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In a near-maniacal quest to push beyond a billion page views (fuck sales, who needs ‘em), Etsy is hard at work changing Your Shop Pages until they no longer resemble a shop!
Click to the left, click to the right, click on the new “symbols” to the left, even if it’s just to figure out what those strange little pictures mean. Like that “shopfront” that looks like a filmstrip? Well, thank your lucky stars they aren’t renderings of cute little girls with daisies!!!
A whole set of little pictures that don’t resemble any international-symbols we’ve seen around the world on a site that claims it’s expanding internationally ---- is someone in the Etsy lunchroom spiking the organic-punch with hallucinogens? Are the crochet covers on the airducts at EtsyCorp emitting mind-altering fumes? Have the stuffings in the Plushie Phone Room burst and polluted the bottled water dispensers?
A lotta more clicks around Your Account to find all the sneaky new “security settings” which are designed to be even more confusing so you select the wrong one. (Thanks to the constant Etsy spam fears being shoved down sellers’ throats.) Does anyone working for Etsy know what the words LOGICAL and INTUITIVE mean?
Etsy is one big Musical Chairs Game, ring around the rosy, who knows where you’re going to land?
A lotta clicks zooming around in total confusion on Etsy until you forget to click Shop, Buy, and Pay! So much to do, so little time to shop and buy!
Wait! Is that more sellers and more buyers we hear closing the Etsy Door (forever) behind them? You bet!
Friday, February 25, 2011
Musical Chairs Etsy Style
Posted by The Funny One at 9:59 AM
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19 Comments:
Wait! Is that the sound of the flushing toilet I hear??
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7714/ideas/discuss/6798704/
Outrage as people who didn't know about the "Find a Friend" opt-in discover their email address is being shared.
And cute little icons, nav bar changes--but no update to search.
Just one more way to "magically" increase the supposed page views. Over inflate the numbers is one of the few things they do well. Etsy is spiraling out of control mind blowingly fast. I am so glad to be gone from there.
I can't comment on the My Account but the new header is a real deterrent to new buyers. Guess they don't want any of those.
Basically it just says log-in and reqister.
The seller/buy/community/blog links are moved up to the corner, not very noticible.
I had never been there, I would probably throw my hands up and leave.
But who needs buyers anyway
Since Etsy is so hellbent on driving sales to their select faves by force-feeding circles, teams, and (barf) more FP Swimmy-dictated "personalization" to force more eyeballs to select faves again, check out the overkill in "Selected Shops" under Favorites. Yep, the same list of Etsy faves. Have nightmares yet?
This manic push to FB Etsy is so obviously geared to take declining sales and package your personal info to sell, and if Etsy isn't already doing it, beware. Once you add your Real Name to Your Account, you are in for some serious swapping on your name, your business, and your reputation. The only one who profits will be Etsy - not you.
Remember every new listing feeds this frenzy, and the more you pay Etsy, the more you support their plan to make money off you, not you making money from sales on Etsy.
I noticed something like this recently, when I clicked on someone's "shop" link and ended up on a profile page. I later realized it was because they didn't have a shop (or an open one?), but then there shouldn't have been a shop link there at all.
I would say that Etsy needs to get some experienced designers to address these things, but, considering their internal culture, I doubt they'd be able to get anything done. It just feels like Etsy is playing games with the site and their customers, especially if they consider themselves more of a social site than a marketplace.
Since all my items have expired, I don't often check in at E, but yesterday was in need of some info for my income tax prep, and what a shock to my system it was.
All of a sudden the sign in was back on the right top side, and those faded little icons were a complete mystery.
It's beyond my comprehension why those who have seen all these terrible changes for sellers, still cling to the site by their toenails.
Sure they get traffic, but with all these new clickity clicks, it seems to me that the traffic is going to dry up, and with it their chances of selling to any new customers.
Repeat customers can only help you survive for just so long, and then a new "flavor of the week" will pull them in another direction.
I'm afraid that those folks who can't see beyond the end of their noses, are going to have a very rude awakening in the not too distant future, and they really don't deserve any sympathy, but I do feel bad for them.
Sigh. This is a little off topic, but I just saw on Etsy a painter whose work I really liked. Then I went to their shop and saw lots of paintings, many looking sorta different, and not very good.
THEN, I looked at the dates that these works were posted. This is the most prolific artist I've ever heard of! This person can paint so fast that they post 6 to 12 paintings about every 2 hours. Amazing! No wonder I can't keep up. It takes me weeks to finish 12 paintings! I might as well hang it up. (um, no pun intended, really)
Gotta love Etsy. Home of the spirit-crushing schmucks.
Check out & comment on the new AuctionBytes repeat of Kalin's claim that he's "responding to sellers' concerns":
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m02/i28/s05
If you're following the New Header thread, you'll see that Kalin hasn't directly addressed ONE seller comment or question --- he's completely off the mark on each post.
The lack of Admin direct response leads back to Kalin, and he ain't listening.
It's a doomsday scenario of their own making.
Did you see Etsy Uncensored's blog post on Kalin's speech? It clearly explains how screwed we are.
http://etsyuncensored.blogspot.com/2011/02/etsys-rob-kalin-speaks.html
Sark and Rebecca, a glitch lost your posts. Please post again so I can let them through!
I posted this on the auctionbytes website.
Mon Feb 28 18:26:09 2011
Shopping is social if you work for etsy and don't have a life.
Real shopping sites look like Zappos. With a search, with customer serivce reps that have working telephones.
They are run by people who care about their customers, not Mark Zuckerberg wannabees.
They have marketing departments. They advertize. They don't put people's livelyhoods at risk for the sake of a social experiment.
I found this interview on YouTube with etsy's press manager.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3okv9_k7PiY
It's so cool, they don't do press releases or advertise, but they let everyone know a drunk employee slept in the company boat.
Here I was thinking that teams would be less spammy than forums. Oh no, my friend. I joined a few and already my posts are met with replies by desperate sellers even though my intent in joining teams was to escape that sort of nonsense. I want to talk about issues related to my craft, not talk about treasuries, marketing, tagging, etc.
I think sellers on teams need to get over the idea that other sellers are going to buy their stuff- we have a hard enough time getting rid of our own stuff!!! It doesn't matter how I start a post, someone turns it into a "see what I have for sale" kind of thing. It gets tiresome.
Well, crap, then I would have to remember what I posted...
I decided to avoid the forums like the plague on the day (or during the week) that this change took place. (Well, that and I had other shit to do). I just remember logging into my account and thinking: what the fuck?
You know, just when I thought it made sense that the log-in crap was on the lefthand side of the screen (because I looked at my shop while at work, on their tiny antiquated PC box monitors and was like: oh, shit, the page is wider than the screen) — I stand corrected - it's "sign out" that I would have to scroll for.
So, yeah, right at the moment that I had my epiphany - bam - changed to the opposite. Clearly, that's what happens when you use logic.
I suppose the envelope & the heart make sense, the other two — ?
What I don't understand is why it says "Your Account." Shouldn't it say "my account" - you know, if I'm logged into my own account, then maybe I'm part of the 80% of the population that thinks of myself in the first person, not the third person. It's like "Bob Dole's Etsy."
Okay, maybe that last joke was a little dated.
Whatever they do will make no sense, and once the memorization of tasks has finally kicked in - then they'll change it again.
I guess we should all start praising the fact that the listing process is still five pages - like that's fucking magic! Then, maybe through the miracle of reverse psychology they'll change it. Of course, I'm going to bank on reverse reverse psychology (where nothing that would be really helpful will be altered to be more helpful), but that's me.
As soon as I'm used to this new stuff - they'll just change it again...
giantheaddesk said...
It's so cool, they don't do press releases or advertise, but they let everyone know a drunk employee slept in the company boat.
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They advertise and clumsily promote a certain image to whom they want. They don't give a fuck about attracting buyers, obviously. They do care about getting new sellers, since they make money from sellers whether they sell anything or not. And they do care about attracting new engineers - that 'drunk on a boat' video is probably intended to show people how awesome it is to work for Etsy.
Of course, simply looking at Rob Kalin and hearing that engineers have to talk to that creepy sociopath everyday should dispel any notion that working at Etsy would be enjoyable.
It's nice to see that a lot of people are realizing that Rob Kalin is not who he tries to sell himself as.
Yeah, they're not a shopping site anymore. They're some sort of canvas for Kalin to try to prove to everyone how creative and amazing he is (which is a joke), when all we want is a sober place to show OUR creativity.
Just like that swimmy shit - for some reason this jerk stands up in front of 50,000 artists and says he's the creative visionary force we're all supposed to follow. Excuse me? Some cheesy mashup of flickr and eBay is creative? It was a good idea and worked obviously, but pretty much all the creativity shown in the first few years of Etsy belonged to Jared, not Rob Kalin. And since then? The site is a joke. Everything they release is either a failure, a copy of what other sites were doing 2-3 years ago, or both.
And now, the new investors are pulling the strings. People who have absolutely no idea what it is like to be an independent artist or crafter and don't even remotely care are in charge of the premiere site to sell arts and crafts... like so much in our world these days, it's very sad. Etsy is beyond dead. It now actually works against what we thought it was going to do.
Maybe Etsy can forget about people taking their new rollouts seriously with the latest black eye (Etsy reseller featured in Glamour). With rape cards and now this, there won't be any friends to look up!
Regretsy caught it:
http://www.regretsy.com/2011/03/02/boy-is-my-face-red/#comments
And lots of negative comments on Etsy's facebook page as well.
Y'all don't get it. He's going for the Oscar, the movie will be "Etsy", a la Zuckenberg.
What we can do:
At this point, it's more than evident that Etsy isn't listening & are using their arrogance to censor and punish sellers with wild abandon. (I bet Admins never read past the 1st sentence of any post/seller they don't like.)
However!there are plenty of comments here on EB & Regretsy that list links to several PR repeats & pro- and anti-Etsy posts around cyberspace.
We can't post on Etsy, but we can post elsewhere and often.
Outside chatter gets to Etsy faster than any forum post --- and doesn't subject you to their anti-seller, anti-business behavior that belittles every person they target for revenge.
Etsy is very sensitive to outside negative press----so go on over and give them what they deserve.
Let's hope these companies sever ANY relationship with Etsy in a NYminute!
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