Beauty Insider Community Feedback

[KatieBT]

Hello beautiful Beauty Insider Community members! 

We’re starting this thread for you guys to report any issues and weird things that you are seeing or ask any questions. We have a number of issues logged that we are already working on a fix for, so this is a work in process.

Some things to note as you are reporting issues:

• If you are looking for a thread and can’t find it, please post here. We’ll need to manually move some threads that got lost in the migration to their correct groups.
• If you are reporting a bug please be specific about the issue you're seeing, how you got there (“I clicked here and it did *this*”), the device you're using and which browser you're in. 

Some tips:

• If you are looking for a thread that you commented on in the old community, go to the front page of conversations and click the “My Posts” tab. This is where you will find all of your conversations activity, including your heart count.

• For more tips and information, check out the Community FAQs: https://community.sephora.com/t5/Customer-Support/BEAUTY-INSIDER-COMMUNITY-FAQs/m-p/2825445#M49862

It’s good to see you all and thanks for being patient!

Whenever reporting a bug we need as much info as possible or our tech team cannot reproduce the issue and verify it's actually occurring. If they can't see the issue they cannot fix it. You cannot overshare details, test on too many devices or share too many screenshots... The more detail the better!

[SportyGirly125]

@ohheyitscindyk yay!!!  I was helping you post pics in the promo threads

[ohheyitscindyk]

@SportyGirly125 Thank you! I still don't get notifications for threads I'm subscribed to 😞

[GeorginaBT]

@ohheyitscindyk Thank you very much for calling this out - currently looking into a fix with our vendor partners! Heads up that we might reach out to get more information / troubleshoot the issue with you if that's alright. 😊

[ohheyitscindyk]

@GeorginaBT Thank you!

[WinglessOne]

@ohheyitscindyk Were you trying to upload images for thread posts? (Assuming that's what you were doing, not uploading images to the Gallery.) Oh boy... I wondered if there was a photo limit.

@KatieBT @TeamBIC If there really is supposed to be a limit on photos we can upload to include in our posts (as opposed to Gallery images), then... 

1. Accessing our photos: Is there someplace we can see all our images, aside from the post reply page? Right now, the only way I can see all my photos is to click the camera "Insert Photos" icon above this text box. I'd love to be able to reach my photos some other way, perhaps as an option on the "My Conversation Activity" page in the left nav (on desktop). 
2. Photo album issue: Speaking of the current "Insert Photos" album, its current design is fine for the task of uploading new images to include in posts. But going in there and searching for existing photos to reuse, rather than upload a dupe photo, is a pain. I have to scroll through aaaaalllll my photos... and now that timed sessions are in effect, my session can end by the time I find the old photo I'm looking for. Then I have to refresh my session, get back into the reply page, retype (or in my case, paste—assuming I copied my post text before trying to add images), get into the photo album, scroll a lot again, and probably get kicked out my session a second time. So...
3. Improvement suggestion: The ability to make our own sub-albums and group photos in them would be fantastic! And/or if we had a photo album page (outside of the reply page), it could maybe have a few more features like the ability to filter photos by date range (months, years, or whatever), create/delete sub-albums and move photos into or out of them... I don't expect something as robust as Mac OS/iOS Photos or Google Photos (I say "robust" mostly because those apps have photo editing functionality), but a bit more functionality than we currently have would make photos much easier to manage—especially if there's a limit on how many we can upload, and some of us have to delete some images to get back under the limit. 

Thanks! 

[RGbrown]

@WinglessOne 

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, in the land that time forgot...

Back when BIC was BT (Beauty Talk), we had an album. We could reach all of our pictures in one place, and we could delete them quickly, or hide them easily with public and private folders. It wasn't super fancy with loads of functionality; they were in chronological order and you had to know about when you uploaded something if you were looking for something in particular, but they were *easily accessible*, all in one spot. We lost that when BT became BIC, and there were numerous requests to bring it back, but they apparently fell on deaf ears.

In my mind, it feels like Sephora went for "all of your pictures belong to us, forever and ever, amen" and doesn't really care to give us control once we've uploaded them. Some folks stopped posting altogether over it (and to be fair, other changes in the board, but I don't think it's unfair to say that the loss of the gallery contributed for some), and some folks (myself included), stopped for a while, but the lure of chat buddies drew us back more than the loss of control.

Sadly, I find it easier to just take a new pic whenever possible instead of trying to hunt for an old one. A gallery with halfway decent usability (or even just any gallery) would be a welcomed upgrade!

@KatieBT @TeamBIC 

[ohheyitscindyk]

@WinglessOne Yup, for thread posts. I had no idea there's even a limit 😄

[itsfi]

@ohheyitscindyk @WinglessOne, my recollection is that @Tamara76 had this issue a while back and received a similar message about reaching the limit. She reached out to @TeamBIC and the mods to help and they were able to get it resolved but I think it took some time. Hopefully it can be addressed quickly @ohheyitscindyk. 🤞🏼 

@TeamBIC @GeorginaBT, is there a way (either currently or perhaps in a future update?) where we might be able to know how many photos we’ve already uploaded so that we have an idea when we are close to reaching the limit? 

[ohheyitscindyk]

@itsfi Ahh thanks for the heads up!

[RAWRitsRED]

Hi @KatieBT  @GeorginaBT!

I'm still having some trouble with notifications.  I'm not receiving all the notifications even when I'm tagged in the posts.  I will sometimes find out that I was tagged in a post while scrolling through the feed instead of emails or the "bell" icon.  With email notifications, I will receive some notifications an hour or two after I'm actually tagged and by then, I would have seen them already.

Thank you!

[GeorginaBT]

Thanks for this callout @RAWRitsRED - I actually just got a notification about you tagging me in this post! So in addition to notifications not coming up in your notification feed, there also looks to be a delay. This turns out to be a known issue with our vendor partners, so I've given them this extra feedback to help them work out a resolution asap. 

[ShortErica]

Hi all, I remembered a request for some type of feedback regarding saving drafts of posts, right? So this morning I got the dreaded "You've exceeded the number of private messages" text and was like "No, I don't want to retype this later!" which made me think, can we save drafts of them? It would be even cooler to have a trigger that if you check a box or something, the draft would then automatically send when you allowed to send private messages again. Just thinking of ideas. 🤷

[WinglessOne]

@ShortErica I love this idea! Both ideas, actually: saving draft messages and an auto-send option. I'm trying to remember if Lithium has either capability built in (assuming that's still the app running BIC). If not, it could probably be customized by dev. After all, the global IT/dev motto is "everything's possible—with enough funding." 😄 

[SportyGirly125]

@ShortErica I have learned my lesson too many times when typing lengthy responses and for it to not send or disappear.  I copy and paste my response in notes on my phone just in case it doesn’t send. 

[pocketvenus]

@SportyGirly125 I do this too but sometimes I forget and lose a giant post!

[ShortErica]

Oh yes @SportyGirly125! This was just a short message but had info (tracking number) that I didn't want to search for later when sending would work. I made a draft in my gmail but thought it might be convenient to have that functionality build into BIC. And good news, I was just able to get it to send! That's a smart move to get into the habit of it though. If I do a super long post I generally copy it somewhere but not always.

[TeamBIC]

Hey BIC! You may notice that the desktop and mobile web versions of the Beauty Insider Community got a makeover this morning Tuesday, 8/4/20. 😎 You’ll see that our Community Home (community.sephora.com) is now a true home base for Community: up at the top you can navigate between Community Home, your profile, groups, and the Gallery. You’ll also be able to begin a new thread by clicking “Start a Conversation” or post in the Gallery by clicking “Add a Photo” right from the top navigation bar! Like before, your Community notifications and private messages are accessible from here as well. Under the Community search bar, you will be able to see when fellow BICers are online with you.

If you’re new around here (aka, not logged in), you will see a grey bar that will help you get familiar with Community by leading you to our 3 steps to getting started, Community FAQs, and our Customer Support page. You see it in the screen shot we’re sharing here.

You will also find trending groups and featured Gallery photos at the top of Community Home for easy access! The featured Gallery photos are no longer in the middle of the main feeds of threads. Below the trending groups and featured photos widgets, you’ll see all the threads you know and love.

We’re so excited about this beautiful update to the BIC! As with most releases, we have noticed some new bugs that we are taking note of and sharing with our vendor partners. If you encounter any issues, please feel free to share them with us here. We love and thank you for your feedback!

[Anastasiya13]

Wow, just logged in after not being on for a few days, and I have to say what a huge difference it is. Not sure how I feel about it yet, since I still need to explore a bit more.

[WinglessOne]

@TeamBIC  Oh, I wondered if/when BIC would get a redesign similar to what I noticed happening at sephora.com a week or so ago! I haven't looked at everything via small/xs viewport (smartphone) or tablet yet, but here's what I can say via my laptop (Google Chrome on a 16" MacBook Pro running Catalina.) 

BIC feedback 

Spoiler

Loving this: 

• Thread/post and message notifications are now separate! Honestly, you could've made just this single little change and I'd have been happy. 🤣Now I have one less step to reach messages, and they're not buried as sub-nav; they've got equal visibility as thread/post notifications. Hooray! 
• Community homepage with dashboard treatment makes much more usability/navigational sense than the previous conversations-only approach. (That's UX-reviewspeak for "yay, it's finally a real homepage for BIC!") 
• The homepage dashboard modules are compact enough to not annoy me. Sure, I have to scroll down to get to threads, but not very far at all. And there's enough empty space around the BIC logo and search bar to keep everything from looking too congested. 
• Having Featured Photos out of the thread list (on BIC homepage) is a welcome visual improvement. 
• Utility nav (top right corner of all Sephora and BIC pages): thank you for separating BIC and Sephora/shopping links into their own nav menus! I love having a persistent BIC dropdown menu up there. 

Suggest improvements: 

• Font size on BIC homepage thread previews is one point too small. Those of us in our 40s dealing with The Old Lady Eyes (presbyopia) need to zoom in or grab our reading glasses, or lean waaaay back from the screen to read everything. Is this the same font size used on the Brands page? (I'm too lazy right now to check your stylesheets.) I sometimes have to zoom in on that page, too, but it's a bit easier to read because of all the spacing between lines. 
• Green font under search bar on BIC homepage is way too small. Should be at least the same size as the font above it, though it'd still be hard to read. This is both a font size and color contrast issue. A darker green and bigger font size will help a lot. 
• I like that trending groups are used on the BIC homepage dashboard module. Being able to customize this to show 6 groups you pick, or at least 6 groups you belong to, would be a nice-to-have option. 
• Pill buttons (like the "Start a Conversation" and "Add a Photo" buttons) are the current digital design trend but I don't like them. Many other people love that button style. I've never liked it, not even when forced to switch to them for my former employer's site years ago. Rounded ends on search bars don't bug me at all but, but some reason, it does on buttons. Especially ghost (aka stamp or cutout) buttons: those that have no fill color. I haven't looked up the latest usability insights on this button style (how well do they perform vs other button styles, how do customers/users feel about them, etc.) so, eh, this is 100% subjective and not really an improvement suggestion. 
• Bug: I can't create bulleted or numbered lists inside spoilers. Whenever and however I try—click bullet or number list icon first; type something, then move cursor in front of it and click bullet/number list icon; type lots of text with line breaks, then select everything and click bullet/number list icon—the bullet or number appears outside the spoiler, as if the spoiler itself is the list item. This is an old issue I've reported before, but now one of my workarounds is gone because y'all removed the HTML editor from reply options a short while back. 😞 (Before, I could just go into html and hand-code a bullet list inside the spoiler tags.) My only workaround now is to create a bullet/number list outside spoiler, then copy the whole list and paste it into the spoiler. 

Sephora.com feedback 

I haven't picked through the site enough today, but for now: major kudos on the new main nav bar (the black strip of links near top of each page)! I assume these links were at least partly based on visitor stats like items most clicked on or searched for? However they came about, I'm glad to see them focused on the task of shopping, with BIC getting its own persistent nav menu. And I appreciate the categories inside each link category of the main nav: hopefully they'll make it easier for shoppers to find what they need, with fewer clicks. Hooray for easy access to lots of stuff that used be buried in the old "Shop" menu! 

I'll have to look at everything via phone and tablet later. But for now, I'm mostly liking the desktop updates! 

[ShortErica]

Thanks for the workaround about the bullets @WinglessOne. I too used to bust into the html code to format bullets inside of spoilers and was at a loss of what to do with that feature gone. But yes, I'd prefer it just be allowable in the first place!

[GeorginaBT]

@WinglessOne THANK YOU for this incredibly detailed feedback! We've shared it with our vendor partners. Really appreciate your expertise. ❤️