Archive for February, 2009
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 7, 2009 at 4:28 am · Filed under Email Notifications, Marketing, Miscellaneous, Site Use · By JB
On January 9th, 2009, Etsy added a little check box to the login page. Right below the password box, this box said “Yes, send me emails about hot items and gift ideas.”
Matt explained it here
matt says:
Hi,
The Etsy news alert email sign-ups have been integrated into the seller sign up process.
Thanks, Matt
Posted at 6:05 pm, January 8 2009 EST
The box was removed on February 6, 2009.
Editorial: I am glad they removed it. The location right under the password box was where most sites put their box for “remember me” or “keep me logged in all the time”, so I tended to check that box just out of habit, even though I knew it was for something else. Then I would have to opt out of those emails immediately after. It was counter-intuitive, and felt like I was being “tricked’ into checking it. Also, it was not for Etsy “News”. I am already signed up for that. It was for Etsy FINDS, purely promotional emails. Also, it was not only on the registration page to make a new account- it was on the login page for existing accounts and you had to avoid it every single time you logged in.
Thank you Etsy for removing that.
February 5, 2009 at 4:08 pm · Filed under Etsy Communications, Forums · By JB
Look! Look!
http://www.etsy.com/forums_board.php?forum_id=5000003
It’s an official Etsy announcements forum!!!
Only Admins can post there. And they will post important announcements there, not hidden and buried in the other 10 forums. They still may open discussion threads in the other forums when they need user input, and of course members can discuss the announcements on their own in the other forums too.
matt says:
Please understand that we will continue to engage with the community in the other sections of the Forums, and not all posts from admin will appear in the Announcements area. Instead, we plan to reserve this for those pieces of information we deem important enough to be exalted to this special section. As this is new for us too, there may be some “figuring out” about the best way to utilize this section and what types of information should be there.
See also this Storque article.
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.
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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.
