Sneak Peek: Etsy Vacation Mode

September 17, 2008 at 12:23 pm · Filed under Convos, Features, Listings, The Future · By GreenMamba

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:

Excerpt from the Storque:

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.

Comments (10)

E-mail Auto Reply Now In Effect

July 18, 2008 at 12:44 pm · Filed under Bugs, Convos, Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba

Although there’s no official announcement in either the Etsy fora or the Storque, members have verified that the e-mail auto-reply system is finally up and running. Now, when members attempt to reply to a convo through the duplicate e-mail, they will get a warning message via immediate auto-reply.

Thanks go out to dottyral for the heads-up and for providing the content of the auto-reply message:

dottyral says:

This is fabulous! Thank you admin!

I like that it explains just how to reply. This is the auto reply I received right away…

__________________________

Oops! You tried to reply to an Etsy conversation via email.

To reply you’ll need to go to Etsy, login and click Conversations (in the upper right).

The message you sent was *not received* by the person you tried to send it to.

Thanks!
Etsy

Quoted from this thread.

Comments (3)

Busy Sellers = Convo Woes

January 16, 2008 at 7:29 pm · Filed under Convos · By GreenMamba

A busy seller’s Conversation privileges were muted for legitimately contacting buyers with shipping/order info. She was promptly unmuted, but was advised NOT to use convos, but to use e-mail instead. Read about it here.

Here is admin Emily’s reply, from page 12 of the above thread:

emilybidwell says:

I am so, so sorry, but having limits on how many Convos and how fast they go out is the only way to prevent serious spammers from abusing the system. We all wish there was another way, and we know how valuable Convos are to your business, but if you have a newsletter, or a lot of letters to send out at once, please use email so that your Convos don’t get frozen by the spam bot.

BTW: Etsy uses spam filters and bots that will freeze the Convos

Posted at 5:43 pm, January 16 2008 EST

Comments (9)