Month: December 2017

The Brilliant Buyer’s Guide to Leaving Product Reviews

You are not an idiot.  I know this.  You know this.  But sometimes, trying to find your way around the finer areas of a website sure can make you feel like one, can’t it?  Even with my own site, I try to make it do certain things, often accompanied by the thought, This is my blasted website! Why does it have to be so hard?  I’ve had a couple of inquiries from customers asking how they can leave reviews on products.  When I tested out my site, that’s the one thing I never thought about doing.  (After all, I think all of my products are the most amazing thing ever!)  So, I went through the steps of leaving a review so I could share them with you.

  1. Sign in to your account.  This is in the upper right corner of your screen.  Once you login, you’ll be redirected to your personal account page.
    Sign in to your account. This is in the upper right corner.

    2.  Find the product(s) on the site you wish to review.  Unfortunately, the “my account” section doesn’t list individual items purchased, just quantity spent, order date, etc.  I chose Christmas Spice Body Creme.  The listing goes Product Name -> Quantity in Stock -> Price -> Add to cart, followed by the Paypal button and social share buttons.  Under that is the “Write a Review” box.

“Write a Review” box is right under the Paypal button and the social share icons.

3.  Submit your review.  A notification will pop up on my end to let me know I have a review I need to moderate, and once I do that, your review will show up on the website.

This is what it looks like on my end.

I absolutely promise you…  I will not delete negative product reviews.  (If you’re blasting my company or me, I will not approve those and strongly encourage you to contact me via my website, email, phone, Facebook messenger, snail mail, or carrier pigeon so we can discuss any problems you may have.)  Fragrance love is highly subjective, and how soaps treat different customers’ skin has a great deal of variance.  What doesn’t work for one person might be exactly what another customer is looking for.  Real life example here…  I had a supplier who never approved negative reviews.  Let’s say, for example, I’d bought a duplicated scent from that company.  It smelled marvelous, dead-on dupe for the original, but it was awful in cold-processed soap.  The scent itself morphed in ugly ways (means it stank), it turned my soap the color of spinach after it comes out of a baby, and it was just a disappointment for what I wanted to use it for.  If I left that as a review, the site’s owner would never have approved it.  However, that’s a warning to others who might want to use it in soap, while those who are shopping for it to use in other applications need to know how true it smells and that they’ll likely be pleased with it.

With my own site, I’ll take the same “it may help someone else” approach.  After all, that’s the reason I ask customers to leave reviews, right?  So your 2-star, “Dried out my skin” soap may be just what that customer with excessively oily skin is looking for.

If you have purchased something from me and have not yet reviewed it, I invite you again to cruise over to the website and do that.  It won’t take but a few minutes.  If you submit your review in the form of a poem – it can be freestyle, rhyming, haiku, sonnet, or whatever – I will find some way to reward both your creativity and your bravery.  It’ll either be as free shipping, something off your total purchase, or SOMETHING.  (This idea just came to me as I was typing this, so stay tuned for what I decide to do.)

 

DIY Holidays – Grapevine Wreaths

It sat on my bathroom counter for years, “it” being a large cork with a styrofoam hemisphere glued on top and seashells covering the styrofoam.  I’d had it for years.  Way back when Peter and I were dating or engaged – I honestly can’t remember which Christmas it was – his brother and his family had given me a glass jar filled with red and green m&m’s and topped with this seashell-covered lid.  The majority of the shells were augers, a small spiral shell that is easy to find along the Crystal Coast.  Once the m&m’s were history (my love of m&m’s is legendary among my friends and family members and was a running gag in grad school), that jar made a lovely addition to my bathroom counter, often filled with cotton balls.

A few years ago, my younger daughter accidentally knocked the jar off the counter, leaving me with just the lid.  I’m pretty sure my husband’s sister-in-law had painstakingly glued all those shells onto the lid herself, had designed it from shells gathered over the course of numerous trips to the family’s beach house.  Because of that, I couldn’t bring myself just to trash it, and as I was striving towards decluttering the counter top, I really didn’t feel replacing the jar was a high priority.

One morning over breakfast as I was staring out the window at the grapevine trellis edging its way to winter’s dormancy, it came to me.  I could make grapevine wreaths!  I wouldn’t even have to buy them; I could harvest my own grapevines and make them myself.  A little later that morning, the shell-covered lid caught my eye, and the idea of making beach-themed wreaths for Christmas gelled.

Freshly harvested grapevine

I immediately set about twining the vines into wreaths.  I think I got a bit overly ambitious in my harvesting.  My husband, Peter, got into the action, too.  After a little trimming and tucking, they looked great!  (These are before the trimming and tucking.)

All the grapevine wreaths Peter and I made.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of these!

I made a video of the designing of these, complete with a view of the final results.

I hung these right beside the front door, and I am pleased with how they turned out and how they look.  Although it looks like they’re strung together, I left them separate so I could hang them differently in other years.  I’m also excited to be able to showcase the beautiful shells that were originally on the jar lid and give them new life.

Happy crafting, and please post your project pictures!  I’d love to see them!