Please get in touch using our contact form or, if you’re a member, by posting a question in the technical support area of the forum. We’d love to help.
Finally, thank you for all the support and encouragement you wrote in your responses. It means the world to us.
