First results of the Hatterly survey!

Thank you to everyone who filled in the Hatterly survey. We’ve sorted the data and are starting to work on solutions that we think will help folks.

Before I dive into today’s post, I’d like to reiterate that the survey was primarily to help us learn what we could develop right now for you to use whilst we wait for the new website to be finished. The answers will of course help make sure we’re on the right track with the new website and database, but I just want to be clear that the spreadsheet option isn’t a long term solution.

Yup, there are other databases out there, including Ravelry, yet none of them are Hat specific. You can’t search for earflap + pixie, for instance, and there isn’t a category for slouch. It’s discouraged on the Ravelry database to use two or more Hat tags as they’re all treated as styles, not attributes. I think that particular database is more effective for other garments - although I don’t use it for that, so I’m taking everyone else’s word for it! - but in terms of Hats and Hat styles, it’s limited. I’ll explain more in a forthcoming article, but essentially any style Hat can have earflaps added, or slouch added or a peak brim etc. I tend to mix up styles often and push the boundaries just a tad, and I’ve run into these problems often.

Back to what I should be talking about!

One solution we’ve been working on this week is a visual search method. The data showed us that the 2 most important search criteria for Hat knitters are Yarn Weight and Style, and they will absolutely be covered in the new website database, along with a whole bunch of other Hat specific things. Yet it was clear from the feedback that a visual search was very much needed, especially in the interim. It was almost a 50/50 split between sure, I’ll use a spreadsheet to search for what I want and I’d like to see the photos for these searches, please!

It was mighty helpful and I’m really glad we asked and you told us, else we’d have just run with the spreadsheet idea and it wouldn’t have been as helpful to everyone as we’d hoped.

Also, did I mention, over 1,000 entries!

So…. we’ve been building Pinterest boards that are grouped by Yarn Weight, Style and Construction. And within each board there are further categories. For instance in any of the Yarn Weight boards you’ll find categories for the Styles, and vice versa. So far the construction boards cover Modular and Sideways, as the Vertical one is the biggest and needs a bit more time. These 3 boards have categories grouped by Yarn Weight but I’m going to see if I can work some magic and create categories by Style as well.

At the moment the website database has about 15 styles or so, but for these boards I needed to simplify things and got them down to 8. There are 7 yarn weights as well, which is the range my patterns come in.

It’s been quite the task, as each pin needed to be manually uploaded and created, but we’ve got the groundwork done now and we can start to build on these. Phew!

Image is a screenshot of the Woolly Wormhead Pinterest homepage, with 20 different boards. Each board snapshot is a collage of some of the Hat pins to be found within the board.

I’ve never been a big Pinterest user and it’s been a sharp learning curve but I’m getting the hang of it now and have lots of plans to use it more! If you’re not following me already, now would be a good time to as you’ll see the new boards and searches develop as we get them built.

Image shows a screenshot of the DK weight Pinterest board. There are thumbnails for each category across the top and then it starts to show the images in full under each category sub-heading.

Image shows a screenshot of the Slouchy Hat Pinterest board. Just like the DK board, there are thumbnails for each category across the top and the first few images in full under each category sub-heading.

The two screenshots above are a snapshot of how the categories work under each main board. There are limitations with this method, as I can’t place categories within categories but I’ve a few ideas for how to create related categories or somehow show extra pins for those patterns that merge weights or styles or otherwise don’t firmly sit within one category without having to create loads of new pins.

You can of course create your own boards and re-pin these - I’d love to see that happening! Boards that match Hats to yarns, or wish-list patterns or queuing patterns you’d like to knit. It may not be the most sophisticated way to approach a search function but it certainly has a lot of potential.

I haven’t done all this by myself, I wouldn’t have been able to. Team WW have been amazing.

Right now all pins lead to this current website, which we know isn’t as accessible as it should be. However coupled with the spreadsheet - which is almost ready! - you’ll be able to visually search for the Hat of your preference and then grab the URL for Etsy or Payhip from the spreadsheet. We’d love to add boards for Etsy and Payhip as well but it’s taken a fair chunk of time to do these and we can’t promise we can get them all built quickly. But they are on the list and in the queue!