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You guys talk to us, but let's get this out there in print, so to speak...
Unlike Etsy Admin, we actually man our comments and will respond in general.
Now that it is November 2008, what are your main or continuing concerns about Etsy? Spill it out, let it all hang out. Don't leave a single thing unturned.
We know eyes are watching us.
As usual, no slamming on posters or sellers. Admin is fair game. All comments will be going through moderation, but as long as you keep the shots above the belt, it'll be let through.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Informal Round Table Between the Bitches and YOU
Posted by The Sneaky One at 7:11 PM
Tagged: 2008, about etsy, concerns, expectations
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48 Comments:
STATS!
SEARCH!
LOAD TIMES!
are clear, consistant policies too much to ask for?
Does this passage from the TOS make anyone else think the reason you can not edit or delete expired listings is because they are saving an option to publish in other ways? ie..make money from this snapshot of a crafty revolution? It leaves them so many options..
You grant Etsy a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise the copyright, publicity, and database rights (but no other rights) you have in the Content, in any media now known or not currently known, with respect to your Content. You agree to allow Etsy to store or re-format your Content on Etsy and display your Content on Etsy in any way as Etsy chooses.
1. Outside advertising...MORE
2. Metrics/Stats
3. Category load times need to be faster
Great! Keep 'em coming!
How about NO MORE EMPLOYEE STORES.
I mean talk about conflict of interest. The curate the Front page, Gift Guides, Etsy Finds, Featured Artists.
And if that wasn't enough, they have access to their own stats, so they KNOW what brings their customers in. No stats for us and we get the shaft. I'm sick of the bullshit.
jerseybitch, that's standard legalese, but definitely something to keep in mind.
if they want to store things that bad they should have a backup storage and still allow us to keep our stores organized.
My concerns today, sadly, are pretty much identical to my concerns last year at this time.
1. stats
2. search
3. poor (or no) communication
4. unfair mutings and bannings without even telling the person what they did.
5. too little, too late re: holiday marketing. (and waaaay too narrow. all the ads feature one seller with 3 things in her shop!)
- a lack of statistics and other useful seller tools
- search that works, as expected, as industry standards dictate
- a site that runs well and fast, accurate communication when it doesn't. To everyone. Every time.
- fair treatment of International vendors in regards to promotions, contests and, dare I say it, currency
- less Mickey Mouse marketing efforts for the site. sheesh.
- accountable, intelligent staff who can keep their cool and remain helpful
- reliable, consistent customer service (not asking for 30 minute turnarounds but stick to what you promise and make that promise)
- less painfully unprofessional writing in their pet projects
-fix Search
-give us stats
-make listing easier (like on Artfire - one page, all photos upload at once...)
-institute some form of oversight on new shops so we aren't inundated by resellers all the time. And get rid of the ones who are there & lying outright about it.
-enforce the rules fairly & equally for all. Be clear about what I've done wrong and why I'm being punished. And if your best bud does the same thing, punish them too.
- remove copyright infringers/ products.
-advertise to buyers
-hire a customer service person who is actually trained for the job.
Most of this stuff is from a year ago, but hasn't been addressed yet. Other places offer these things, so why not Etsy? It just makes me sad.
My main gripe is that now that I'm banned from selling on Etsy, I can't buy anything either. I have a lot of favorite artists that I was hoping to shop with for the holidays. I can't convo them, so I have no way of giving them my money.
As a potential buyer I'm annoyed, but all of the sellers out there should be PISSED that Etsy just shut out a good paying customer.
Why have obviously asshat employees been retained?
Why is discipline handed out so unevenly?
Why do they continue to watch off-site activities?
Why do they ask for suggestions from sellers and then ignore them?
Why do they have such a limited and narrow-minded aesthetic?
Why are so many resources are put into the Labs, which serve only a tiny fraction of Etsy members?
Why are they too fucking lazy to vett the items they feature?
Why do admin shops have access to stats, while ordinary sellers don't?
Why is retaliatory/unfair feedback removed for some sellers, and not for others?
Why are changes made to the TOS without notifying sellers?
1. statistics
2. statistics
3. statistics
4. purchasing ad space targeted to a demographic that is ready to spend
5. statistics
Along with everyone else, my concerns/wants & needs are pretty much identical from last year. But if I may add:
* Why are Etsy administrators and employees consistently not only rude, unprofessional and flying with half a clue, but are also not trained in the field they are currently employed in. Most admins wouldn't know something was handmade as opposed to commercially produced if it bit them in the ass and introduced itself. The front page is a shining example.
*WHY was getting hardware/server upgrades (such as they were) like pulling teeth? Why was this not a top priority?
*Why do they let Rob Kalin make such an ass of himself consistently in the media? Are they not aware of the image this gives each and every one of us?
*Is a real live marketing team too much to ask for?
what specific stats do people want from etsy?
I would like them to act like professionals and not preschool teachers.
Admins should not be allowed to have shops, I agree. Absolute conflict of interest, unethical and again, unprofessional.
God, I fucking hate Etsy. Maybe I just need more cupcakes?
Why is someone's husband making the tools (as much as he can) that etsy refuses to provide? (etsyhacks.com)
Why am I muted when the evil puddy runs free?
Why did I get a threat of closure for a offsite tweet along with a special pointed mention that I work for the competitor? Why should who I work for matter? (I know why, I'm going to CRUSH THEM LIKE A BUG!) I'm already fucking muted how many times do you have to kick me in the face?
Why can't Maria meet with sellers in the labs for a honest discussion and give real answers.
1 - inconsistent and bullying tactics by admin
2 - international seller issues
3 - stats
4 - bugs
All good, and all correct.
And I am asking ALL SELLERS to keep thinking about WHAT HAS ETSY DONE FOR SELLERS IN 2008?
What has changed to make selling better and easier? A few little tweaks here and there, a few re-wordings (from Sold to Sales)!!!!!
And that's IT. No major changes or improvements that sellers need and want have been made. NONE.
The lousy, jam-packed, overloaded, blog heavy, cutesy Etsy trendy headings, cutesy unprofessional "trendy themes" pushed by Etsy are all on display on the FRONT PAGE -------- which looks NO DIFFERENT than it did 12 months ago.
That says it all--------keep asking yourself, "What has Etsy done to make it better and easier for me to sell on the site in 2008?"
The economy may make the final decision on the future of Etsy - but the real lesson is that Etsy ignored its sellers for 4 years, and while we sellers worked and work our asses off, we got nothing back.
2009 Prediction:
My crystal ball shows that etsy will remain strong but become a crafters universe. i.e.; that artisans with experience and well made handmade goods will move away from the 3rd world atmosphere etsy is creating for itself.
Paw and Claw said:
The Mutt said...
what specific stats do people want from etsy?
Personally, i want to know WHERE my clicks and sales came from.
and no, the tiny little blurb in "note to seller" is NOT good enough.
where are they coming from?
On etsy, from my blog, from my BILLIONS of other links out there?
My paid advertising, my banner swaps, my flickr, directly typing in the URL, redirected from MY personalized url...WHERE?
if i KNOW what brings click, i know what is a HUGE waste of my time and money, and what i should be focusing on.
if i SAVE money and time on advertising, i can SPEND more money on etsy. Simple math.
i don't want to know IP addresses, or locations or even user Id's..I just want to know WHERE on the web the person came from.
the site makes USE of google analytics, anyone with eyes can see that.
so why not actually USE it in the way it was meant to be used? :(
/rant
(Reposting because of a blogger glitch)
From a buyer's perspective, the search needs to be something that works, pronto.
I've given up on searching for things and bought them off etsy because I couldn't find what I was looking for. Sorry sellers, but if I can't find you, I can't buy from you.
(They need to figure out how to fix the tagging issue, too).
I completely agree that they need to hire some grown-ups so that etsy doesn't come off like a bunch of high-schoolers.
And agreed as well with the hipster thing and favoritism. I'm not a seller, so I don't have a vested interest in who they feature, etc, but I am sick of seeing hipster crap all over the place.
Search repairs would be wonderful.
More variety in the gift guides would be fantastic
Promotion to new buyers would be a dream
The freedom to at least put Google analytics on our pages would be great too. I have it on my hyenacart shop, and it is a big help in finding out where my traffic is coming from.
BUYING PROCESS!
I can't believe it's November and they STILL haven't improved the check out process. They last year did a stupid ass 12 second hack, btu it did NOT improve the confusion factor. It's not clear, it's to many steps and it's too easy to not pay attention and not catch you never actually put payment info in.
How about this?
FIX EVERYTHING!
GIVE SELLERS SOME TOOLS!
The fact that admins are allowed to have stores on Etsy is a HUGE conflict of interest.
The search function sucks!
Regarding the lack of STATS, where do I even begin. Etsy's business plan is actually quite intelligent...incredibly lazy, but intelligent.
In order to sell anything, sellers are forced to spend hours using blogs, the forums, flickr, twitter, etc. and then spend advertising money in order to promote their shop. In addition, in an effort to be seen on Etsy, they spend more money renewing, renewing, renewing or on the pathetic showcases.
Why should Etsy spend money to advertise? They already have their sellers doing all the work for them, and its not costing Etsy anything. Any buyers that a seller successfully attracts to their store can easily move into the remainder of the Etsy site with one easy click on the BUY button.
By NOT providing sellers with stats, and keeping their sellers in the dark, Etsy just keeps making more money as their sellers continue to spend more time and money advertising.
The initial attraction of $.20 listings loses its appeal very quickly.
I still don't understand why Etsy doesn't acknowledge the rest of the world (i.e. NOT Brooklyn, NY, USA). I know Etsy is a US-based company, but at this point there are way too many international sellers and buyers that they are constantly ignoring. Instead of catering to just the Etsyians who celebrate Christmas, why not Hanukkah too? And don't just acknowledge important US holidays, but include Canadian, UK, Australian, Chinese, etc., etc., etc.
The list is endless on the different groups of people worldwide Etsy can reach out to, but they've still got their head buried in the tub of frosting in their "hip and trendy" workspace in Brooklyn, NY.
If I was going to continue to list on that ass backwards site I would want. Who knows maybe I will be after the 1st.
1. Admins who are hired for their ability and past experience not how many shit sandwiches they can eat.
2. One listing page instead of 4.
3. Flat store fees for people who sell the same items over and over and over! The current set is beyond lame.
4. Start focusing on trying to get more buyers and less sellers until the ratio is better.
5. STOP THE FAVORITISM YESTERDAY!
6. Stats of knowing what key words were used to find my store or item. Stats of where people come from to my store or listings.
7. Just an over all increase in the professionalism of the Admin. I am shocked the 27 million dollar investors aren't crawling up someone's over this.
8. Deal with sock puppet accounts, learn how to block proxy servers. Learn how to ban IP's or learn how to deal with repeat offenders better.
9. Stop funding the lame Etsy Labs. Fees should be going towards more advertising and marketing instead of subsidizing the stupid labs! LAME O!
10. Fairness to everyone.
11. Availability to ste up customer news letters.
12. Store blogs.
That's my dirty dozen.
The one thing I have learned about Etsy is Etsy does what Etsy wants when Etsy wants and not a day sooner!
I think that sums it up.
As a buyer, the search function still makes me want to curl up under my bed in the fetal position with my thumb in my mouth. I will do anything to avoid using Search. I try the Guides, Shop Local, Time Machine, Categories... I even check out random shops through peoples avatars in the forums before I finally give in and use the Search.
Man, just talking about the Search gives me the shakes.
Views. Where are the views? This is the INTERNET, people. There are supposed to be millions of people on the internet. WHY do I spend 20 cents to get 2 people to look at my work? What is the point anymore?
I'm almost giving up.
Favoritism: If I see that girl with the big glasses, or that girl with the flower head pieces on the front page one more time I will puke..right here...
Or the gal withe paper products made on with her uni's commercial equipment or the stained glass jewelry gal she always show cases~
* Search is still crap and there is no advanced search (as we used to have pre-V2!)
* Stats are almost non-existent
* Buyers are not made clear re which currency they're shopping in
* Etsy is not consistent in punishing people
* They should ease up on punishing people altogether so we can feel less like we're living under some insanely repressive regime
* The listing and renewing process is still too clunky
* In particular it still takes an insane number of clicks to put a relisted item into a category
* Too much focus just on US buyers and sellers despite large numbers of non-US buyers and sellers
* The seriously shoddy HTML which hinders search engine optimisation and the site being used more widely
* Lack of speed when dealing with resellers
* Too much favouritism
* The Storque using up too many resources when there are so many other problems
* Lack of communication (especially by email) about important issues
* The help section not being searchable
I'm sure I could double or triple the length of that list, but it will do for now.
I love all of these suggestions. I agree that much is still needed to make Etsy better for the sellers AND the buyers.
The main things (besides all those already mentioned) I would like to see is the ability to *copy* an existing current or sold listing.
Also I would like to have the option of resetting my views to zero when renewing an item.
Okay, I'm just a buyer. But I'll add the stuff I've commented about previously.
1) Tone down the gender stereotyping! Not all female customers want dresses with a 28 inch bust measurement and jewelry; not all males want stuff that is techie related, sports related or decorated with images of weaponry. I'm talking about the home page here, Etsy. The photos your drones select from the treasuries. The huge diversity of sellers on Etsy offers so much more. Art is handmade. We wanna see more art. Extra points for selecting images that are not all of children, animals (incl. birds), or young ana women.
2) Search really really sucks. Write a search program, or lease the software. Just do something about search.
3) Re-examine the whole team thing. I'd luv to visit the teams profile page and find a bumch of sellers' shops to click on that specialize in handmade contemporary (not country, sorry) decor items, for example. There are like 300+ teams listed that are not related to a geographic area, and a lot of them are completely unrelated to why a buyer is on Etsy. (Reproductive status, religion, fandom, new age fluffy worldviews for examples.) Set up a new designation for special interest seller communities, or something, and let's get the relevant teams more visibility with buyers on the Etsy site!
4) Screen shops before they open (not jurying!) to weed out resellers and empty shops. Require sellers to complete profiles, location, and shipping info before selling anything on Etsy.
5) Separate handmade from vintage and commercial supplies. When I am shopping for an antique, I don't wanna see new items in the style of old. When I am shopping for handmade, I don't wanna to see vintage. It is already impossible to catch most of the deliberate mis-tagging (or mis-categorizing) on the site now. Your reputation = flea market now; fix this soon, before it's too late. Oh, and let major/wholesale supplies sellers open an Etsy shop!
6) Can Maria and find a CEO who can update a business community without making a female reproduction reference in the first paragraph. There are corporations where that focus is appropriate. Etsy is not one of them.
And........Resolution #1 for the New Year 2009:
Take the Dorque and dump it off the Brooklyn Bridge, all 234,895 pages of it.
From a buyer's perspective:
I work in IT so I'm used to using Nots, Ands, and Ors in my day job (Well, !, &, |, but that's beside the point). However, that's for writing code. Etsy is the only online search that I ever use NOT or AND terms to search for things. The ONLY one. I don't like to do it, but its the only way that I come close to finding any thing. If I use it only because I have to...what about your average user? What about your casual internet user? Newbie?
If people can't find stuff in the first couple clicks, they're going elsewhere. The internet is a big place, there's no reason for new customers to work hard to use a site when there are so many places to visit.
Not to worry about grumpy and rude staff, they are leaving in waves. Soon it will be just Maria and the clueless MBA left.
What do you "bitches" think about projected/planned chances to the site between now and Christmas? Since every other retail organization in the country froze improvements after Labor day. Or at least by Holloween.
Beta code for the only time in the year when retail folks make money. Yeah Etsy
Right now my most pressing need is the ability to deal with sold listings. I really could use something similar to Ebays system of sorting sold listings.
It would be nice for me to be able to search through my own sold listings based on category, etc..
Also some sort of convo folders would be nice and stats!
If relisting an item would put it back into the same shop category automatically that would be helpful.
1. Search
2. Mistagging (a capital offense, IMO)
3. Less emo, more variety on the front page.
4. Advertising to people with money! I know people with money and they haven't heard of Etsy. Therefore, we have a problem.
5. Stats. I think most of my items are found on Google from comments I have gotten. I just want to be able to prove that the Etsy search bites, but I can't do this without stats. Oh wait, I think I have my answer.
Fix the damn payment process. My customers get confused when etsy sends the "yay you bought!" email before the payment ever clears.
Fix search. Looking for an item yesterday was a chore. I avoid doing searches at all possible.
Stats. Please, throw us a rope here.
Clean up the listing process. 5 separate pages? One page for listing, another for verification and that should be IT.
Get rid of the trolls. For months on end, the nastiest commenters had free reign over those of us who wished not to be muted.
Etsy should separate its social scene from its business site entirely - different user accounts, different domain, everything.
Obviously, too many people don't know how to get along with others professionally in a business setting. That includes many of Etsy's employees, but also a very large portion of Etsy sellers.
It's oh-so-indie to blur that line between professional and personal, but when you're dealing with people who never knew where the line was to begin with, you end up with inconsistent policies, sloppy customer service, and unresponsiveness.
But that's just from the Etsy side. From the user side you have tens of thousands of people who have not quit their day jobs and are not treating their small businesses like real businesses (another thread on taxes, anyone?) who think Etsy should be their ebay, facebook and livejournal all rolled into one, and who start acting like children crying "but you PROMISED!!!" when they don't get exactly what they want (or like surly teenagers convinced that everyone else in the world is an idiot who doesn't understand.)
Etsy - You have the money now to hire away a top customer service person from someplace who has already figured this out (I'd start shopping at Paypal or GoDaddy) and get a professional training program in place for your customer service. Do that.
And then cut the forums and chat right out of etsy.com and put them in their own box. Let people rant and rave and kiss and hug all they want over there, far away from the rest of us who are trying to run businesses.
lone haranger, were you around when they moved out of beta in 2006? It was right around this time and it was a clusterfuck and a half.
I wouldn't want them to mess with any major upgrades through the holiday season.
This post was mainly an exercise to show how little has been accomplished. The people here and the critical ones in the forums are the ones they should be listening too. Not the oversugared cupcakes licking their assholes.
EtsyHacks is WONDERFUL, but the things he is doing are things Etsy should be providing.. Provided they had a programming team worth a damn.
Just curious do you think Etsy has ANY intentions of doing anything other than bending over in front of the cheerleaders to have their asses kissed?
I bet not. They are content. Everyday another cheerleader comes on board and is ready to kiss some Etsy Admin ass and with very good reason as the cheerleaders get special treatment.
more marketing/advertising from the etsy employees! they seem to make enough money for ads in newspapers..things like that o.0
Ditto to all that's been said and I just have to reiterate the favoritism. I never ever look at gift guides, but did last week. Holy crap...they have one particular seller in so many guides. And many of them are a complete stretch as to why they're there.
The seller has beautiful, stark, handformed work. Love it. But you know what, I'll now never buy from them because the favoritism, whether no fault of their own or not, has completely pissed me off.
Other people would like to feather their 'nest' too Etsy.
Diversity with the tone you fuckwads set as the "spirit and theme" of Etsy. There is more to life than Weezer, mismatched Chuck Taylors, recycled cardigans from Goodwill, and not washing and grooming your hair for a week. Indie does not equal 1995 and grunge.
ok, one more
how about batch edit for tags? OMFG after adding a new team tag for all my items. GAH!
The consistent themes here are pretty powerful. My biggest issues:
1) Etsy management's utter lack of vision, talent and planning.
2) Etsy employees' utter lack of maturity, skills and productivity.
3) Elitist culture that favors artsy photos of crappy products over practical photos of superb products.
4) Elitist culture that ignores the diversity of people, locales, talents, products.
5) Search function that is universally despised yet never changes.
6) Etsy's utter inability to capitalize on its rapid success to create a premiere shopping venue.
Pretty sad state of affairs.
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