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Busse Design Desconstructs Sephora.com
By Joy Busse, CEO & President - Busse Design USA
Reprinted from Internet World, December 15, 2000
The mammoth beauty site is just as slick as its stores, but its recent makeover didn't do much to spruce up the user interface.
It's a good thing that sephora.com launched a new Web site in the midst of our review. Their original site fell victim to the dictum of being fashionable at all costs. The most egregious example of this was the ridiculously hard-to-read black background of the old home page. Hats off to the Sephora team for ditching the hipster design and switching to what users really want-an easy-to-read site. However, a new background alone does not make a user-centric experience. Sephora.com's content is potentially engaging, but lack of UI continuity leads to an unsatisfying visit. In order to live up to its slogan, "The Most Beauty Online," the site needs another nip and tuck.
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Searching for the perfect experience.
Sephora.com presents a variety of search options that help filter product information and direct users quickly to the information they want. Though the information design of a pull-down menu can be extremely useful, the designers still need to think about the human aspect of decision-making that's specific to cosmetics. For example, a visual to assist me in determining my skin type would yield a more accurate search result when I'm browsing for skincare.
Inconsistent Cobranding.
Sephora has different levels of cobranding participation, from a simple partner logo on a page that lists products, to a partner's Flash presentation. While cobranding may be great for the pocketbook, in this case it's not great for the user experience. Users are thrown into completely different interfaces when clicking from one brand to another. Sephora needs to integrate the brands into the global site architecture and design strategy; simply inserting a partner's content into its site creates an egregious example of inconsistent user interface design.
Isn't the beauty industry all about visuals?
While the graphics on the new site are definitely better than its black predecessor, they still lack the impact needed to make a connection with the user. Whether your customer is a 20-something or an elegant sophisticate, the images must still entice them to shop.
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