Earlier this month I went out to dinner with my family. We went to the same restaurant we always go to - The Afghan Kebab House. Anytime someone comes to visit, we go to this restaurant. A birthday? An anniversary? A graduation? Family hang? We go to this restaurant. As we sat down and caught up about holiday plans, the waiter brought out the bread and our chatter came to a screeching halt. My parents have been coming to this hole in a wall joint for 40 years, and they expect a certain kind of bread. Well, that bread was... different.
They asked the waiter, "why a different bread?" There was no satisfying response. It just was. We talked about it throughout the entire meal. It all came back to the bread, and it didn’t end at dinner. Over the next week, all of our family group chats across three continents exploded with chatter over the bread at this one restaurant. Why? Well, of course everyone in our family knows about this restaurant because my parents have taken everyone and their mother (literally) here. The reactions were the same across continents - but, why? Something they expected on every visit that brought them joy was changed without an explanation.
As I watched the reactions unfold over the bread at The Afghan Kebab House throughout the week, I flashed back to all the conversations I’ve had with you, our readers, since the site relaunch. I had come full circle.
Thank you for all your feedback - in comments, the Reader’s Survey, and Zoom chats. One quote from a reader still sticks out: “It’s my morning coffee, and then I read The Washington Post and MSA.” You helped me - and the whole team - better understand where we went wrong. In our best efforts to try and bring you something exciting, we ended up waltzing to hip-hop music. Yikes. It was awkward. It didn’t work. It sucked. I am sorry for that. Also while we’re here, I haven’t truly stepped out from behind the scenes beyond My Subscription Life. That sucked too. Allow me a chance to do this differently, because we are working to improve things with your feedback in mind.
Three New Things
First up - tomorrow you will be seeing a more familiar version of the website. Hopefully this update will make the website easier to navigate and more intuitive. It might not be perfect yet, but we will keep improving it. In the meantime, let’s avoid the surprises. Here’s what it will look like:
What changed?
- We moved the feed up.
- Each day we will update the top of the homepage based on what might be exciting to you, the community.
- In the feed, we will pin things that might be of interest, just like we did on the old site.
- The fonts are bigger, and we made them darker.
Second up - we revamped The Directory. Looking for a gift for the bookworm in your life? A subscription to please your inner chocoholic? The Directory makes it easy to explore the great wide world of subs and find exactly what you're looking for (we hope!). Each brand’s page features the essential information you might want to know about them, any reviews we’ve done in the past, and reviews and ratings from readers. Here are a couple of examples: Bokksu, Bespoke Post.
Third up - you may have caught some of the new pieces we are writing. We thought we’d add some new flavors to the mix. Subscriptions are such a big part of all of our daily lives so we got curious - when did this trend start? The cat is out of the bag - I’m nerdy, the team is nerdy, we thought it would be fun to get nerdy with you all. We also wanted to meet more members of the community - have you met Melody (a.k.a. Natlovesmelody) from our Confessions of a Swapper series? Maybe you want to get to know (or get reacquainted with) folks at MSA so there’s now the My Subscription Life series - here’s the latest one on Christen. Lastly, keep an eye out for First Impressions; this is our follow-up review on a brand we got your feedback on from the “Should We Review?” posts. Brandi recently did Baby Discovery Box.
What's Next
We need to work on consistency and timing. We have been late on spoilers, we missed details on posts, and we haven't always been super quick to respond to comments. This is not our intention, and we are frustrated with ourselves too. We are working on it, and hopefully you’ll notice some of the improvements. We will keep you updated on new changes to make these experiences better.
On Friday, we will be posting an update on what MSA is doing this holiday season. Of course there will be giveaways!
Also, we launched our first Community Review. We were thinking of new ways to involve you - the community - so we can learn from one another. Plus, who doesn’t love a new subscription hack?! Should we do more of these? Which sub should we do next?
AMA
From now on, let’s do this differently. We are MSA because of this community, and we are excited to talk about all things subscriptions - that hasn’t changed. We want to hear from you. Are you interested in seeing more reviews from the community? Would you be interested in reviewing your favorite subscription box? What did you think of the new articles - how was the flavor? Any questions we can answer? Tell us in the comments section - our eyes and ears are always open. I will do a follow-up post responding to questions next week.
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