This is really useful to read. Thank you all for your comments so far. It sounds like the biggest frustration is with the homepage and giving that amount of space to one maker for so long. Is that right?
We do have plans to review the homepage and we may also change how the featured maker section appears before any larger revisions happen. One idea we had was to change it to a “Featured Makers” section, and show a changing selection of products from all previous featured makers, with a link the interviews landing page on the blog where the current featured seller would obviously be top, and retain the button which links to this page showing all featured sellers.
Do you think that would be a better experience for users, as they would then see a wider selection of products in this section?
In terms of how the Featured Maker slot might develop, we want to test how it works as a monthly feature first, but during this time we will review the feature and how it performs. We don’t want to make a rash decision, but to carefully consider the benefits it brings along with the concerns you’ve all raised, and whether it’s best to continue with some changes, find an alternative or remove it altogether.
I do really like the idea of having a featured craft (or genre) of the month, as that would allow us to explore that in more detail, while highlighting more makers in that field. This is an extension of how we were planning to work in the coming months (as we explained here) so it may be that, for a while, we continue with featured makers already scheduled, so we can honour our commitment to them but move towards a featured craft, rather than a featured maker. For example, in May our featured maker will be Matilda Belle, so our featured craft for May would be Handmade Supplies, and her interview would form part of that. Moving to only having a featured craft would take some more work, as we would need to research the best way to display/showcase that in order to involve as many sellers as possible.
Let us know what you think.