Dear Friends of Etsy,

My good friend Patty, a recent mother of twins, describes herself as “addicted to Etsy.”  She tells me all the time how she would like to see the buying experience improved on Etsy.  Beyond my friend Patty, I frequently engage with Etsy sellers and buyers. Mostly this happens through email and by reading the Etsy Forums. Sometimes, it happens in person. A few weeks ago I was walking the streets of lower Manhattan and I came across an Etsy seller.  Then, a few days later, I sat next to the daughter-in-law of this Etsy seller on a plane. A couple of months ago, I met JuliaPott and Sweetestpea, now Zooguu, when they visited Etsy’s Brooklyn offices. And buyers—I seem to bump into them everywhere.

Recently, I met the Philly Etsy Street Team in Philadelphia (Go Phillies!). The meeting was a casual gathering of six or seven Etsy sellers. I asked if I could attend their regular monthly meeting because I am trying to learn more about how different Etsy Teams work and how Etsy can better serve them. We discussed their experiences on Etsy—what they find useful and what frustrates them. I learned a lot from the discussion.

More than anything, I left the meeting with a sense of real optimism about Etsy’s future.  Etsy has a lot to deliver on, to be sure. That’s in part why I am here and what I want to tell you more about in this update.

But first allow me for just a moment to reflect on what drew me here in the first place: the celebration of unique artistry and authentic connections between buyers and makers. These Philadelphia sellers reaffirmed my strong feeling that Etsy can foster connections among people, communities and cultures through stories, products and experiences.  They showed me how they created beautiful, one-of-kind, little Philly Etsy Street Team branded totes to give away at a recent Swap-o-Rama-Rama. The swap bag is made with great care and exhibits qualities of craft and qualities of the heart. And in our increasingly throw-away culture, these are the kind of treasured items found on Etsy—items that will last a lifetime.

Thanks to all of you who are making, presenting and buying on Etsy. I look forward to meeting more of you soon, including the fine folks on the New New York Street Team and the Capital Region Etsy Street Team, who I hope to meet later this month.

The Bigger Picture
Since I last wrote an article in the Etsy blog (the Storque), a lot has been happening, and I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve been doing in these last three months. Many Etsy sellers want more than anything to know what we are doing to address functional issues on the website and when those projects will be finished. At the same time, I feel that it is my duty to share with the larger Etsy community my sense of the bigger picture.

I’ll try to do a little of both here. I plan to write another article soon to elaborate on Etsy’s brand—where we stand and what we’re aspiring to. 

For now, let me first say that Etsy is weathering the current economic storm comparatively well. Traffic and sales continue to grow, and we’re looking forward to a relatively strong holiday season, though it’s clearly impossible to project how tightly consumers will rein in spending as a result of the current economic uncertainties.  In September, we attracted roughly five million unique visitors, and transaction volume is reaching new peaks.

As outlined in the holiday marketing plans Matt shared with the community, we’re investing in getting more buyers to the site. Much of our marketing investment is concentrated on online media channels, including search marketing. I believe that online media spending, as well as word-of-mouth marketing through social networking and blogging sites, is the most effective form of marketing for a web-only destination like Etsy. We are also actively reminding folks that Etsy represents both a unique and conscientious choice this holiday season, and of course the value of what’s sold on Etsy goes well beyond the price. 

People
In my first article for the blog, I mentioned that I was focusing on People, Process and Product. And that’s indeed what I have been doing. I’ve spent the lion’s share of the last three months working on:

• recruiting top talent,
• designing the organizational structure Etsy needs to serve its customers and its mission for the long term,
• defining the Etsy brand and what we stand for, and
• prioritizing projects to meet our business goals.

Etsy is beginning to work in new ways. Chad Dickerson, who joined Etsy September 2, 2008, is leading all of our technical efforts as Etsy’s Chief Technology Officer. Like me, Chad is focused on assembling the best possible team. Last month, he provided this sobering and honest technical update after his first two weeks on the job. 

Let me introduce someone who will work closely with Chad in helping Etsy to release more products and features more quickly. Two weeks ago, I hired Sara Hicks to lead Etsy’s Product Management team. Sara will join us November 10, 2008. She comes to Etsy via a company called Spot Runner, where she served as head of the Product Team for the past three years. Her background also includes a five year stint at Yahoo! where she worked on Yahoo!’s e-commerce hosting product lines. Sara and Chad will be joined at the hip, working closely to craft our product development plans, prioritize projects and, with your input, deliver the best possible experience for both buyers and sellers.

And in the last couple of months we welcomed a new Flash developer, Vincent Walker, and a new designer, Bek Hodgson. Another new addition:  Liz Wald will join Etsy full-time in the new year. Liz will be responsible for helping to further internationalize Etsy.  More on that in 2009.

I am also currently looking for someone to help lead our marketing efforts. To reassure everyone: Matt Stinchcomb is not going anywhere. He is an incredibly valuable member of Etsy’s team and will continue to play a leadership role at the company. It is my intention to develop marketing talent throughout Etsy. I want to instill customer-centricity and strategic marketing capabilities throughout the company. As we grow, I hope this will result in more senior managers coming up through the marketing ranks.

In the next few months, I will round out my management team with experienced leads for Customer Service, Human Resources and Finance.

Search
One immediate and urgent project involves architecting substantial improvements to Etsy’s search function.  During the next week or two, you should see marked improvements in the speed at which Etsy’s search function returns search results  (note: this refers to the speed with which users received results to a given query).  Many of you and many inside Etsy want to improve search in other ways. That’s coming too, but I think speed trumps all, especially in the holiday season.

We also plan early in 2009 to begin to change the way Etsy’s site search actually works.  It was originally designed to return the most recently listed items first. As a result, Etsy understands that many of its sellers renew listings before their original expiration dates in order to push items closer to the top of search results for a particular query.  

I believe that Etsy must design its site search with buyers in mind. Its main purpose should be to help buyers find what they’re looking for. Returning items in reverse chronological order isn’t the best way to achieve that. At the same time, Etsy should provide sellers with various options to advertise and promote their merchandise to Etsy’s enthusiastic and growing buyer base. Redesigning the search function and creating new ways for sellers to advertise on Etsy are two important initiatives.  

The List:  What Are We Doing Now
Many of you are interested in seeing and commenting on a complete list of projects Etsy is working on at any given time. We are researching ways that we might reliably publish such a list and allow you to tell us what’s important to all of you. Of course, Etsy must always balance competing priorities from different groups, and ultimately we have to make choices we think are in the company’s best interests. However, there are some examples in the market that we are studying as possible options for more easily getting your input, like Salesforce.com’s IdeaExchange (GreenMamba, I promise you I had my eye on that one before this thread, but I hadn’t seen Dell’s, so thanks for that example).

In the meantime, here’s an old fashioned list of products and features we are working on now and plan to introduce in the next three months or so. Each of these will be announced in more detail as we determine specific launch schedules.

• Improving the Etsy checkout process to include, among other things, the option for buyers to save items in their carts to a Favorites list. We will enable buyers to see their favorites at the bottom of the checkout pages. These are part of what we’ve called Phase I of additional clarifications and enhancements to be made to Etsy’s checkout process in the first part of 2009.
• Improvements to Etsy Gift Guides in time for the holiday season. These already launched October 28, 2008.
• Making a few homepage tweaks:
  • We will not change any major functionality.  
  • We will move categories higher up on the left side of the page and some of the “ways to shop” will be pushed down.  
  • We will replace the word “Alchemy” with the word “Custom.”
  • For logged-in users, we will add a link to “Favorites” at the top of the page next to the cart.
• Introducing new tools for Etsy Teams. These will include easier ways to find Etsy Teams as well as tools for management of activity in Etsy Teams.
• Enabling sellers to pay Etsy fees with Paypal.
  •  Many sellers have asked for this, and we plan to make it happen on an optional basis (yes, that means sellers can use Paypal if you want but you don’t have to). As part of our overall attempt to offer sellers more options to pay their Etsy fees, we are also evaluating our collection policies. This isn’t cause for alarm; we are not going to change anything without first thoroughly communicating with all sellers our goals and plans. I mention it now because it’s one of many operational aspects of Etsy’s business that I am studying and making sure we execute as professionally as possible.
  • Looking at the options for sellers to pay Etsy fees is part of a comprehensive look at all payments processes on Etsy, including payments from buyers to sellers. We are trying to address hurdles that currently discourage buyers from purchasing more frequently from more than one seller, and we are hoping to add new ways to buy like site-wide gift cards.   
  • I am aware of and taking into consideration the reactions in the Forums last year and earlier this year to the idea of an Etsy payment system. We are looking at a variety of different solutions. It’s too early to lay these out now, but there will be communications outlining more about these initiatives as we move them along.
• Introducing new tools for Etsy’s Support Team to improve our response time in addressing flagged items.
•  Rolling out Super Etsy Mini (described in Matt’s holiday marketing plan post).

And, right about now, some of you are thinking seller stats, Maria, seller stats. Yes, I know they are important to many of you and that they’ve been promised in the past.  Etsy is serious about providing them.  They are not on this list because – although we are evaluating ways to offer sellers more complete metrics for your shops — I am not sure if we can come out with an offering in the next three-to-four months.   Please know that this project is on our radar screen and under evaluation.

I am actively engaged in helping to prioritize the product launches and features releases beyond this list and into 2009. As we put timetables around such releases, we will inform you.

Thank you all for participating with Etsy.  If you want to comment on this article, please do so in this forum thread.  As mentioned above, I will be writing again soon to address more strategic topics.