11 December 2008
Most of us have moved on, but Etsy still can't get its act together. These things are still stagnant and are really bugging me:
Still no stats. Etsy is using Google Analytics as well as their own internal tracking codes passed through urls. So why are sellers still not privy to these stats? Single item views are not enough - and even then, unreliable - the view counts have gone broken many, many times since I've been on. We want to know where viewers and buyers are coming from and this really is basic information. If the powers that be are too lazy to do anything about it, at least just let us put in our own Google Analytics codes.
Expired items. It makes absolutely no sense that we can't edit or delete them. The only thing we can do is to renew them. I'm not going to pay $0.20 to delete something! And besides, Etsy must think they have unlimited disk space to be keeping all that data indefinitely.
Pay our bill using Paypal. I'm glad I didn't hold my breath. What's so difficult about this anyway? Do you know how annoying it is for international sellers to use credit cards when we can tap into our Paypal balance??
Organise favourites. I'm reaching 200 favourite sellers and god knows how many individual items. It is painful to even go through them for springcleaning so I've stopped. Can't we at least be able to sort sellers alphabetically, or by most recent listing? Group favourite items of the same seller together? Geez.
Forums. I stopped skulking around a long time ago but I noticed one thing still hasn't changed. After you submit a response, you are taken back to the first page of the thread. I mean... what kind of user experience is this?!
Shipping profiles. Yes, Etsy introduced this so that we could make batch changes. But you know what? It isn't good enough. I am still unable to effect a mass change without a lot of roundabout confusion. When I change Shipping Profile A, I expect every listing using Shipping Profile A to be updated with the changes. But no. I have to go into batch update and re-select Shipping Profile A. On which items? I guess I have to memorise them because the default display is "no change". Am I missing something here or does Etsy think we all have loads of time to waste?
Rearranging product photos. So now we have a visual method of shifting them around. But instead of the more user-friendly drag-and-drop method, we have to clickety-click little arrows. It's so... yawn.
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I shan't even go into the ever-persistent cruddy search, blatant mistagging, and same old sellers on front page and gift guides.
Instead of attending to all this, Etsy's gone and fiddled with things like Treasury, Time Machine, Storque, Pounce and whatnot that don't even necessarily make the buying experience easier.
P.S. Two years is about the time I have been selling on Etsy. And 2 calendar years is like 6 years digital/online time. When you really think about it, what has Etsy been doing all this while?
Still no stats. Etsy is using Google Analytics as well as their own internal tracking codes passed through urls. So why are sellers still not privy to these stats? Single item views are not enough - and even then, unreliable - the view counts have gone broken many, many times since I've been on. We want to know where viewers and buyers are coming from and this really is basic information. If the powers that be are too lazy to do anything about it, at least just let us put in our own Google Analytics codes.
Expired items. It makes absolutely no sense that we can't edit or delete them. The only thing we can do is to renew them. I'm not going to pay $0.20 to delete something! And besides, Etsy must think they have unlimited disk space to be keeping all that data indefinitely.
Pay our bill using Paypal. I'm glad I didn't hold my breath. What's so difficult about this anyway? Do you know how annoying it is for international sellers to use credit cards when we can tap into our Paypal balance??
Organise favourites. I'm reaching 200 favourite sellers and god knows how many individual items. It is painful to even go through them for springcleaning so I've stopped. Can't we at least be able to sort sellers alphabetically, or by most recent listing? Group favourite items of the same seller together? Geez.
Forums. I stopped skulking around a long time ago but I noticed one thing still hasn't changed. After you submit a response, you are taken back to the first page of the thread. I mean... what kind of user experience is this?!
Shipping profiles. Yes, Etsy introduced this so that we could make batch changes. But you know what? It isn't good enough. I am still unable to effect a mass change without a lot of roundabout confusion. When I change Shipping Profile A, I expect every listing using Shipping Profile A to be updated with the changes. But no. I have to go into batch update and re-select Shipping Profile A. On which items? I guess I have to memorise them because the default display is "no change". Am I missing something here or does Etsy think we all have loads of time to waste?
Rearranging product photos. So now we have a visual method of shifting them around. But instead of the more user-friendly drag-and-drop method, we have to clickety-click little arrows. It's so... yawn.
------------------------------------------------------------
I shan't even go into the ever-persistent cruddy search, blatant mistagging, and same old sellers on front page and gift guides.
Instead of attending to all this, Etsy's gone and fiddled with things like Treasury, Time Machine, Storque, Pounce and whatnot that don't even necessarily make the buying experience easier.
P.S. Two years is about the time I have been selling on Etsy. And 2 calendar years is like 6 years digital/online time. When you really think about it, what has Etsy been doing all this while?
7
comments:
- @ 11 December 2008 at 15:34 saplanet said...
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Completely agree with you. These are the bugging issues that I am not seeing significant (let alone constructive) improvements made.
When the USD rates danced frantically, the international sellers' heart pumped harder. I WANT TO PAY WITH PAYPAL!
Glad you provided a channel for some ventilation, I am tired of the glitches which have been there forever. - @ 11 December 2008 at 16:33 beakee said...
- Yeah... isn't it actually amazing that the same problems are STILL there?! For want of a better phrase, they're still effing us sellers around.
- @ 11 December 2008 at 17:31 Ruok said...
- wah so angsty
- @ 12 December 2008 at 12:30 beakee said...
- No angst... I was quite calm when I wrote it :P
- @ 17 December 2008 at 01:02 sihaya09 said...
- I am so with you. I've been pretty lucky on Etsy, but when it comes down to it-- I want to know where my newer buyers are coming from. Digging through my favorites for a seller whose name I've forgotten is a chore. And oh my lord, I keep seeing the same four or five jewelry sellers being promoted daily. It's so annoying.
- @ 17 January 2009 at 03:09 Yellowgoat said...
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I am very fedup with my seller experience on etsy. I mean why make it so difficult? First of all, they can't let you sort your items, it can only be listed by time, I mean come on, if I have a physical shop, if some items are not noticed by people, I will have them rearranged a little bit and get them out, right? Well not in etsy.
Talk about treasury, it only has 333 spots, everytime I check, it's full, so should I use all my time and energy to lurk around to see if it's full and wishing my luck? Besides, a treasury is pretty much promoting other people, hm..any tool to help myself? Then it's the ad space, come on, everytime I check, it's full. I'm willing to pay, but that isn't good enough.
The tutorial/help on it's site, is not complete, then you have to dig through forums, and google to find the answer you need. Why make it so hard etsy?
And wow, you've been working with it for 2 years. I've been only working with it 2 months and it's already wearing on me.
Besides, when I was a customer on etsy before I started the shop, it's so hard to find the things I want, I have to dig through all sort of user's favorite to see something I like, and that takes months to build up a favorite. In retrospect, no wonder it's hard to do business as a seller.
Sorry for the late reply, I was searching some etsy stuff and stumble on to your site. - @ 17 January 2009 at 11:57 beakee said...
- Hi Yellowgoat, I see that you've been on Etsy for 2 months, so that's not long. I guess it is much harder for newer sellers now because of the sheer number, in comparison to what it was like 2-4 years ago. The only thing I can say is you'll need to stand out and get people to go to your shop. Riding on Etsy's huge traffic is just a little bonus.