The Why?

Last week, we quietly unveiled some fundamental changes to the ResonantVibes.com store. This unveiling was the culmination of reams of user feedback, days of internal discussion and weeks of development. While we have yet to shout it from the mountaintops, we are confident that this overhaul will change the way you shop for music on RV.

One of the most frequent bits of advice we’ve received from users pertains to the browsing functionality of the site. Many users have suggested that we streamline the process and provide a way to quickly navigate our catalog while providing the flexibility to sort the collection. Some have mentioned that our product listings were too big and cumbersome, so we’ve slimmed them down. Significantly.

Furthermore, we wanted to provide users with more views into our catalog, so we added the ability to view by releases, tracks or samples. This is change that you can believe in (if the President of The United States of America can end a sentence with a preposition, so can we).

The Details

• Browse Sidebars

  

  When we first launched RV 2.0, we received a great deal of feedback about the difficulty users were experiencing when attempting to browse our catalog. Most customers liked the new look, but found that they were having trouble locating the music they were seeking. With this release, we’ve taken some big steps towards getting out of your way and bringing you closer to the music you love.

  We’ve now added the ability to browse all releases, tracks or samples with one click via the Browse All sidebar. While this isn’t a very specific set of criteria, many users have indicated that they just want to browse right through our catalog without anything in particular in mind. These are likely
  the folks who start in the ‘A’ bin at the record store and don’t leave until they’ve made their way to through ‘Z’. We like you guys and gals!
  And we want your eyes to hit every item in our catalog, if possible. By default, your Browse All selection will sort by release date, with the freshest items coming first. This is all configurable though.

  For the more decisive shopper, we’ve added the Browse By Genre sidebar. This is similar to the Browse All sidebar, but limits the items to the genre of your choice. Using either menu, cnce you’ve made a selection, you can change the item type you’re viewing and apply different sorts via the View and Sort drop-downs menus.

• New Menus

  • View Menu

    

    Now, once you’ve chosen a product type or genre to browse, you can change the product type your viewing by hovering over the View drop-down menu. When you hover, you will be presented with a list of the available product types and the number of each available. Simply click on the product type to view it. This works the same for Browse All or Browse By Genre. As an added bonus, you can now view our catalog by releases and even add an entire release to your cart with one click!

  • Sort Menu

    

    The ability to sort has been conspicuously missing since we launched RV 2.0. We’ve found it! Now, you can sort your releases, tracks or samples by date, label or title. We’ll be adding more sorts, so speak up if you have suggestons! We’re always looking for feedback from everyone who uses our site. In fact, without said feedback, we probably wouldn’t have made many of these changes.

• Play & Cue Page

  

  This was a HUGE request from users. We’re not shy about it, we want you to buy music from us. And you’re not shy about insisting upon listening to our music before forking over your hard earned bucks. Now, you can click the Play or Cue button on each page and bring us both closer to our goals. The upper button, play, will add the entire page of items to the player and start playing the first item. The lower button, cue, will add the entire page, but won’t interrupt your currently playing track.

• Configurable Per Page Option

  

  Look right over there. Right, to your left. Correct. See that? Now contain your excitement! We went ahead and gave you the ability to specify how many items you want to appear on each page. Be warned: you must wield this power wisely. Adding a page of 100 releases to your player could add upwards of 400 tracks to the player. This option defaults to 30, but some of you power users might want to test the limits. Go right ahead. But, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

• Mo’ Better Listings

  

  Yeah, that’s right. We went and saved the best for last. Sam completely re-designed the guts of our store presentation. He added a practical (and pretty) gradient background to increase readability and to differentiate the listings, as they have become significantly more compact. However, this compacting was not at the expense of expressiveness and usefulness. We think these listings are far more more readable, scannable and usable. Kudos to Sam for developing these. I won’t bore you with any more details, but will encourage you to jump right in and start browsing our catalog. And please, please share with us any feedback you might have on the site. We strive to continually make RV better, but need your help to do so. Please send your comments, concerns, questions and/or complaints to support@resonantvibes.com.

That’s it for now. And I think we can all agree that’s enough.

Cudd’n Johnny

Tags: site updates, store