Archive for Categories
June 23, 2008 at 3:37 pm · Filed under Categories, Listings, Search · By GreenMamba
As detailed in this Storque article, Etsy delivers on its promise to give a one-time listing extension, of four full months, to eligible vintage and commercial suppy listings. This offer was made to compensate sellers of these items for changes to the default search feature which separate their listings from the pool of handmade items.
Excerpt:
Dear Etsians,
Back in February when Etsy announced upcoming changes to the way search would work, we made a promise to our Vintage and Commercial Supply sellers that we would extend the life of their item listings by four months, for free.
The search changes took effect May 5, and we are now ready to honor our promise. We intend to start rolling out the additional four months beginning on June 30, 2008.
The four month free extension will apply only to Vintage and Commercial Supplies sellers.
Here’s the Plan for the Four Month Extension:
- Only properly tagged listings will get the four month extension, so this is a great opportunity to make sure your Vintage and Commercial Supplies items are properly categorized. In other words, make sure the top tag is “Vintage” or “Supplies.” In the case of Supplies, items should also be tagged with “Commercial.”
- On Thursday June 30, Etsy will capture a snapshot of all Vintage and Commercial Supplies listings on the site.
- Immediately thereafter, we will begin rolling out a free four month extension on all of these listings.
- The rollout will take approximately 30-45 days from June 30.
- We will keep you updated on the progress and will announce when the process is complete.
- After the process is completed, if you have any questions or concerns about specific listings, contact support@etsy.com. Please include the following words in the subject of your email: “4 month extension.” This will help us target your questions and get back to you more quickly.
Please see the article for a list of FAQs regarding this extension plan.
Also follow the announcement thread here.
June 6, 2008 at 6:37 pm · Filed under Categories · By GreenMamba
Prompted by Etsy artists’ ongoing - and long-standing - questions, comments and suggestions about how best to tag their listings, Etsy hosted a Treehouse Chatt With Matt this morning (Friday, 6 June 2008) to begin addressing their concerns. Minutes can be found here.
Pursuant to the coming changes and clarifications to the top level Art Category, which will include new sub-categories, Etsy admin HeyMichelle has been seeking input on a variety of specific areas.
HeyMichelle says here (excerpt):
Hi there everyone! We just had a meeting in the Virtual Labs with the Artists of Etsy (those who are listing work in the Art Category). What a great meeting! Now, it’s time to get more feedback on some things we discussed, so I’ll be posting a few more threads today.
Posted at 1:54 pm, June 6 2008 EST
Visit these threads to join in the discussions:
The Art category- let’s talk about it
The Art Category- digital art!
Printmaking has been added as a subcategory under Art
Art Category: originals
May 22, 2008 at 3:08 pm · Filed under Categories · By JB
On Thursday, May 29 at 4PMish Eastern U.S. time, Etsy will be adding Collectibles as a top-level category.
The Collectibles category is for handmade items, and is intended to include dolls and doll accoutrements, figurines, miniatures, plush animals, and other “toys” for adult collectors. As well, some items of non-functional home decoration, such as ornaments, or a tole-painted teakettle that is for decoration only, will fit into this category.
source: this Storque article
Discuss the new category in this forum thread.
UPDATE:
The Collectibles category has been withdrawn for reconsideration.
May 5, 2008 at 4:43 pm · Filed under Categories, Features, Search · By GreenMamba
This Storque article briefly outlines the changes.
Today, we launched some exciting changes to Etsy’s search engine. These changes were requested by the community and we think they help improve the shopping experience on Etsy.
We’ve separated item search into three new searches: Handmade, Vintage, and Supplies. The default is Handmade, with Vintage and Supplies available in the drop-down. You can also select “All items” to search Handmade, Supplies, and Vintage all at once.
Consequently, it is critical that sellers categorize and tag their items correctly in order to place them within the proper search. Last week, we posted some information that will help you with that process. You can read the initial heads up here — Tech Updates: Upcoming Changes to Search and Categories — and its companion, follow-up article here — Upcoming Changes to Search: Your Questions Answered.
Just to clarify, category bleed is addressed when searching via specific top-level categories, rather than via the search bar at the top of each page. The drop-down menu does default to handmade, and includes the other search options, both new and old, but searches the entire database, not within specific categories.
HeyMichelle says here:
I mean- the “no bleed” is for categories. By categories, I mean the category browser. Search does not search just within that category…
If you would like to search *just* the art category, type in your additional search terms from the Art category, a subcategory, or subsubcategory from the Categories pages.
There are numerous threads following this change, in several forum sections. There is also some speculation that the change has affected the ability to list new items in at least some categories. See this thread in Bugs.
update by JB:
The bug linked above appears to be resolved and was not a true bug, but a problem on one user’s computer.
April 29, 2008 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Categories, Search · By quirke
This Storque article answers some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the upcoming changes to search and categories.
The discussion is still continuing in the related forum thread here.
April 28, 2008 at 12:09 pm · Filed under Categories, Search · By quirke
In this Storque article, Marymary describes the long-anticipated separation of vintage and supplies from handmade items in the Etsy search function, as well as other important changes to categories and search. An excerpt from the article:
Hello Etsians!
On Monday, May 5, 2008, some important and exciting changes are happening with searching and categories. These changes are in response to feedback from all around the Etsy community, and were first introduced back in February with Rob’s Focus on Handmade Storque article. Here’s a rundown of what is to come:
We’ll be separating item search into three new searches: Handmade, Vintage, and Supplies.
Handmade Items – This is the default search. This searches all items on Etsy that are not tagged with “commercial” and do not have “vintage” as the first tag. Handmade supplies will still appear in this search. You can search tags and titles or tags, titles, and descriptions.
Supplies – This will search all of the supplies on Etsy, both handmade and commercial. Any item tagged “supplies” will show up in the results.
Vintage – This special vintage search returns only items within the Vintage category. This means items with vintage as their first tag (selected from the dropdown menu in the listing process).
The existing search will also remain available. Just select “All items” from the search bar to search handmade, supplies, and vintage all at once.
We’ll also be making changes to the category browser. Currently a top-level category such as Jewelry shows only items within the Jewelry category. The subcategories and sub-subcategories contain any items that have the tag “jewelry,” but are not necessarily in the Jewelry category. We call this “category bleed.”
The changes on May 5 will eliminate category bleed. All subcategories will only show items from within that category. Meaning the subcategories of “jewelry” will no longer pull up jewelry supplies.
The Patterns category is also gearing up for change, although this will not be part of the May 5 update. In order to help keep things organized, Patterns will be moving into the supplies category. A new drop-down will appear in the listing process for Patterns, prompting you to select handmade (if it’s your own pattern) or commercial (if it’s someone else’s pattern)
There is an accompanying forum thread here.
March 1, 2008 at 9:48 pm · Filed under Categories, Search, Tags · By GreenMamba
In this thread, Etsy memberTwistedThicket inquired about the status of the promised, and much anticipated, search overhaul which would aim Etsy’s primary focus at handmade goods. Admin kfarrell had this response:
Hey folks,
I know you’re all patiently waiting, but I think this is a good time to mention the last line of Rob’s Storque article: “Like all tasks that require engineering work, things could take longer than expected, so please keep this in mind.”
Because Etsy is such a vast site, it is often hard to estimate exactly how long something will take. Doubly so because the site is constantly changing even as we’re working on it. Search changes in particular can be finicky because of the huge impact they have on the site’s speed.
Chris recently put through a bunch of great changes that have sped things up dramatically - meaning we can handle much more traffic before anyone will notice a slowdown. This is one of the many steps towards the improvements everyone is waiting for.
Thanks for your continued patience, although you might want to exhale, oxygen to the brain is a good thing!
Stay tuned to the Storque ( http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/etsyNews/ ) for tech updates about site changes, since the holiday madness ended the ninjas in Engineering have been cranking things out at a good clip. :)
Posted at 5:15 pm, March 1 2008 EST
Read the original Storque announcement here.
Previous coverage on UEN can be found here.
February 22, 2008 at 2:36 pm · Filed under Categories, Showcase · By quirke
In this Storque article, Etsy announces that instead of just appearing on the first page of a top category, the Category Showcases will appear on every page.
Dear Sellers,
The Category Showcases now appear on each page when you’re browsing the Top Categories. That means you get more coverage with your Showcase ads than before, since the Category Showcases previously only appeared on the first page. So enjoy and know that buyers will have their eyeballs on your items even more!
Thanks to Halflyng for the heads-up on this change.
February 1, 2008 at 7:39 pm · Filed under Categories, Search, Tags, The Storque · By quirke
In this Storque article, Rob/Rokali describes some new changes to the site, focused mainly on tweaks to browsing and searching that will result in reduced category bleed, and vintage and supplies being screened out from the default search settings.
The tagline on our homepage reads Your place to buy & sell all things handmade. This was our focus when we launched Etsy two-and-a-half years ago, and it will remain our focus. However, a bit of housekeeping is needed to maintain this.
Etsy currently has over 1.1 million active listings, and more than twice this number of items have been sold. Way back when, in April or May of 2005, when we were laying out the top-level categories, we included two categories that we thought would be of great use to the community: Supplies and Vintage. We’re glad we did this, and we have been happy to see these categories thrive.
As Etsy continues to grow and the circles of people who know about the site spreads beyond crafters, we see the ratio of buyers to sellers increase. What began as a one-to-one ratio is now five-to-one, and we hope to see it around ten-to-one by the end of this year. This means means more buyers for every seller. It also means the vast majority of people coming to the site are coming here to find “all things handmade.”
We’re super sensitive to how the small businesses get pushed to the perimeter of marketplaces. Indeed, we created Etsy for the specific reason of making sure that handmade goods were kept in the center. We’re going to make some changes to the current site to make sure the center can hold.
What’s going to change?
We’re tweaking how both browsing and searching work.
The main search bar will default to searching only handmade goods. This means that vintage items and commercial supplies will, by default, be excluded from search results. Of course, the searcher can opt to include them by selecting the correct option from the drop-down menu to the right of the search bar.
Right now we have what we call “subcategory bleed.” When you click into, say, Art, you only see items whose first tag is Art. But as soon as you hit a subcategory in Art, like Drawings, you see all items who have both those tags, no matter what the first tag is. This will be remedied to work in the way that most people expect it to work (from other ecommerce taxonomies): Art > Drawings will only show items with the first tag Art; in other words, items inside that top-level category.
Three Special Considerations
One: Patterns will be moved to their appropriate places: handmade patterns with the handmade crafting supplies, and commercial patterns with the commercial supplies. The Patterns for sale on Etsy are both handmade and commercial, and should be tagged appropriately. This moving will be done automagically, and we’ll give specific advance notice for it.
Two: Handmade supplies are handmade, so they’ll still be included in the default results.
Three: We know that changes like these will require some getting used to. We’re going to give all commercial supplies and vintage items an extra 4 months of listing time in light of this.
What’s the timeframe for these changes? Our goal is to put them in place by the end of this month. Like all tasks that require engineering work, things could take longer than expected, so please keep this in mind.
The comments for this article are closed, but here is an accompanying forum thread for discussion.
UPDATE 02/02/08:
Rob/Rokali has provided a mock-up of how the new header might look.
UPDATE 02/02/08 by JB:
Rokali has posted his follow-up
January 19, 2008 at 12:25 am · Filed under Categories, Search · By quirke
Etsy has improved the search function to allow searching within categories and subcategories using tags. Previously, only searching within top level categories was possible.
See the related Storque article here.
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