Archive for December, 2008
December 30, 2008 at 6:23 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
As reported in this Storque article by admins sean11, twokb, and zakj, Etsy has provided easy-to-use links for sharing your favorite shops, listings, and articles. Excerpt:
Now on every item listing page, shop page and Etsy blog post, you can use pre-installed social bookmarking options to share and spread the cool stuff you find on Etsy. Whether you’re into Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Myspace, Google Bookmarks, Kaboodle, Stylehive, Delicious, ThisNext or Digg, we’ve got you covered.
Look for the link that says “Bookmark and share” at the bottom of blog posts like this one or under Page Tools on item listing pages and shop pages:
Click it to pop open a box with options and start sharing!
December 24, 2008 at 6:07 pm · Filed under Etsy Staff, Features, The Future, Views / Counters · By JB
source: this Storque article
Tom Kutter, aka Kutty, is a new product manager at Etsy and focuses on building products for Etsy sellers and developers. Welcome Tom!
Etsy is currently conducting a beta test with Google Analytics to enable Etsy sellers to track metrics such as pageviews, site visits, popular content and page referrals.
We have contacted a small group of sellers to help us with beta-testing. We’re hoping to complete beta testing soon, and at that point, we will have more to say about the timing of releasing Google Analytics to the entire seller community. So expect an announcement here on the blog, in the forums, and to the Etsy News email list. The release will be accompanied by an FAQ and links to Google Analytics resources.
For now, we wanted to give Etsy sellers a heads up.
Shortly after this Etsy announcement, Etsy competitor Artfire publicly announced today that they are introducing Google Analytics stats free to all members. Previously, stats had only been available to Artfire paying members.
update: Google stats are already live in production on Artfire.
December 13, 2008 at 10:54 am · Filed under Laws & Regs, Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
In this Storque article by Etsy admin Vanessa, Etsy Inc speaks candidly of the dramatic impact that new CPSC legislation, slated to take effect on February 10, 2009, will have on makers/sellers of handmade children’s items.
An excerpt:
The following is an open letter regarding the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). This Act, which will go into effect on February 10th, 2009, puts forth much more stringent safety measures for products intended for children under the age of 12.
Under the very important auspices of child safety, the Act may have grave unintended consequences: fewer choices for families who are looking for handcrafted alternatives. Many Etsy artists and craftspeople have expressed fears that they won’t be able stay in business due to the burdensome cost of testing and certification pursuant to the proposed legislation.
As a venue for handcrafted and vintage items from small entrepreneurs, Etsy has invited the Ombudsman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to join us in a webchat in our Virtual Lab. Etsy would very much appreciate the opportunity to provide a forum for discussing the concerns of artisans who make toys and children’s products as well as their customers who support handmade products.
We urge members of the Etsy community and anyone concerned with both child safety and conscientious consumption to contact their governmental representatives; ask them to consider how the Act will impact independent craftspeople.
The office of the CPSC ombudsman: 888-531-9070.
Visit the Handmade Toy Alliance for information about writing your representatives.
Following the excerpt provided above, there is an Open Letter, drafted by Etsy admin, which can be copied and forwarded to the appropriate authorities. Read the full letter here.
This article was also sent out in an Etsy News e-mail. To subscribe, please go here.
Any members wishing to comment on this issue may do so in this official forum thread.
UPDATE 12.31.08 by GreenMamba
Today, Etsy admin Vanessa announced in this thread that she has published a follow-up CPSIA article in the Storque.
Article excerpt:
Cecilia, of the handmadetoyalliance.org and craftsburykids.com, is helping crafters and artisans get their voices heard. She is very active on the Alliance’s Facebook Group (join the group here). We wanted to share some updates and deadlines via Cecilia:
Midnight, this Wednesday, December 31, 2008 is the deadline for the first round of voting on the Change.org site. If you haven’t voted, please do, and pass the word on. Let’s remain in the number one spot! Here’s the link.
This coming Monday, January 5, is the deadline for comments to the CPSC. The CPSC has asked for comments regarding component testing and natural materials exemptions! This is our chance to speak directly to the CPSC and push them to include these important additions in the CPSIA/provide your personal feedback on anything that hasn’t been touched on. Here is the link to the CPSC forms.
December 9, 2008 at 7:12 pm · Filed under Etsy Communications, Search · By dangerousmezzo
In this thread the new Vice President of Product Management, saralouhicks, announces that thanks to the input from Etsy buyers and sellers, search pagination will be changed back to show the total number of pages returned, probably by the end of this week. Here’s an excerpt from the thread:
Some valid points were raised, which include:
SEARCH: The way current search results are displayed (ranking) is based on chronology (most recently listed items first). We believe Etsy would be better served by a system that takes into account both ranking and relevance in a more sophisticated way. In retrospect, the change we made to pagination would have been more appropriately introduced with the introduction of a new ranking and a relevancy-based system.
JUMP TO: There is a “jump to” box at the bottom of search results category pages, but without knowing how many pages there are, it’s illogical to jump to a page deeper in the results. If the shopper jumps too far, they meet a message that says “we didn’t find anything.”
In light of these two critical points, we’ve decided to reformat the pagination display to include the last page number again (such as it appears here in the Forums). The Etsy engineering team is working on this right now, but we have testing to go through yet. We are aiming to release the change before the end of the week.
I want to apologize for the way in which this change was launched. With the changes to the search system coming up in the new year, we may revisit the pagination display, but I assure you that we will take into better consideration how pagination supports the overall functionality of search.
Update by JB:
The fix is live, right now, today. It won’t take a week of testing after all.
(editorial: YAY!!)
source: this forum post
stellaloella says:
More good news! Our testing went smoothly, so we were able to push the change live just moments ago.
Posted at 6:35 pm, December 9 2008 EST
December 6, 2008 at 3:53 pm · Filed under Etsy Staff, Street Teams, The Future · By quirke
According to her blog, Etsy Teams leader Sarawearsskirts/Girlscantell will be leaving Etsy as of December 31st, since her position has been dissolved. Stellaloella answers questions in this forum thread.
stellaloella says:
Hi, everyone. Yes, it’s true that Sara will be leaving her position as Etsy Teams coordinator at the end of the calendar year. The Teams program, however, will continue on but with a slightly different direction in 2009. We definitely value all the Etsy Teams, Team members and the incredible work Sara has done with the program thus far. Matt will hopefully be able to elaborate more on the future of the Etsy Teams program in the coming months. For the time being, Teams should keep on keepin’ on with all the amazing work you do in these mini-communities.
On a personal note, I will definitely miss working with Sara, as I’ve come to admire her greatly for her community-mindedness and creative ambition. I wish nothing but the very best for Sara in all her future endeavors.
I believe she has plans to stay active on Etsy with her personal shop, girlscantell. That said, I ask that you please be respectful of her privacy regarding her employment with Etsy. Speculation about the hows & whys of this decision are potentially hurtful to the company and to Sara, and so I ask that you please remain considerate of the people involved in this matter. Thank you.
edit Dec 8 by JB
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5946469&page=4
Matt posted here, with additional information
matt says:
Hello,
I will be sending this out to the teams later today, but wanted to share it here first. I apologize for the delay in getting this out.
Thanks, Matt
—-
Dear Friends
Etsy Teams are part of Etsy’s foundation, and we are committed to working more closely with all of you to help promote our joint goals. Since I created the Teams idea three years ago, over 450 Teams with 20,000 members have formed around the globe. It’s time for Etsy to take a closer look at how we can better support Teams and your needs.
Over the past few weeks, I have spent a great deal of time speaking with Teams and working with Maria to look at what Etsy is and isn’t doing with the Teams program. As part of this examination, I recently made the difficult decision to discontinue the role that Sara Selepouchin currently holds at Etsy. (For those of you who do not know Sara, she is the friendly lady who has been running the Teams program.) This decision is in no way a reflection of our commitment to the Teams program.
On the contrary, I see it as a first step to better aligning Etsy’s resources to meet growing needs of Teams. I will be creating a new Brooklyn-based position to work closely with me to develop and implement new tools, collaborative promotional, and branding opportunities for Etsy Teams. New Team profile pages, private forums, and more are among the top priorities for the first part of 2009 as mentioned in Maria’s Storque article: http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/talking-shop-with-etsy-ceo-maria-thomas-2853/.
Sara will continue working with Etsy until the end of the year. She will be meeting with a couple other admin, including me, to pass on her tasks, information and ideas so we can continue to provide support to Teams without any interruption. In the new year, Danielle (Etsy admin daniellexo) and I will be available and actively involved in handling Team page changes, questions, and content. We now share the teams@etsy inbox and are committed to keeping your Team information up to date and helping to facilitate your Etsy Teams in any way possible.
Organizational change is part of the natural, sometimes painful, process of building a great and lasting business, and with it comes great potential but also some hard choices. It is never easy when someone loses her job, and I can assure you that this decision was not made capriciously. We are all very grateful for Sara’s contributions to Etsy. I thank Sara for her one and a half years at Etsy, and I wish her the very, very best luck in her future endeavors.
I remain more committed to Etsy Teams than ever. I see the incredible role they play in our communities and want to make sure that Etsy Teams receive the attention and resources they deserve.
I appreciate your understanding and compassion in this matter.
As always, I am available at matt [!at] etsy.com
Please address all Teams related inquiries to teams [!at] etsy.com
Thanks,
Matt Stinchcomb, VP, Communications- Etsy.com
Posted at 2:26 pm, December 8 2008
December 6, 2008 at 12:01 am · Filed under Bugs, Site Security · By JB
Source- this etsy thread
jorgelo says:
There was a display issue on the homepage that would show random user’s login in the header.
This was just a display error on the header. A user who saw the wrong username in the header was not able to access any account information that did not belong to them.
This happened on a small subset of pages, none of them that require authentication.
Sorry about the issue, and we are working on it.
Posted at 9:02 pm, December 5 2008 EST
More info here (this thread is locked)
jorgelo says:
We just rolled out some changes with caching and ran into some snags. Though it may have looked like you were logged in as someone else, the header was just displaying incorrectly.
Your data is safe.
Posted at 8:53 pm, December 5 2008 ES
Despite these assurances that only the header was cached and no private data was compromised, some users did report anding in another seller’s “Your Etsy” page- the back end of your shop, not the public front view of a shop. The entire page was the other user’s items, from the “your Etsy” viewpoint. So it appears that in some cases, not only the header was displaying the wrong information.
December 4, 2008 at 7:49 pm · Filed under Categories, Search · By JB
Etsy has changed the pagination display in search results and categories.
For an example see here
the page numbers are now displayed as
173980 items 1 2 3 4 5 …
The old system would show the number of the last page too, like this
173980 items 1 2 3 4 5 … 8285
Now there is no link to the last page and no way to quickly jump to the last page. The ellipses are not clickable. You have to page forward one at a time using the arrows, or use the jump button (without knowing what is the max number you can type in).
Admin replied in this forum thread
stellaloella says:
This is a new, small change we just made. Etsians are so observant, we can’t slip anything by unnoticed. ;)
As I mentioned in another thread moments ago, this pagination change was made primarily for the the search results & categories pages. We will try to get the Your Etsy view tweaked to show a quick link to the last page for easier shop management.
Etsy’s reason for this change is explained by Stellaloella
stellaloella says:
There’s sort of a psychology of online shopping to this change. Our usability testing revealed that casual shoppers can get overwhelmed by seeing there are so many pages of results. The thought kind of is, “I have to look through 500+ pages of scarves? Oh my!” So showing just a few pages at a time makes the browsing experience feel more manageable (even if the total number of results is still up there).
Posted at 4:49 pm, December 4 2008 EST -
Another side effect of this change will be that sellers will have to renew more often to constantly stay in those first 5 pages of results, which is all a buyer will know exists.
Originally the new pagination system was also applied to alchemy, favorites, pages within our shops, but users complained and Etsy changed it back, just for those areas. (not for search and categories)
In this forum thread Marymary says
marymary says:
Hey guys!
So glad you noticed, and yes with your positive feedback throughout the day we have added a final page back to Your Etsy pages, Alchemy pages, Shop home, and Favorites.
UPDATE: December 9, 2008 — Search result pagination will be restored to its original form
December 4, 2008 at 3:48 pm · Filed under Views / Counters · By JB
Source: this forum post
marymary says:
Hey there!
I’m glad you noticed some changes in the ways views register on Etsy. We are now restricting the amount of clicks per unique user that will register in a given time on item listings.
You should notice that this will help with site speed as well as make your view counts a lot more accurate if you are trying to judge how many different people are checking out your items.
December 4, 2008 at 3:43 pm · Filed under Site Security · By JB
Source- this forum thread
Several users reported getting a security warning when logging into Etsy this morning, that the security certificate was not valid. Etsy admin replied on page 2 and page 5, and the problem was quickly corrected.
jorgelo says:
This issue has been fixed, if you see it again feel free to post.
The problem originated when a user would go to etsy.com instead of www.etsy.com. This has been fixed.
Thanks for the report.
December 3, 2008 at 11:08 am · Filed under Favorites, Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
You asked for it, and you got it: a way to organize all your Favorite shops and listings. But, it’s not a product of Etsy engineering. etsyfeeder comes courtesy of Adam Kendall, husband of Etsy seller soapdeli.
I asked Adam to tell us a little something about his Favorites-sorting application, and this is what he had to say:
etsyfeeder in it’s original incarnation was a simple little application that allowed Etsy sellers to produce an RSS feed they could hand out that included pictures and “add to cart” buttons to help promote their shops. From there, it spiraled to other features that Etsy users were looking for that Etsy hasn’t seen fit to provide, or has basically been too slow in implementing. Like Etsy sellers, third party developers can often react to the marketplace quicker than can the larger entities like Etsy, Inc. So, since I don’t craft, but wanted to support my wife in her Etsy endeavors, and support Etsy itself, I decided to extend the original RSS feeds to managing favorite items and shops through a tagging interface. So my tagline is “handmade code for Etsy people”, because the site is crafted with my own two hands and knowledge.
Since Etsy itself is a fairly interactive experience and pushes the boundaries of what the web is all about, I wanted to push that envelope as well. So the site now includes the following features:
— Allows you to dynamically add and remove tags
— You can drag and drop your items and shops into your defined tags
— You can quickly get a list of all items and even untagged items
— Hovering your mouse over an item or shop will popup a description and price if it’s an item
— You can sort your list of items by price or name, and shops by name
— For all your favorite shops, you can get an RSS feed with the pictures of all items
— You can still generate an RSS feed for your shop with pictures by using the link once logged in
The application is completely cross platform. I have tested it under Firefox on both Mac and Linux. It has also been tested under Safari for Mac, IE6 and IE7 for Windows and is functionally the same under all.
Something that I am considering for the next release of the software:
— Ability to save “templates” of items for sale so you can quickly “relist” items
I haven’t quite got all the details worked out on this feature, so I’m not sure I will be able to pull it off, but it’s on the horizon if I can submit the data in a way that Etsy is expecting.
Of course I am open to other suggestions from Etsy users for features that they would to see and will do what I can to get those features implemented as well.
So a big Thank you! goes out to Adam (and soapdeli) for this handy-dandy and much-requested tool: http://etsyfeeder.appspot.com/
If you take this application for a test drive, be sure to stop by this announcement thread to leave a bit of feedback for Adam (Etsy username akendall1 ).
PLEASE NOTE that this app will not currently work with private Fave settings.
update Dec 11 by JB:
The stats portion of the etsyfeeder site has been discontinued
http://etsyfeeder.appspot.com/stats
(you will only see the following message if you are logged in)
Statistical data from Etsy
Oops.
Etsy has decided to shut off access to these stats without warning.
What’s this mean for you? These stats may no longer work, or if they do, they are horribly out of date. I’m keeping them up for archival purposes at this point. Want these stats back? Perhaps an email campaign to Etsy.com would work. Who knows. I really wish I could keep providing services like these to folks, but it appears that those that be at Etsy just aren’t willing to work with folks. It’s about community my ass.
Update: 12-10-2008
Chad Dickerson, the new IT Guy in Charge has decided to reach out. This won’t necessarily bring these stats back, but at least it’s a start. Maybe Etsy does in fact give a damn about it’s users and those of us who are trying to provide tools that make your Etsy experience better. Only time will tell. I realize it’s hard to ask all of you to have patience when you’ve been waiting for these things for so long, but it’s all I can ask at this point. Thank you for your continued support.
Next entries »
