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The gift guides are an infuriating bandaid slapped on the bigger problem of the ridiculous search tool. They were created so people who come here to buy a gift can get in and out with minimal frustration, so Etsy can have those sales. Perhaps if Etsy focused more energy on improving categories, tags, and searching they wouldn’t need to play favorites just to keep some sales in-house. If I was a seller I would be beside myself if I wasn’t included among the elite gift guide picks. This whole website is a gift guide. Imagine a big grocery store with crap thrown everywhere and no discernable aisles. No “bread section” no “cereal section” or perhaps those sections DO exist but even when you DO find the bread section there is also flour and eggs and milk and all sorts of things to make bread in that aisle, and also sandwiches and toast and all sorts of things that bread has been used to make. You would go fricking CRAZY trying to buy some damn bread!! So, instead of organizing the store, admin just put a section right by the check-out counters of some special pre-selected bread along with special pre-selected cereal, special pre-selected laundry soap… etc…
And the other people who make bread, even though their bread might ROCK, just because no one can fucking find it, people just buy the bread by the front door.
Outstanding.
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19 Comments:
the etsy gift guides were created by peeps who were unpopular in high school because they were artsy and weird.now they are in the real world where artsy and weird is cool. for reals.so what do they do? they act like people in high school who created their own network of peeps who are the chosen peeps and leaving the rest of the awkward,gawky,self conscious unbrooklyn-based masses to fend for themselves.
quite frankly those guides would be really appealing to me if i were in them, one of the chosen few.instead, i'll sit at home on saturday nights and plot the demise of their arts craftsy circle jerk until infinity.
beautiful.
This quote should be cut & pasted into every forum thread on etsy.
It should also be sent via twitter, convo & email to every person on their payroll.
Etsy, you make me cry from frustration.
It's getting worse, not better.
This quote is the best I have read in a long time...kuddos
"And the other people who make bread, even though their bread might ROCK, just because no one can fucking find it, people just buy the bread by the front door."
As someone who makes kick ass bread that is never at the front door, I am completely in love with the person who wrote this and want to send her free bread.
This quote is so good, it glows.
Not only are the "gift guides" a complete disaster, just remember sellers, Etsy forced them on us last year with all its flaws, blatantly ignored sellers pleas for changes, left it to fester and blister for 12 months, did absolutely NOTHING with it, then SHOVED IT down our thoats again by MAKING THEM EVEN WORSE AND MORE IRRELEVANT THAN LAST YEAR.
The new "categories" of gift ideas smell just as farty as their 10,000 blog posts about the same items that are the strangest bit of "trend-fantasy-making" that Etsy has been spinning for months, making them even MORE unappealing than ever. Why, the buying public can't make any fucking sense of what the hell Etsy is talking about, so why not spread the confusion to "What To Buy?" and flip off buyers like Etsy flips off sellers?
I get the distinct impression that Etsy is fucking with sellers a lot these days because they've been left alone in the playhouse so long, their diapers petrified. They have managed to make the site look so unappealing, they probably scare more buyers away with a marketing approach that STINKS to high heaven. Ya gotta ask yourself, WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?!?
Etsy looks worse than ever, more baffling then ever, thinks up the weirdest titles for everything, and has turned the site into their very own little shop of horrors.
Why, when sellers thought it was safe to stock their stores for Christmas, Etsy flipped their collective middle finger at sellers once again-------and if buyers are going elsewhere to shop, I don't blame 'em because so am I (and my family and friends).
I must say, the front page is usually very pretty, but...look closer. Could you imagine yourself with some of the items featured? Giving them as gifts? Having them in your home? Sure, you need to take GREAT photos to be on the front page, but just thing about the famous rotting pepper photo by Edward Weston. Masterpiece photo, yes! But would you want it in your fridge? Would you want to eat it?
I am so glad the topic of favorites & crappy Admin taste has been brought up recently...so many buyers are turned off by the "hipness without substance" that is ETSY!
I don't want half-finished whatsits. I would never give a thrift store sweater with the sleeves cut off made into a "cuff" or whatever to anyone. Not ever.
I wouldn't give half the shit I see on the front page as a gift. And if I get any of that crap as a gift, I quit.
Damn, that was so unfortunately beautifully put.
while the gift guides are relatively beautiful to look at, they are also (and after a year continue to be) unfair. sales are generated from them (my item sold several times last year) so they are an excellent sales tool but i think the method of selection for inclusion is, as the quotable and soledca mention, biased. although it would cut down the visual appeal i still think sellers should be able to nominate an item for a specific gift guide during listing, and then GG's can randomly pull from those tagged each time the page is loaded, similar to the old 100 items sampler in the good old days.
the argument that items are only included cos they have good pics, etc etc etc doesn't really hold water for me since the front page already has the monopoly on this kind of requirement. why is it not possible to give buyers a fresh look at EVERYTHING etsians have to offer in a way which is autorun, requires no interference by a biased admin perspective and never gets stale?
until then more and more etsians are going to feel unkindly excluded from the 'awesome' etsy community which exists only in rokali's fevered imagination
I cannot look at the "gift guides". They just make me feel BAD and generally embarrassed for being affiliated with the site.
ps: What community???
This is so absolutely wonderful. I want this posted on Etsy's front page.
Funny, that's exactly how my local supermarkt works. Thankfully, I know to shop around, but not everyone does.
Very well put. Gift guides are a great promo for a very narrow selection of sellers.
People always say "your photos have to be great," but there are hundreds of thousands of great photos that are never featured.
They eliminated the Pets gg, even though pet products are a multi-billion dollar industry. The Primitives gg has scarves, the Art Collectors gg is mostly simplistic Primitives. GG for Him is mostly scented soap and scarves.
Admin is clueless, and not improving. I had such faith in the new management last spring. Oh well.
What? It's been like a year and people are still complaining about the stupid Gift Guides?
Anons at 1109 and 641, you need to choose a name, any name, in order for your comment to be published.
who's had the pleasure of viewing the new format on the front page? the left hand column is ALL Gift Guides......... until you scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can see the same useless ways to shop
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