New Community Look and Feel

[Ixist]

Idle and I spent a lot of time working to set up the new look and feel of the community. You'll notice that we moved, removed, changed and did some housecleaning of channels (categories).

We are completely moving the News, Announcements and Feedback area from the community and re-positioning it elsewhere. We wanted our community to be about pheromones and make it inviting to everyone. I never liked the idea of having all the business stuff upfront as I felt it takes away from the community spirit about pheromones. Understanding also we need a place for business chatter. With some new functionality that stabilizes some old unused features we have moved this section into several new spots and merged others too.

The first is Forum Feedback (where you are now) is now apart of Everything Else. You still get a voice and its still important to us (we love your suggestions) but now this type of feedback neatly fits into everything else rather than overshadows the real stuff the community is about.

Next we moved and renamed Store and Shipping feedback to Customer Experience Testimonials This section fits perfectly into the Beginnings Channel because that's exactly what new people will want to read first. Is XS a good company, do they ship fast, how do they handle customer service? All very important to new, and old alike, customers.

We also took the sub category: Newsletters and renamed it to Lifetime Discounts, Newsletters and Other Great Ways To Save. Another section that also fits perfectly into the Beginnings Channel. Its usually the first question that's asked, "how do I save money?". We'll be archiving past newsletters, keeping everyone updated on reward point giveaways and of course Lifetime Discounts for Community Influencers.

We also created a FAQ section which will be filled with posts about using coupons or discount codes. The difference between a voucher and gift promo. Things like that. KateD has been working on a big list over the last couple years of questions repeatedly asked by new members. We can better assist these customers if we made a video for them and so that's what this section is for. This is not a section about how to use pheromones.

We have a new XS News and another called Announcements category you'll be able to see in navigation bar up top within a few days. XS News will be a blog type and anything newsworthy will be posted there. Things such as New product releases, discontinuations, Beta to Artisan, etc... Anything that is newsworthy but not announcements that will expire such as PayPal glitch thread. Its important enough to let our clients know but in a few days it will hopefully be resolved and thus expire. Announcements will also be used to post Shipping Holidays in US/EU Hubs. It will make sense once we start to populate these new sections.

I like this new layout because emphasis is on the community and pheromones. You will be able to reply to posts there, but its not going to count for Lifetime Discounts. This is again in the spirit of helping the community. Some members have more posts pointing out products that are out off stock than ever really assisting a new community member with getting started.

We have a few things we need to set for the new Top Navigation categories so you should be able to see them after this weekend.

[Ixist]

XSteveO I noticed that the site is running faster too. I mostly use mobile and it used to load much slooower. I like it more now!!

[XSteveO]

XSteveO I noticed that the site is running faster too. I mostly use mobile and it used to load much slooower. I like it more now!!

WOW, that's awesome to read! I don't think we planned for that, but heck yeah we will take credit