[Case Study] Turtle Fur - what works and what doesn't

Every time I saw this Turtle Fur, I was wondering if turtle really has fur… Anyway, this company which was founded in 1982 created the awesome neck warmer to keep you warm in snowy winter. When my husband just purchased the product on Amazon, he noticed the logo has changed.

Just by looking at them without knowing their process and their story, I would say it’s hard to make it worse. The original one looks like a kid’s brand.

What works

• Clean silhouette than the cartoon version of a turtle can sell to broader audience. It also looks higher quality.

• Huge improvement in logotype.

• Love they use lowercase on logotype to convey the idea they’re family and kids-friendly. The lowercase rule is also applied through out the website.

Not sure…

• They put so much details on turtle toes… (That was what I noticed at the first glance.)

• Why there’s a frame around the turtle?

Now look at their website to check the “look and feel”. I’m not sure when they redesigned it but it looks like recent work.

What works

• Color palette is welcoming, family-friendly, and natural.

• Slab serif and sans-serif font combination works pretty well.

• The lowercase rule is applied through out the website.

• Really like the topo map graphic element in the middle. It’s subtle and not too distracting.

what works

• Navigation looks really clean and nicely organized with the lines.

what doesn’t works

• women’s collections is confusing. What’s the difference between “collections” and “styles"? Truckers are in two different categories.

Let’s keep scrolling the homepage. And here’s the part I feel confused.

What doesn’t work…

• For the 3 categories “Shop kid’s best seller” they use different fonts and colors. Why don’t they just have 3 basic categories kids, men’s, women’s?

• “Read more” button font is off

• The bottom text looks randomly place. I can kinda tell there are 3 equal columns. But without any lines, the uneven space makes the layout look bad.

And here’s the footer

What doesn’t work…

• It definitely needs more hierarchy in this space. It’s really hard to find the page I want especially the sub-menu doesn’t group it really well. Some items have several lines and the space between items are not big enough to differentiate them. This part drives me insane.

• The logos at the bottom are partners? I don’t know why they need to put blurry logos there that no one can read.

I’m not going to audit every product page or this article will be too long. Let’s check out their Project Warmth.

What doesn’t work…

• The topo map graphic as the background is too busy. Makes the line opacity down to 30% or less so the text is legible.

Their step by step illustration on desktop version is too big and I’m also not in love with the illustration style. This part looks ok on mobile version .

If you keep scrolling down you’ll see their donation list -

What doesn’t work…

• Looks like just dumping the whole excel sheet here. It’s great that you offer a list but who’s gonna read through it? Whatever you put on the website you need to put thoughts into it. You can make the whole list into another pdf (for whoever is interested.) Or one of the easiest way to organize is using filter Type and it shows the list under a certain type. The name with hyperlinks allow people to go to individual site.

• There’s no left, right padding so all the info touching to the edge of the page.

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This is just a very basic assessment in design elements, layout and storytelling without any user testing. The goal is trying to give non-designers an example that a small detail can change how user experiences the online shopping experience. For me personally, I have very little patience trying to figure out or find things on websites. If it’s too hard to use I’ll close the window right away. Don’t tell me you never feel frustrated when you’re browsing on the internet!