Etsy announces the impending arrival (no firm ETA) of a long-asked-for feature, Shop Vacation Mode, and gives a sneak peek at how it will look and function:
Here’s a sneak peak of Etsy’s upcoming feature, Vacation Mode. Vacation Mode allows a seller to put her shop on hold if she is out of town, sick, or otherwise wants to take a break from selling. We’ll be rolling it out soon, so keep an eye out!
When in Vacation Mode, items in a seller’s shop cannot be purchased. The seller’s shop will appear empty, with a special vacation announcement. The seller’s items can still be viewed via a direct item link (if they are linked from an outside blog for example), and can still be Hearted (added to favorites), but will not appear in site searches or the Category Browser. Buyers can sign up to be notified via email when the seller returns from Vacation Mode.
How it works:
Your personal Vacation Mode settings:
- From “Your Etsy” click on “Vacation Mode” under Shop Setup.
- The Vacation Mode page has prompts for a vacation announcement, Convo auto-response, and on/off switch.
- Enter your desired announcement message and Convo auto-response about being on vacation.
- Leave the on/off radio buttons set to “off” if you are just setting up the process at this point and click “Save.”
Turning Vacation Mode on and off:
- When you are ready to go on vacation, click on Vacation Mode from Your Etsy and set it to “on” and save.
- Your shop will now be in Vacation Mode and will function differently:
- Your Shop Announcement has been replaced with your Vacation Announcement.
- Items no longer appear in your shop.
- Any Convos sent to you will get an auto-reply.
- On your Shop page, Potential buyers will see a field where they can opt into having Etsy notify them when the seller returns from vacation. Their email addresses will be kept private.
- On all of your listing pages, a banner appears across the top announcing that the shop is temporarily closed and the “Add to cart” button has been replaced with a greyed-out “on vacation” notice.
- Your items no longer appear in Gift Guides, searches, Category Browser, flash apps such as Pounce, Colors, Shop Local, or Geolocator.
For complete details about this - and a related ‘batch deactivation’ - feature, please read the full Storque article.
To comment, join the discussion on this Etsy forum thread.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
A very useful feature, indeed. And, notice that Etsy didn’t ’spring’ it on us this time - they have given everyone advance notice via a Storque article, forum thread and News alert. Very nice!
Danke, Etsy!
September 17th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I really like the part where the items won’t go blank in people’s favorites, like they would if they were in edit mode. I clean all the blanks out of my favorites regularly and if they were on vacation and had the item in edit mode, they’d lose a heart and I’d lose track of the item.
Convo auto-response is awesome! I’d actually like this even if I didn’t turn on vacation mode, I could see it would be very useful.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
finally! one problem though….they didn’t email everyone about this. How many members venture into the forums? 1% wasn’t it? Same thing with the CTO article, I wouldn’t have known about it if I didn’t RSS off-Etsy sites
September 18th, 2008 at 2:17 am
They did email if you’re signed up to receive Etsy News (although I believe that these sort of notifications should be opt-out, not opt-in.) I got the email about 15 hours ago.
September 18th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Yes, they should be opt in. I don’t want a bunch of fluff in my inbox so I haven’t opted in and if it weren’t for the forums and UEN I wouldn’t know about it.
September 18th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Scuse me, it’s late. That should have been “opt out” not “opt in”. Sheesh.
September 18th, 2008 at 5:14 am
:)
I think most of the problem though is that many people don’t even know that you *can* opt-in to get the News/Site Announcement emails - I found out completely by accident from someone else, not from Etsy. I never read the Storque unless I’m directed to something there, finding actual news on that thing is like pulling teeth.
September 18th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
I received an email regarding “vacation mode” and the “tech update from chad” email, but only because I opt-in to get news. I was shocked to see both of those emails arrive before I’d found out this news from other sources (uen or the forums). News I’ve received from Etsy has always been after I need to know or not at all so I was pleasantly surprised, I agree that having to opt-in to important news is ridiculous - every seller needs to know this stuff!
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
triceratops. I disagree. You forget that some of us are on many other sites not just Etsy and I delete site updates from most of them. I couldn’t care less unless I’m active. If I care enough, I can find out new information my self. Not everyone thinks Etsy site updates are important. There are a lot of empty and inactive shops. I prefer the option.
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
While Etsy thinks everyone loves to read 50 paragraphs when they add anything to the site, sorry Etsy, you still don’t know how to write a clear sentence, after 3 years of lots and lots and lots of practice.
This is a nice feature but Dawanda has had it for ages, most other new sites have it, and in fact, most other sites let their sellers do batch editing, batch picture loading, AND give sellers tons of stats on site visitors and shop visitors. It was a long time coming.
However, despite Etsy’s 50 paragraph manual on one tiny new feature, there will be over a thousand posts in the forums because, dear Etsy, most sellers don’t have the time or patience to read your manuals and learn the real details.
Let the questions begin! Brevity and clarity do have a place in business communications. No wonder your sellers continue to be confused to distraction.