Absolute Aromas 3.0
The rebuild, so far
Three things are coming together at once: the new website, the product database that feeds it, and Abbie, the aromatherapy assistant who sits on top of both.
Three things are coming together at once: the new website, the product database that feeds it, and Abbie, the aromatherapy assistant who sits on top of both.
Absolute Aromas makes close to 600 SKUs: oils, blends, carriers, skincare, bath and body, home fragrance and gifts, across dozens of sizes. That range is one of our real strengths, and it is also the problem to solve.
Most people arrive knowing how they want to feel, or a scent they half remember, rarely the exact product name. Every extra click and every dead end is a moment they might quietly give up. The whole rebuild comes back to one question: how do we get each person to the right product with as little friction as possible, whether they would rather browse, search, or simply ask Abbie.
Here is where the project stands today. The website has been proved page by page as a working prototype, the database now holds the whole range in one place, and Abbie has gone from an idea to something you can actually talk to. Have a look around, and follow the links through to the live tools.
We are moving off the old WooCommerce site and building a completely custom Shopify theme in the Absolute Aromas look. Rather than design straight into code, we have proved the whole visual language first as a set of working prototype pages, so the look can be signed off before any of it becomes permanent.
Every page type is built and linked together, so you can move around the site exactly as a visitor would. The shared preview shows each page at laptop and phone width side by side, with a feedback button on every one so comments come straight back to us.
Behind the website sits a single database that holds everything we know about every Absolute Aromas product. The website reads from it, and in time so will Amazon, the trade catalogue, the new guided finder, and the move to Cin7. Get a product right once, in one place, and it stays right everywhere.
It is filled and live. The whole current range is in, with sizes, barcodes and prices, and thousands of product images have been pulled across from Google Drive and tidied into one library. Most of the website copy has been gathered in too, ready to be checked over.
Harriet and the team edit all of this through linndontwork, a purpose-built editor with a friendly assistant called Linn built in, so nobody has to wrestle with a spreadsheet. It is the same database underneath, just a far kinder way to work with it.
A note on the name: the editor is moving from linndoesntwork to linndontwork. The live link still reads linndoesntwork.pages.dev until the app itself is redeployed under the new name.
Abbie is an aromatherapy assistant built into the website. A visitor can tell her how they are feeling, name a scent they already love, or simply ask for help choosing, and she talks them through the range like a knowledgeable member of the team who happens to always be on hand.
She is not making things up. Abbie reads the very same product database as everything else, so she only ever suggests real products that we actually stock, with their real prices. Her answers come from Claude, and the key that powers her is kept safely on the server, never in the page itself.
Most importantly, she keeps to the Absolute Aromas rules. She never says an oil can cure or treat anything, she hedges her wording gently, she flags photosensitivity on citrus oils, she points anyone pregnant or asking about a child towards the right professional, and she names her sources. The brand voice and the safety guidance are built into her from the very first word.
Built and ready to demo. Use the play button on each clip; sound is on the recordings.
From here, the approved pages get turned into the real Shopify theme, the product details get filled in so the finder and Abbie can do even more, and the gathered copy gets checked and switched on. The pieces are in place. Now they get joined up.