Archive for Features
March 11, 2009 at 11:19 pm · Filed under Checkout System, Payments, Search, Seller Opportunities, Showcase, Site Security, Site Use, The Future · By JB
The Head of Etsy’s Product Team has posted an update on their progress and projects for the coming months.
Source: The Storque
Sara recaps the changes from the past several months including Google Analytics, beta testing of API, the Etsy Shop application on Facebook, and changes to the RSS feeds.
She also mentions features which had previously been promised but have now been put on the back burner, including more tools for Etsy teams, and the Super Etsy Mini.
Key points in their plans for the coming months include:
- “Search is our top priority for 2009. We anticipate numerous updates to Search throughout 2009.” (more details are available in Product Manager Sean Flanagan’s Storque article here.)
- Payments: There is currently a seller survey about payments, which Sara did not mention but that will possibly result in some new payment options being incorporated into Etsy, such as google or RME. Sara only mentioned changes which have already occurred such as sellers being able to pay their bills with paypal, and the fact that Etsy now employs a collection agency.
- Checkout: In the coming months we will be working to better clarify the functional elements of the overall (checkout) process, including introducing inline registration (i.e. letting first-time buyers checkout on Etsy without forcing them to confirm their registration first).
- Safety, Security, and Trust: No specific details are given here, but Sara says “While it may not always be possible for Etsy to disclose its fraud deterrence practices…Etsy takes these issues very seriously and thus we continue to update our infrastructure to keep fraudulent behavior off of our site.
- Showcase: In March you will see improvements to the design of Etsy’s Category pages and, more specifically, the design of the Category Showcase promotional modules at the top of those pages. …
In the coming months, we are looking to expand Showcase placements to other relevant areas of our site to provide more opportunities for sellers to gain additional exposure. (ed:this is possibly related to Sean’s mention of possibly selling paid ads on the search results pages.)
- Seller Tools: In the next month, Etsy plans to release tools to allow sellers to rearrange the items in your shop.
- Site Performance: Sara does not mention any details, but refers readers to Chad’s recent article here which goes into detail about site performance.
Sara closes with the promise of more regular updates:
I’ll be back with regular updates on what we’ve accomplished from this list and what else we have lined up for the remainder of the year.
For the full text of Sara’s article please see The Storque.
Commenting is closed for this article, but there is a forum thread open to comments.
March 9, 2009 at 10:11 pm · Filed under Search · By JB
Today the Etsy search has made several small changes.
- Search dropdown menu choice has been made persistent. Previously, when performing a search under Vintage for example, the search dropdown menu would switch back to Handmade after clicking to view an item in the search results. Your dropdown menu choice is now persistent when searching under Handmade, Vintage, Supplies or All Items—until you change it. We’ve also made it easier to return to your search results from an item listing page—just look for the “Search Results” link in the breadcrumb navigation below the Etsy logo.
- Search result sort order has been made persistent. Similarly, if you like to sort search results by price for example, Etsy will remember your preference and allow you to keep sorting search results the way you want to for the length of your session on Etsy.com, until you decide to change it (or open a new browser window and start a new session). This is another small way to help make Etsy more searcher friendly.
- A price filter has been added to search results for Materials. You can now set a price range for search results under Materials—look for the price filter under Search Tools on the right.
Search issues Etsy is working on now include:
- Simplifying the Search Dropdown Menu
we will be including an option to search descriptions for Handmade, Vintage, Supplies and All Items on search results pages, and making the search dropdown menu exactly that: Handmade, Vintage, Supplies, All Items. The other existing search dropdown options such as “Materials” and “Sellers: usernames” will still exist, as will the search dropdown options available from other areas of the site.
(ed: since May 2008, Vintage and Supplies have been unsearchable by description, this change will restore that function.)
- Improving Accuracy
Our goal is to give browsers and buyers an option to sort search results by relevancy, in addition to recency, to help them find items of interest.
…
Our current work on relevancy involves weighting some item fields more than others. What do we mean by weighting? We mean the importance attributed by the search engine to the types of fields being searched. For example, to return quality search results by relevancy, we may find we need to give item tags slightly more precedence than titles and significantly more precedence than descriptions.
- Redesigning the Listing Process
we’re focused on redesigning the item listing process, which is really where it all begins when it comes to search on Etsy.
…
We’re taking a thorough look at Etsy’s category structure and our current use of tags. Incorporating more structure here will ultimately enable category-specific filters on search results pages, allowing users to narrow down their search intuitively. It will enable multiple ways to shop: for example by category, by recipient, by material or by technique.
…
Expect improvements throughout 2009. Details will be announced on the Etsy Blog, in the Etsy Forums and to the Etsy News email list.
Other areas Etsy is exploring include:
things like links to related searches on search result pages, spell-checking functionality to suggest searches for misspelled words, advertising options for search result pages and many more features we’ll discuss as they near completion
Other useful Information:
Etsy is beginning a series of Virtual Labs where they will give anyone interested access to a test area to try out different searches and discuss the future of Etsy search. The first of these sessions will take place this Friday, March 13 at 1:00 pm EDT in the Virtual Labs.
Source: this Storque article
Coommenting on that article is closed but you can discuss it or ask questions in this Etsy forum thread.
March 9, 2009 at 9:21 pm · Filed under Search, Site Maintenance, The Future · By JB
Etsy’s Chief Technical Officer Chad Dickerson wrote an update today on Etsy’s technical progress and plans for the coming months.
Key points included:
- Monitoring and Communication
we rolled out a sophisticated monitoring system in November that today enables us to keep an eye on 700 services running on over 170 pieces of hardware, including servers, network gear and storage systems. When there is an issue with one of our systems, our engineers are proactively alerted. The monitoring system performs over one million automated checks every day — about 12 checks per second — and notifies us of any problems 24×7.
…
We also use a third-party service from Gomez to proactively measure page load times for Etsy at various points around the world. Gomez (which is used by 14 of the top 15 most visited sites on the Web) is an incredibly rich information source and tells us how fast Etsy’s home page is loading right now in Los Angeles, or last week in Madrid or the average for the world last Tuesday.
- Performance and Scalability
our performance as measured by our own systems and Gomez has vastly improved in the past six months even as site usage has grown considerably. In other words, the changes we have made to our systems and approach are demonstrating scalability. The numbers from Gomez, our third-party measurement service, tell the story in clear measurable terms. Our home page now loads 2-3 times faster in most locations around the world compared to October and as much as nine times faster in some places
…
We achieved some of these improvements by using the services of Akamai, a web infrastructure company. Akamai directs 25% of the world’s Web traffic using 40,000 servers in 70 locations around the world.
- Search and Developer API
When I arrived in September, Etsy’s search function was unacceptably slow, plain and simple. As I wrote in that update: “Some searches are taking as long as 60 seconds to return results and others are timing out altogether.” We began work on Search immediately. You should have noticed speed improvements in search and across the whole site beginning in November as we improved existing search and eventually migrated the backend entirely to a widely used open source platform (Solr) in January.
…
In February, the Etsy API has also been released to a small group of developers and a public beta launch will follow soon.
- Looking Ahead
Looking ahead, our goals in the Engineering Team are very simple: to continue to refine Etsy’s technology architecture towards a high-performance and scalable model, and to deliver the new features to buyers and sellers in the areas described in Maria’s update on Etsy’s priorities for 2009.
Source: this Storque article
March 9, 2009 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous, Treasury · By JB
This is just a short post to introduce our readers to craftopolis.com/, another new third-party site with useful tools for Etsy users. Craftopolis currently has a treasury search tool called the Treasure Hunt. This lets you type in your shop name and see a list of all the treasuries you are featured in, including treasury west and alternate spots. It’s a nifty time saver from having to scan every page of both treasuries looking for the gold or silver stars.
The site was designed by the husband of Etsy seller StudioMarlene, and UEN hopes to have an interview with the creators coming soon.
Also coming soon, according to Craftopolis, is a search for the gift guides.
The site is brand new and there have been some bugs reported, most notably when they had used up their allowed 5000 hits to the Etsy database and users got the error message that the name they typed in was not a registered user. Craftopolis has requested an increase in their daily hit limit from Etsy to alleviate the problem.
I have also added the link to our sidebar with all the other great third-party sites.
February 28, 2009 at 2:03 am · Filed under Etsy Communications, Miscellaneous, The Future · By GreenMamba
In this Storque article, Maria Thomas touches base with the Etsy community, addressing such topics as 2008 (a very brief retrospective); operational updates and a short list of product-related priorities; reaching out to Etsy sellers, which includes a focus on non-US shopowners and an upcoming trip to Europe; and the introduction of two new consultants: Sep Kamvar, “one of the world’s brightest minds in personalized search, computational methods and data mining”; and Louis Sagar, “a recognized innovator in home interiors, artisan craft and lifestyle retailing.”
Under the heading of ‘The Bigger Picture’, Maria concluded by asking a few questions of the Etsy community: (excerpted)
I’d like to close with a question: what business do you think Etsy is in?
[Followed by a paragraph about Zappos.com and a quote from its CEO, Tony Hsieh.]
So, what do you think? What has Etsy tapped into that’s bigger than creating a marketplace for handmade items, vintage goods and supplies? I will be curious to read your thoughts and will post again on this subject in April. Please join the discussion in this forum thread (we’ll close commenting here to consolidate dicussion in one thread).
Be sure to read the full article here, and add your comments and questions to the companion forum thread linked above.
February 24, 2009 at 2:06 am · Filed under Bugs, Site Maintenance, Views / Counters · By JB
Early this morning Etsy was down for 4 hours to perform scheduled maintenance. When the site came back up, some users reported their view counts had dropped. This bug has been fixed. Etsy has restored the missing views, except for any views which occurred between 5:45-6:45AM EST.
Source: this forum post and this forum thread.
There was an additional post-maintenance bug in the forums, a few threads got mixed up out of order and some replies are displaying in the wrong threads. The bug seems limited to a few threads posted right before or after the maintenance.
Source: this forum thread
February 4, 2009 at 8:59 pm · Filed under Features, The Future · By JB
Etsy CTO Chad Dickerson is starting beta testing of an open Etsy API. The testers are by invitation only but if you are a coder or developer you can ask to be included.
source: this Storque article
When I joined Etsy, one of the things I was most excited about was the proliferation of applications created by outside developers using data available from our servers. Historically, Etsy never made it difficult to access the functions that were created to serve applications like Time Machine 2, Color Picker and Treasury, but they were all officially unsupported for outside developers. Not surprisingly, developers “found” these capabilities and began building applications and services around them.
We think a formally supported Etsy API will be good for everyone, too. To that end, I am excited and proud to say that Etsy has begun an invite-only beta test of an official API with a select group of developers. It means supporting a new type of customer in addition to the buyers and sellers on Etsy: the developer. Releasing APIs takes significant thought and follow-through. So like those before us, before releasing the API publicly, we wanted to make sure that the API had the appropriate infrastructure that developers need to make them successful. We want to have the system in place to gather the appropriate information from developers to support the higher demands third party applications place on our system. That meant creating documentation, developer key provisioning, and stable supported methods that developers can depend on. We have spent the past few months putting these features together, with the effort being led by Tom Kutter aka kutty on the Product Team and Justin Sheckler aka Stunji on the Engineering Team. In reaching out to a number of developers who have already built Etsy applications, we have spoken to them about those applications and future ones they want to build. If you are a developer and are interested in joining this early-stage beta, please email us at developer@etsy.com
source: Chad’s twitter
new Etsy API, now in invite-only beta: http://bit.ly/fZmiV if you’re interested in joining, please dm me. big thx to @jaykayess!
If you are not on twitter, dm= direct message, it’s the twitter equivalent of a convo on Etsy.
February 1, 2009 at 8:36 pm · Filed under Shop Statistsics, Tags · By JB
Source: my own Google Analytics stats, as far as I can tell this is an unannounced change. If there is some admin announcement buried in a long forum post, please let me know and I will add a source link.
—————————————
Update Feb 2:
Etsy has announced the changes that they added on Jan 29.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6026206
http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/tech-update-etsy-web-analytics-enhancements-3350/
These sources did not exist yet when I wrote this article, but are a good place to discuss the changes where Etsy admins may answer any questions you have.)
—————————————-
Starting on January 29, 2009, Etsy has added search terms to their referral urls. This means that when you do a search using Etsy’s internal search engine, whatever keywords you searched for will be part of the item link that you click.
Example:
Do an Etsy search for fused plastic heart, with the drop down menu set to handmade tags and titles (default setting)
This will be the search results:
http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_type=tag_title&search_query=fused+plastic+heart
Now when you see my item (I am eclipse), click that and look at the url in your address bar.
new url:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_list_4&listing_id=20247898&ga_search_query=fused+plastic+heart&ga_search_type=tag_title
prior to January 29th, the url used to be:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_list_4&listing_id=20247898
The old url only told you that someone found you in search (that is what the ref=sr means)
and it told you that your item appeared 4th in the list (list_4), but you would have no idea what the person was searching for.
The new, longer url contains all the keywords you searched for
ga_search_query=fused+plastic+heart
and it contains what setting you used in the drop down menu
ga_search_type=tag_title
What this means for sellers:
What this means is that now when I check my Google Analytics stats, I can see exactly what people were looking for using Etsy’s search engine! Before the 29th, Etsy’s Google Analytics would not track internal Etsy searches, it only reported keywords from google searches (and many of those were incorrect, see this previous UEN article).
Your older stas prior to Jan 29 will still show the old referal urls, but going forward your new stats since the 29th should show the improved referral data.
This is a major improvement in the stats available to Etsy sellers.
Thank you Etsy!
To see the new referral urls in your GA stats, log into google analytics and then click “View report”
then in the sidebar click “content”
then click “top content”
the urls will be listed in the “page” column. Hover on the little arrow in the box icon to see the full urls.
(click this photo to see full size version)
You may want to change your date range to Jan 29-today’s date, in order to see only the stats with the new, improved urls.
Please Note that this info is not in the “Traffic sources” or Referring sites” sections, but it DOES provide referral data. The referrer is coded INTO the url of the item itself.
January 15, 2009 at 8:49 pm · Filed under Bugs, Shop Statistsics, Views / Counters · By JB
Source: this forum thread
Etsy released their stats (google analytics) 1 week ago, and there have been several bug reports and issues concerning the stats since then. These same issues surfaced during the beta testing, before last Thursday.
Today Etsy announced the issues formally, apologized for the problems and asked members for patience while they try to fix the problems.
Summary of the first issue: (for complete quote you can view the forum thread)
stellaloella says:
Dear Etsy sellers,
Last week, Etsy launched Google Analytics for sellers’ shops. Here is the original announcement from the Storque: http://www.etsy.com/storque/article/3141/
…
We apologize for releasing Web Analytics before fully resolving this Traffic Sources issue.
…
The Traffic Sources issue is the result of a tactical mistake in our integration. We share individual visitor tracking cookies between Etsy and Etsy sellers using Google Analytics. This results in Etsy sellers seeing Traffic Sources that relate to how their visitors originally entered Etsy in general, rather than Traffic Sources specific to their shop pages only.
…
We are still reviewing what options are best for our seller community, and we are testing possible solutions. Since Google Analytics reports update once a day, we have to wait 24-36 hours between running these tests to verify the results. We ask for your patience while we work through a few ideas and consult with Google and others to understand what’s possible.
What this means for sellers:
Your current Google Analytics stats are including some erroneous data, both referers and keywords. This bug only affects Traffic Sources. Your pageviews and other visitor data (location, etc) in Google Analytics are not affected and should be reliable.
What you can do about this problem:
Basically nothing- it has to be resolved on Etsy’s end, and changing your GA settings will not solve it.
There is a also second issue which is unrelated to the first.
Sellers have pointed out that links within the Google Analytics Content reports redirect to their shop homepage instead of the proper listing page. This is caused by Etsy giving us incorrect set-up directions about what domain to list in our Google Analytics account settings. They said to use shopname.etsy.com, and actually we should have used www.etsy.com. Etsy will be updating their set-up instructions and FAQ to reflect this as well.
What you can do about this problem:
This is one we can fix ourselves.
If you already have your Analytics set up, here is how to fix this:
– Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
– In the upper right is a menu for “My Analytics Accounts” Select your Etsy shop account. This will take you to the Overview page for that profile.
– Click “Edit” under “Actions for your Etsy shop profile.
– On the Profile setting page, click “Edit” in the grey bar that says “Main Website Profile Information”
– Change the Website URL to http://www.etsy.com (instead of username.etsy.com)
– Click “Save Changes”
– When you view your Content reports in Google Analytics, the external links to specific shop pages should direct to the correct page.
Note that editing this setting will ONLY solve the problem of clickable links in your Content report, it will not correct the first issue of incorrect referers and keywords.
UPDATE Feb 1, 2009
http://etsynews.com/868/etsy-adds-search-terms-to-referals-improves-google-analytics-stats/
January 9, 2009 at 12:20 pm · Filed under Shop Statistsics, Site Use · By GreenMamba
After the successful completetion of beta testing, Etsy has released their new Web Analytics to the general membership. From the announcement thread:
| |
stellaloella says: |
| From the Storque announcement …”Sellers, Etsy has completed beta testing of Etsy Web Analytics (provided through Google Analytics), and you can now enable this feature by going to Your Etsy > Shop Setup > Web Analytics.
“This release of Etsy Web Analytics allows Etsy sellers to track metrics such as pageviews, site visits, popular content and page referrals. For more information, you can also read the Web Analytics FAQ.
“This feature is free to use for all Etsy sellers.
“Web Analytics is a powerful tool, but it can be complex to understand. We urge sellers to share information through the forums, and we are evaluating ways to share information with sellers on how to get the most out of this new feature.”
- - - - - - -
RELEVANT LINKS:
Your Etsy > Shop Setup > Web Analytics : http://www.etsy.com/shop_analytics.php
Etsy Web Analytics FAQ : http://www.etsy.com/faq_selling.php#ga
Google Analytics Help Center : http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/
Read the article here : http://www.etsy.com/storque/article/3141/
- - - - - - -
A big THANK YOU to the sellers who participated in the beta test group for Etsy Web Analytics! The testing process proved to be a valuable step, and we are grateful for the help and feedback provided by the testers.
We know many sellers will be excited about this new feature. We are too! There are a few things we want to make clear for the sake of discussion:
Etsy Web Analytics is …
… a tool for tracking and analyzing web traffic for your Etsy shop. You can see reports such as: pageviews, visitors data (like location), popular content (which pages in your shop are viewed most) and page referrals (where visitors came from). The Google Analytics platform provides various ways to view, sort and compare this data. There is a LOT of info available, so be sure to review the Google Analytics Help Center docs.
Etsy Web Analytics is NOT …
… the final answer to the “we want stats” requests made by Etsy sellers. There remains some Etsy-centric info that Web Analytics does not include, for example: comparative item Hearts data. Etsy Web Analytics is a solid step in the right direction, and we are continuing to work on new features that will help enable sellers to make the most of their Etsy experience.
So, with that said, please discuss and let us know what you think of Etsy Web Analytics. |
| Posted at 10:25 am, January 9 2009 EST |
Join the discussion on Etsy.
Read the Storque article.
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