Search Improvements and Feedback Wanted

As Maria mentioned in her second talking shop article, Etsy was going to make only slight tweeks to search. There are now two Dorque articles of interest on the changes made yesterday - why they always spread this information out we still don't know, but at least this time it's more for redundancy than confusion.

Engineer Sean who appears to be the one attempting to integrate new ranking and search term weighting criteria wrote an article on the dropdown menu, price filter changes, and where they plan on going from here. Meanwhile, Chad wrote a general tech update, his first since September when he joined Etsy and introduced us to his plans (Has it really been that long?!)

Chad's narrative points out just how poorly Etsy's infrastructure was initially developed:

After a lot of hard work and planning, we rolled out a sophisticated monitoring system in November that today enables us to keep an eye on 700 services running on over 170 pieces of hardware, including servers, network gear and storage systems.

This is a system that wasn't in place until November though Etsy had been attempting to be an ecommerce site for more than 3 years. And it is likely the reason it took users screaming about issues for someone to look at it, and then why they couldn't find the problems to fix them.

He also elaborated on one of the priorities Maria mentioned - site performance. By using a network distribution system the following was achieved:

Our home page now loads 2-3 times faster in most locations around the world compared to October and as much as nine times faster in some places. Our average home page load time over a 24-hour period as measured by Gomez in the US in October was 4.6 seconds and today it is 1.5 seconds. Singapore? From 18.6 seconds in October to 2.2 seconds today.

As a whole, Chad's article is pretty optimistic and encouraging. It's unfortunate that Revolving Dick screwed it up so badly and that we had to wait this long for improvements!

With all of these acknowledgements of problems and explanations of what they're attempting, I think they're trying to give us Bitches a stroke. We, we...might actually smile a little. It's yet to be seen what effect on tagging the new weighted search will have, which then would affect current shop listings and the listing process, but the engineers want feedback as they move forward (See, I told you they're trying to give us a stroke!)

We’ve been busy testing search adjustments with users here in Brooklyn at the Etsy Usability Lab as well as remotely, and we’re about to begin a series of Virtual Labs where we’ll give anyone interested access to a test area to try out different searches and discuss the future of Etsy search with us. The first of these sessions will take place this Friday, March 13 at 1:00 pm EDT (check when this is in your time zone).

Make sure you stop by on Friday and let them know your thoughts - then let us know if they listened!

There's also this forum discussion thread that was still open at the time of this entry.

Etsy Labs: Feedback says it all

Your feedback rating on Etsy can make or break you. Many of us are at or near 100% because we'd all rather work things out or leave a neutral rather than put a big bad negative up there. So when one of the Auxiliary tipped EB off to Etsy Labs feedback, we found it made some very interesting reading. The Labs have a total of 2160 sales, and 1632 feedback of 100%. Looking deeper shows an additional 17 neutrals. I wonder how many of these neutrals would have been negatives if the shop had been anyone other than Etsy Labs? Here's an unbelievable sample of neutrals and positives:

Well layered

"not described as well as it could be, but a great shirt nonetheless! i'll just save it for layering i guess...."

Shop local

"Great print on a sunny bag, but why is the bag Made in China and not Made in Brooklyn."

Wear it well

"At first I left neutral feedback for this item, because I received a t-shirt with a funky screen that wore off after two washings. Etsy saw the feedback, and two days later I had a brand new shirt and a lovely note from Julie, an admin. This restored my faith in Etsy's exemplary customer service!!! Etsy rocks!"

Paid for nothing

"i didn't get the shirt:( but i still want it! adorable!!
xoxo"

Wash carefully

"you guys are ultra friendly and accommodating & i love my shirt BUT it's too bad that it the shirt is now crooked after it was washed. i now have a wrap around design to sport - not too thrilled about that..."

I'm gonna hurl cupcakes

"Never recieved the shirt but the Etsy staff was sweet as candy when I contacted them so I decided to turn the purchase into a donation, instead. I hope some mail handler in Brooklyn enjoys the tee! ;)"

More shirt fun

"Shirt was thinner and more faded than I thought it would be - but I'll still wear it."

Shipping issues

etsy, you know i love you with all my heart -- but please, PLEASE invest in some bubblewrapped envelopes! this is the second time i've gotten dented pins in the mail. :(

Quotables: The Saga of the Deadline

Stella:

Today will be your last chance to catch up on old feedback!

Etsy Customer:

OK, it's after midnight Eastern time, and all of my old feedback-to-leave that is 90 days or older have not gone poof?

Stella:

Good morning!

The Feedback expiration change has not yet gone into effect. We will announce this in the Storque when it's ready to go later today.

The midnight deadline was for the end of the policy grace period only. It was not for the Feedback changes (for Feedback we just said "on July 1"). I realize now that combining these two important reminders has caused some confusion, and I apologize for that.

On the upside, you have a little more time this morning to catch up on old Feedback if you need it. :)

**headdesk**

From the Bitches Auxiliary: Negative Nellies

Today's EB rant from me...

This thread on whether or not one should leave negative feedback for nonpaying buyers is driving me just a little crazy:

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5690096&page=1

The general consensus seems to be that it's bad to leave negative feedback. Why? One seller suggests that negative feedback only be given when it's a truly negative transaction. Which is what, I ask? When the buyer comes over and kills your dog? How is not getting paid and not getting any response from a buyer NOT a negative transaction? Someone else suggests that they don't want to leave negative feedback because it might discourage that person from buying from Etsy again. What?! What is this "again" you speak of? They didn't buy in the first place!

I guess it's driving me a little batshit because it exemplifies a "rainbows and unicorns are beautiful and business is meanie weanie!" attitude that permeates so much of Etsy. No wonder Admin thinks they can jerk us around with empty promises: we don't really care about getting paid as long as people are nice to us! Why should Etsy take policing its own site seriously when sellers won't enforce their own rules? Or when sellers won't do other sellers the courtesy of letting them know about a flaky buyer?

I'm not calling for NPBs to be condemned or burned at the stake. One can be polite with negative feedback: a simple "this buyer didn't pay after several attempts to contact" would be fine. But please, at least admit that non-payment is a bad thing!

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, EtsyBitch!

Old Feedback to Bite the Dust

Yep, you heard me. On July 1 feedback that has not been left and is older than 90 days will expire. If you didn’t know this you’re not alone. Luckily some sensible forum watcher saw this thread which references a Storque article.

Another feedback change we'll be making soon: the ability to leave feedback will expire 90 days after the transaction date. That change will go into effect on July 1, 2008, so get your backlog of waiting feedbacks cleaned up before then.

The article is actually about the kiss and makeup feature and then throws that blurb in at the end. However, this blurb is no longer in the Storque article. So is it happening? Who the hell knows. But you should probably clear out that feedback while you can!

My thoughts on this – fucking admin never tell us anything. This type of thing deserves a notification to ALL sellers. Not just those who read every sentence of every article on their blog. And this information should be accessible to everyone, not just forum goers.

Edit Jun 19 4:00 PM EDT by Righteous: Well it seems that there is a Storque article where this is mentioned. It was mentioned among many other changes in the Dos and Don'ts and TOU. However, not every member received the email that should have been received by everyone. Relying on forum threads and the Etsy blog for information is a ridiculous thing to do. Also, the Storque article isn't found when searching for 'feedback', as I assume any reasonable person would do when looking for that information. But, hey, that's just me.