Etsy has gotten rid of the old “brick wall” graphic that you used to see when trying to access deleted shops or accounts that never existed. The new error page has links to continue shopping. This improves the navigability of the site and is much more buyer-friendly than the old brick wall, which had no navigation links.
In this Etsy Bugs thread YadaYadaYada asks, “Why is my private Alchemy shop announcement now my Message from the Seller?”
My private Alchemy shop announcement, saying that I do not accept private Alchemy requests, is now my Message from the Seller on a public Alchemy bid that I won.
It looks unprofessional for my Message to Buyers on this Alchemy bid to say “Thanks for your interest in my shop, but I’m not accepting private Alchemy requests…”
Posted at 9:19 am, April 11 2008 EST
(Emphasis added here.)
In a nutshell:
RevolvingDork says:
This is actually done purposely — on alchemy transactions, your alchemy announcement becomes your announcement to buyers. :]
Posted at 2:07 pm, June 26 2008 EST
Now, users can easily switch between searches for Handmade, Supplies and Vintage.
kfarrell says:
Here’s latest TechUpdate from the Storque: http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/etsyNews/article/tech-updates-prompt-to-switch-between-searches/2106/
“Since we launched separate drop-down searches for Handmade, Supplies, and Vintage items, we’ve been getting a lot of feedback from buyers and sellers. Thank you to everyone who let us know what you think of the changes — we’re listening!
We wanted to make switching your search between Handmade, Supplies, and Vintage a little easier, so we’ve added a little prompt to the top of the search results page. If you search in Handmade, links to perform the same search in Supplies and Vintage will appear. Searches in Supplies will show links to Handmade and Vintage, and searches in Vintage will show links to Handmade and Supplies.
We hope these changes makes searching on Etsy a little easier for you!”
Posted at 12:38 pm, June 26 2008 EST
Quoted from the companion thread, which can be found here.
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.
No kidding. The view counters have been upgraded and improved to be more stable and accurate and, in many cases, lost views from months past have been restored.
Read about it here.
RevolvingDork says:
To the delight of our engineers and (hopefully) our sellers also, we are very pleased to let you know that view tallies should be functioning properly once again.
As many of our sellers know, we’ve experienced a recurring problem for the past several months that caused listing view tallies to sporadically reset. This forced the affected view counts to drop to “1″.
We’ve developed a new, more reliable view tally system. As a result, most sellers will see a shift in their item view counts today. In addition to keeping accurate counts going forward, we were able to restore all view count data since January 1, 2008, even if a listing’s view count was reset during this time. Unfortunately, we were unable to retain data prior toJanuary 1, 2008, so some listings may experience a decease in views if they were on the site prior to the start of the calendar year. Think of it as a fresh start for the new year, with (most importantly) accurate information.We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused by this problem, and we thank all our members for your patience as we worked on a solution. We are hopeful that this new tally system is a solid solution that will provide reliable info. Giving credit where it’s due, we’d like to give big thanks to Etsy engineers, Jorge and CB aka etsybozo who solved this challenging problem. We’ve tested this system thoroughly, but there is always a chance that an issue may arise once we have it running on the live site. If there is an issue, we’ll be sure to alert you through the Storque and the Etsy News Alerts email list. If you continue to experience problems or just have questions, please let us know here!
Here is a brief Q & A about the new system:
Q. Some of my listings lost views counts AGAIN! What’s going on?
A. We’ve been able to restore all view counts that occurred between the dates of January 1, 2008 and June 17, 2008. If your listings’ views occurred outside of that range, they were not able to be included in the new count.Q. My view counts jumped up! Why did that happen?
A. Your listings now reflect all of the view activity between January 1, 2008 and June 17, 2008. If your view counts have jumped, it’s because they were reset in the past and have now been restored.Posted at 4:07 pm, June 18 2008 EST
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!
After unveiling the new Shop Policies page On May 15, many members reported that their policies would randomly blank out, requiring them to input the info anew. Admin RevolvingDork started two fact-finding threads to help pinpoint the cause, and it was determined that expiring listings somehow affected the policies’ ability to ’stick’. After four days and no new reports of vanishing policies, it now appears that the issue has been succesfully resolved. Yay!
RevolvingDork says:
We’re pretty sure that the issue with the policy page has been resolved, meaning that policies should no longer be cleared out on their own.
If you have policies that have been cleared, they will not come back on their own — you’ll have to enter them again. If you have entered them newly as of the time of this posting, and they dissapear *after* that point, please let us know!
Posted at 1:41 pm, June 2 2008 EST - Report this post
UEN previously covered this issue here.
Etsy has released a new feature that allows you to arrange a listing’s photos after uploading the images. Before, you had to delete the photos and reupload them to change the order. Now each photo has little right and left arrows underneath it, which lets you move them around in any order.
source: this Storque article
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.
As reported in this Storque article, Etsy is holding a chat to gather community input on the issue of Etsy sellers having employees. This issue has come up a few times recently in the Etsy forums.
The meeting is Friday May 9
6 pm Central European time zone
5 pm UK time time zone
12 noon eastern USA time zone
11 am central USA time zone
10 am mountain USA time zone
9 am pacific USA time zone
Join us for a discussion and feedback session about employees and your Etsy shop. Rob, aka Rokali, co-founder and CEO of Etsy, will be leading the workshop.
When: Friday, May 9, 12 noon (Eastern US time) times on the Virtual Labs schedule are displayed in your local time
Where: Treehouse Room, Virtual Labs
…
Agenda:
For those selling handmade goods: Are employees necessary for a seller to “make a living making things”? Are the items still “handmade”?What sort of hired help is needed for handmade sellers? Is *what* potential employees do for the shop relevant?
Does the number of employees that a business has impact whether the shop belongs on Etsy? If so, how many is too many?
Are different rules necessary for sellers of commercial supplies and vintage goods? Are employees acceptable for these types of shops?
What sort of information do you need (for example, links to information about employment law) to grow a business that includes employees?
Should sellers who are outsourcing, involved in collectives, and employing people be approved by Etsy? What sort of approval process would you be interested in?
UPDATE Monday May 12 by JB:
The minutes to the meeting are here
