Scroll-stop teardown
Summer FridaysThe homepage
What it's trying to do
The homepage's job right now is to make body care read as the same brand rather than a line extension. Face and lip grew up on two founders' feeds. Body is the first category that has to stand on a page, in front of somebody who has never seen either of them post.
What works
Body Care is already a standing item in the shop menu, sitting with Skincare, Makeup, Lip Care and Fragrance. Not a "New" bucket, not a banner that comes down in a month. On day eleven it's a shelf. That one decision argues for the brand harder than any of the launch copy does.
Three fixes
-
the founders aren't on the page
Search the homepage for Marianna. Then Lauren. Then Hewitt. Zero hits on all three.
The one gesture toward it is a section heading that reads "Discover Our Story Here." The story is a click away, so the page itself carries none of it.
That's survivable while every category rides the founders' feeds. Body doesn't. Someone landing from a search result or a Sephora tab gets a brand with no author on it.
One line, one name, one photo, above the products. The story doesn't have to be long. It has to be on the page.
the founder story stops depending on already following the founders.
-
the hero sells the launch with adjectives
The hero is the body launch. The H1 is "body essentials." Under it: "Effortlessly indulgent scents and rich, buttery moisture." Then "shop now."
Put a competitor's name on that hero. It survives intact. Nothing in it says what a butter balm is, why someone would pick one over a lotion, or what any of it smells like. The three scents have names. None of them are in the hero.
Two-thirds down the page, in a quiet accordion, there's a better line already written: "Essential beauty formulations from California." Under it, "For the skin and senses." A person wrote that. Nobody's reading it there.
the first sentence on the page starts doing an argument's work instead of a banner's.
-
the alt text is unfinished
View source and search `alt=`. Eight images ship raw template code as their description. Five say `product.name`. Three say `${ item.title } image`. The hero image, loaded eagerly at the highest fetch priority, is described as "SummerFridays beauty media."
One more. The alt on a Jet Lag photo reads "Woman with Jet Kag Overnight applied on her face." The flagship product, misspelled, in the only text a screen reader ever gets.
Nobody sees any of this, which is the point. It's the part of the page that never got proofread, and it's the part search engines and blind customers read first.
the images describe products, and the page stops shipping unfinished code to production.
What I'd make instead
The best line on the site says California once and then the whole page drops it. Nothing else picks it up.
That's the film, and not as a beach. Body care is the first thing this brand makes that you use on your whole self, alone, with nobody watching. Face is for going out. Body is for the hour before you decide whether you're going out at all.
One house, one afternoon, one person, shot in real light in the place the brand is named after. Nobody else can make it, because nobody else is named after the day.
If one of the three is worth acting on, I'll send the rest of the read. If not, no hard feelings.
Jason Portillo
Boring Stories · boringstories.io