We are so excited to have our brand new website up and running! Have you come to see it yet? If not, you can find it at www.createkidscouture.com. Today we are going on a special VIP tour together so we can get ourselves familiar with all the ins and outs of our website. We have a lot of new features we know you're going to love!
Here it is! We have all of our main links right on the home page where they are easily accessible. Let's look more closely at some of them:
Here are the links we can find in the top right corner of the homepage. We have all the standard links you would normally find: Home, Contact, About, FAQ, My Account, and View Cart. I encourage you to read the FAQ page, especially if you are a new customer!
In that corner we also have the links for all of our social media. Did you know you can follow CKC on all of these? They can be especially fun if you like sneak peeks and interacting with our staff and other fans.
Next, you may have noticed that cute little present all wrapped up in a pink bow. (Let's be honest, it's always the first thing I notice on a page.) Yes, CKC now has a Gift Registry! You can click that link to create a registry for yourself and a specific event. You will enter a password that your guests will need to use to protect your privacy. Load up your registry with all the patterns you've been dying to have! (Hint: Valentine's Day is coming up and it's really easy to email your significant other a link and a password. Who needs flowers anyway?)
Next we will look at the colored buttons under the main photo. These links are some of our favorites! First up we have our Boutique Directory in red. If you are a fan of CKC styles but don't actually sew them yourself, this directory tells you where to find boutiques that sell CKC outfits! Be sure to check out our shops - they have really gorgeous creations and many of the boutiques even do custom orders. (We still have a few spots left in our directory so if you own a boutique and are interested in being listed, please email courtney@createkidscouture.com.)
The blue button takes us to tiered pricing. Are you familiar with our tiered pricing? Be sure to click the blue link and check it out! It really is a fantastic deal - it's like a sale that you can shop any time you're ready! And speaking of sales, the green button will take you straight to any items that we have on sale at the moment, whether it is the Half-Off Friday pattern, a new release sale, or a special occasion sale. You will always find them under that link. Finally the pink link is our Guest Book but that's not quite in operation yet. We will let you know when it is.
Now let's take a look at the far left margin of our home page. You can see that we have the standard "View Cart" link, as well as a button with Wholesale Info. If you don't know what that is, you can read about it by clicking the link.
Next we have a complete list of all our pattern categories. We currently have Girls, Tweens, Womens, Women's Plus, Doll Clothes, and Boys. Clicking each link will take us to the page where those patterns are listed. We have so many girl patterns available that they are also broken down into subcategories as well:
This is what the Girls category looks like. Each of the listings are available with a picture and a price, which is perfect for browsing. If you look at the right side of the screen above, you will see that there's also a drop down box to sort products by price, alphabetical order, and newest patterns. And -- I love this -- we now have a "View All" feature! Browsing CKC patterns is one of my favorite things to do and it just got easier to see them all at once!
When we click on one of the pattern links it will bring us to a listing like this one. First we see the main cover photo and then four additional views of outfits that were made using this pattern. AND -- we have now added a "View Gallery" button for each listing!
Here you can see that we clicked the turquoise "View Gallery" button under the main picture and it opened the popup window to the left. Now we can see even more tester photos with the different pattern options and fabric combinations. I really love this new feature!
Below the listing photo we have a lot more useful information too. There are links that allow us to email the listing to a friend or to leave our reviews of the pattern. This review feature is new to our website and we would love to hear what you like about our patterns! You must be a verified buyer in order to leave a review.
Next on the listing is the price of the pattern and we can see that this one is on sale a little longer today, woohoo! Here is where we can add the item to our cart and purchase when we are ready.
This next info is VERY important! On the new website our purchased download links will only be available for 7 days! You MUST download your patterns within a week or you will lose them. We will no longer be able to resend patterns if you forgot to download them. We highly recommend saving your patterns to Dropbox right when you receive them! It can be done even from a smartphone. We know that you worked hard to pay for your patterns and we want you to be able to enjoy them!
If we are not yet ready to purchase the pattern we are looking at, we can save it to our gift registry or add it to our wishlist for ourselves. Many of our fans find it helpful to create a wishlist so they know exactly what they want when we have a sale or when they want to reach the next level of tiered pricing. To access our wishlists later, we can find them under My Account at the top of any page.
On the listing page we also have a description of the pattern that tells what makes each one unique, its different options, difficulty level, and of course the fabric requirements. We also added our quick link to the free Marilyn's pattern, so if you're ever in a hurry to find it you can get it right on any of our listings!
Now let's go back to our home page and finish looking at the left column of links. The next one we haven't discussed yet is Couture Clearance. What is this, you may ask?
It is our fabulous section of clearance-priced patterns! You won't believe the prices of these favorites! We currently have 22 patterns listed on clearance from $2 to $5! What a great way to add to your collection of patterns!
The next link is for the Pattern of the Month Club, and we only have three more days to join for 2014! Friday is the last day to become a member and receive a brand new pattern every month.
The last link on the left column takes us to our Free Patterns and Tutorials page:
Did you know that we have the links for all of our FREE tutorials in one convenient place? And now we can get that link right from our website! Come see what a wide variety of free patterns we have: clothes, accessories, home decor, projects for kids, sewing techniques, boutique tutorials, and of course our tips and tricks blog posts. What a wonderful resource! And we will continue adding to this page every week as we create new freebies on Tuesdays.
We're almost done -- are you still with us? Next up, we have a neat new Search Site box. I love that as I type in what I want to find, it lists suggestions as I type, complete with pictures. Let's say that I can't remember the name of Coco's Fabric Pettiskirt but I want to find the listing. I begin typing in "tutu". You can see that right above the search box it brings up the different versions of Coco's along with a picture of each. So cool! Finding the right pattern that we're looking for just got a lot easier.
This brings us to the bottom of our home page. Here we can find links for the size charts, terms and conditions, and info for becoming an affiliate. We want to emphasize how important it is to look at these size charts regularly and re-measure your child often! They grow so fast and if we are going to make custom outfits for our kids we definitely want them to have the right fit!
Now very last on the website you will see our final parting message: "Thanks for Shopping with Us." At CKC we truly appreciate you, our fans, and we hope you love sewing with our patterns as much as we do. Please contact us if you need any help with our website and its new features.
Let's Create! ~ Kristen
