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It’s a great time to be a lover of all things makeup. Makeup brands have exploded in growth in recent years, and inevitably, new brands are also coming out at a regular clip. A recent launch was that of Laura Lee Los Angeles, a brand by makeup YouTuber Laura Lee.
I am not a watcher of Laura Lee. I know about her but I don’t watch her channel. I started hearing some things about her initial launch and I went to check it out. Naturally, I can’t look at an e-commerce site without some kind of issue, but I haven’t run into a content issue like this before.
Let’s take a look.
I don’t understand this. This content is a mess of grammatical and spelling errors. (I heard after taking this screenshot that it was actually worse before I got to it. I do know that the original name was Cats Pajama’s, which is grammatically painful.)
Let’s go through this point by point.
- I don’t like that the product name has a break. I would manually add a break to put “eyeshadow palette” on the second line.
- Bullet 1 is pretty terrible. It’s like a run-on sentence, but not. Why they didn’t use additional bullets like those used below? It should look like this.
- 10 highly pigmented, pressed-powder eyeshadows
- 5 matte shadows
- 4 shimmer shadows
- 1 semi-matte/satin shadow
- Bullet 2. “Smoky” doesn’t have an E, but the whole bullet is problematic. This bullet should read something like this:
- This palette is extremely versatile; create everything from a light everyday look to a dark, smoky eye
- Bullet 3. (Which is no longer here on the live site.) Cruelty-free should be hyphenated, and I’m curious now to know if that underlined text was a link to their practices in production and packaging and how exactly they are defining the product as cruelty-free and vegan.
- Bullet 4, another one that doesn’t flow in any normal way. Update:
- The luxe palette, featuring the eyeshadows and a mirror, is proudly produced in the United States
- Bullet 5, more extremely questionable grammar. This could be as simple as:
- Perfect for use by everyone at every level of experience, from makeup beginners to professional artists
- Bullet 6. Even the intro to the color list is strange. Here’s where you add the palette name again to boost SEO. “The Cat’s Pajamas palette features the following colors:” would be perfect.
- Bullet 7. Inconsistent capitalization, and a general lack of clarity. I’m guessing that “domestic” means in the United States, because the palette is produced there. However, is my shipping free if I am in Alaska or Hawaii, or is shipping only free in the contiguous United States?
- Free ground shipping on orders over $100 shipping in the contiguous United States. Click here for complete information on shipping destinations, prices, and options. (In which the “click here” text would open a pop-up or a new tab or window to a complete shipping information page.
I have said at least a few times before that I believe in the power of editors and copywriters. The impression that a brand gives with terrible grammar and punctuation is very detrimental to my opinion, and I am certain that I’m not the only person who responds to this sort of thing.
This palette is sold out, so perhaps the power of Laura Lee is enough to overcome bad grammar, at least for her followers. I will not be buying anything to go near my eyes from a company that cannot get it together in the copywriting department. This lack of attention to detail is incredibly disappointing, particularly for a brand that is just launching.
