Archive for December, 2007
December 31, 2007 at 9:17 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous · By quirke
In this thread, a number of eagle-eyed Etsy users have noticed several apparent changes to titles and wording in sellers’ shops:
“Shop Announcement” now reads “YourName Shop Announcement”
“Featured Items” now reads “Featured Items from YourName”
“User Info” now reads “YourName’s Info”
“Other Items” now reads “YourName’s Other Items”
As well, a sold item listing now reads just “sold” rather than “sold out”.
Update:
Rokali has responded here:
Rokali says:
Thanks for the support, everyone. We certainly know there’s a lot to do, and much of it centers around engineering-related challenges. We’ve been making a lot of progress and this upcoming year will bring some big steps forward.
This latest small change (repeating the shop name on the shop homepage) was done for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes.
And for the record, adding an apostrophe-s to the end of a shop name, like SomethingSomethingDesigns’s Other Items, is correct grammar:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_apost.html
December 30, 2007 at 12:16 pm · Filed under Press · By Serena
An article featuring Etsy as one of “the hit websites of 2008″ was published in the Guardian Unlimited on December 24. Etsy was first in a list that includes Twitter (also a Union Square Ventures company),Dopplr, Moshimonsters, and Seesmic.
In other news, UEN editor has an awesome holiday and only resurfaces to post the article one week later.
December 27, 2007 at 12:46 pm · Filed under Checkout System, Customer Service, The Future · By GreenMamba
In response to a thread proposing on-site payment processing for all Etsy purchases, Rokali gave this response:
Yes, this is something we’re working on. It’s a large project and requires a hefty amount of legal, technical and operational planning, with almost no margin for making any mistakes.
The most common complaint we hear from buyers concerning the checkout process is having to pay every seller separately, off-site.
This also creates the problem of the “non-paying buyer,” i.e. someone who purchases an item on Etsy but never pays for the item. This is a big drain on both sellers and our own customer support.
Any online transaction is going to involve a “middleman” between the buyer & a seller’s bank account. We’d still allow for a buyer to specify PayPal at checkout if that’s what they preferred. Many other online ecommerce sites do this.
Having our own in-house payment system would also facilitate site-wide gift-certificates, coupons, an affiliate program and more. It’d also entirely eliminate non-paying buyers.
We’ll keep everyone updated as to our planning here. This is something we’d announce several months ahead of time, if we get the go-ahead in the first round (legal) of implementation.
Posted at 6:37 pm, December 26 2007 EST
You can follow the entire thread here.
December 23, 2007 at 6:48 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous · By quirke
After some downtime, EtsyTools has returned!
For those unfamiliar with the site, EtsyTools is an unofficial statistics-gathering site that uses API streams from Etsy.com to gather and display pertinent information for users. They are unaffiliated with Etsy and run by two Etsy members, Interrobang and Vertis.
December 22, 2007 at 1:28 pm · Filed under Down Time, Site Use · By Serena
In this forum thread, RevolvingDork writes:
We’ll be taking the site down very early on Christmas day to perform an upgrade of the Master Database. This upgrade will help us facilitate future growth and make it easier for us to develop new features.
The estimated downtime will be:
Dec 25th
1:00am - 6:00am
Not living in NY, NY? Here’s a handy time zone converting tool: World Time Server. Just choose your location out of the second box.
December 19, 2007 at 7:42 pm · Filed under Marketing · By JB
http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/etsyNews/article/survey-says-we-want-your-input/886/
Etsy is doing a survey!
suggest your questions in this forum thread
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5379549
(if you can still post in the forums, that is!)
December 18, 2007 at 2:41 pm · Filed under Features · By Lis
In this thread, jared says:
We’ve built a tool to help find local shops in your area.
In the same light as Pounce, it’s super fast, minimizing calls to the database and providing simple functionality:
http://www.etsy.com/shop_local.php
This is a sneak peak rollout to gather your feedback and find any bugs that may be hiding. Constructive suggestions are appreciated.
If all goes well, this will be released sitewide as early as tonight. Just in time for all you last minute shoppers!
Some things to note:
* limited to last 100 most recently updated shops
* searches against the ‘City:’ field provided in the public profile
* partial matches ok eg. ‘Albuquerque’ will match ‘Albuquerque, New Mexico’.
* be creative with your search terms. sellers put all kinds of text for their ‘location’.
Thanks for your continued support!
December 18, 2007 at 2:14 pm · Filed under Features · By Lis
In this thread, DrWoohoo says:
What if we included multiple search options into the Poster Sketch tool in order to simplify, speed up and help you create wonderful Posters/Treasuries?
http://www.etsy.com/poster_sketch.php
With Poster Sketch v2, you can populate the cards using 3 techniques:
Populating Cards
—————————————-
1) Manually entering the listing id in each card. Same as v1.
2) At the bottom of the page, after doing a search by color, etc., the scroll area should contain several thumbnail listings. Clicking on a listing in the scroll area will automatically populate the next available card.
3) In addition, if you want to place the new listing in a specific card, you can click and drag the thumbnail to the grid located to the left of the scroll area. Once you are over the cell/card of your choice, release to the mouse button to drop it in place.
Poster Sketch v2 includes the following search options, included below the matrix of cards in the Curator Workspace:
Pick by Color:
—————————————-
There are two ways to find listings by colors:
You can select a color from the Color Wheel – which is located to the right of the ‘Pick by…’ navigation buttons.
In addition, after you fill out a card with your selection, clicking on the blue Refresh button that is located on the bottom right of that card will search for listings that have a matching color.
Please note that we are deep into the development of an enhanced color process and algorithm that will better represent the color associated with the image.
I currently have it set up so that if you have ‘pick by color’ enabled and you populate a new card, the color search – using the color of that listing – automatically starts. I’m on the fence on whether this should be enabled or disabled - any feedback on it would be greatly appreciated.
Pick Users’ Favorites:
—————————————-
This search option allows us to retrieve the favorite listings of users who allow everyone to see their favorites.
Pick by Seller
—————————————-
This option retrieves the listings within the seller’s shop. Enter the seller name in the text field, click on Load and away we go…
Tag Search
—————————————-
Retrieves listings based on the tag you enter in the text field next to the Load button.
In the near future, you will be able to import these listings directly into the Treasury.
I’m really excited to see your results. But before we go officially live with this, please try and break it and give me any comments and criticisms so that we can fine-tune it appropriately.
Thanks for your time and woohoo!
December 17, 2007 at 3:28 am · Filed under Site Maintenance · By Lis
In this thread, RD says:
We’ve taken the color picker down for some emergency maintenance. Due to record levels of traffic hitting the site, the load from a specific color picker function has been causing some parts of the site to behave sluggishly. We’ll be looking at ways to enhance the color picker this week, and will have it back online as soon as we can. As always, site performance is a top priority, so we’re doing what we can to keep it running optimally.
Update
In this thread, RD welcomed the Color Picker back:
It’s back and radder than ever.
Also, it was updated last week so that only active listings come up in the results. Check it out!
December 16, 2007 at 10:58 pm · Filed under Editorial, Meta · By starrydesigns
Dear fellow Etsyians and Readers of UEN,
I regret to inform you that today is the last day of my service to the UEN. It has been a great journey and I have enjoyed writing for and interacting with you. I am sad to leave, but it is a step I must take because of time constraints.
Thank you, Sara, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this great site and to help out the Etsy community. Thank you, UEN editors, for this great journey and friendship. Thank you, readers of the UEN, for your kind support all these months.
All the best to everyone and do give continued support to the UEN as the current editors strive to be of service to you.
Tata for now.
Warmest Love,
Cindy
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