Thanks for the feedback…

Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to send us feedback about Evie Lou’s recent website update! It’s a project that’s been long in the works.

For our first few years, our site was on the HipCommerce platform, which is quite basic and was developed with small retailers like us in mind. But that software was created 15 years ago, which is a lifetime in cyber years. Thus, it’s going the way of the steam engine (or the landline phone, the print newspaper, taxicabs, whatever the modern equivalent may be) and won’t continue to be supported by our hosts. Because we had to change anyway, we thought to make the shift a positive one, by adding features that customers had requested over the years.

So I sent a wish list of things I wanted to see on the revamped site to our developers, the patient folks at Modern Retail. Along the way, our “eight-week project” turned into an eight-month project, which was as frustrating as it sounds. But we wanted to get it right, and a lot of the features we wanted are those found on the big boys’ sites, such as Nordstrom.com or Anthropologie.com — chains with a lot more money and manpower at their disposal. But our development team did their absolute best to find or create enhancements for us that would work similarly to features on more lavish sites, but within our budget. This was an approach I could relate to — after all, it’s what we do all day in our stores for our customers. Not everyone has a Rundholz budget, but many have Rundholz taste.

While we had to give up some of our wish-list items, I’m very happy with the end result, and relieved that so many of the people who really matter (you know, actual customers!) are, too.

Inevitably, however, we’re all discovering various glitches as we work with the new site. Our developers and I are working to resolve them, but in the meantime, if you’ve encountered any of these issues, be assured that they’re real, and you’re not crazy:

• Internet Explorer: Brainy developer types don’t like this browser, and after this process, I see why. To borrow a phrase, it’s so glitchy.  Customers who are accessing the site on IE and trying to add a product to their shopping carts are finding that all sizes auto-default to a size XS.  We’re working on a fix, but in the meantime, the problem can be solved simply by using another browser, such as Google Chrome or Firefox. Or, just give us a call, and we can do the order over the phone!
• Overlapping features: When using the site on mobile phones and some laptops, folks are sometimes having trouble selecting the last size in the pull-down menu, as it sometimes overlaps the Cross-Sell feature below the menu. This is a CSS coding issue (I feel so smart when I throw around phrases like this, but honestly, I have no idea what that means!), which I’m told is a bit involved. Again, a fix is in the works.
• Filtering by size: I really wanted to have this useful feature on every collections catalog page, including clearance item pages, and it was a challenge for the developers to make happen. The good news is, that feature is now in place. The bad news is, it doesn’t work in real time, meaning that if a size Medium is sold out in a particular style, the item in that size will still show up in the filtered view because we did have it at one time. I’m pushing for a solution to this glitch, but for now, if we want the ability to filter at all — which we most certainly do — it’s something we have to live with. I’m sorry about it, and I’m really bummed, too. But nagging is a key component in my skill set, so I’ll stay on this like a bride at a Kleinfeld’s sample sale.

Again, thanks for your patience with us as we navigate the choppy waters of change. I’m going to get back to rowing.

XO, Kim