Storque articles by kutty

Handmade Code: Statsy

2009-12-18T13:45:00-05:00

As part of our Handmade Code series, we're bringing you news and how-to's about the innovations emerging from the Etsy Developer Community. Located at developer.etsy.com, the Etsy Developer Community serves as a hub for third-party software developers who are making neat and helpful programs for Etsy shoppers and sellers. In this edition, TheCrocodileRock tells us all about the applications on Statsy.

I started Statsy this summer as an experiment with the Etsy API to try to see how effective renewing items is. The first tool I created, the Locator, was created so I could see how long my stuff would stay on top of search results when I renewed. Later, I decided to share it and announce it publicly, and thus Statsy was born! The tool was quite a success, and that motivated me to create more tools for everyone to enjoy. Afterwards, I wrote the Biggest Fan and Featurator tools, and in August, my favourite – Vutrac.

What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
Statsy has a variety of tools designed to assist sellers in finding out cool info about their shops and the listings inside them! Currently, you can see where your shop and listings are when someone searches for certain keywords in Google/Etsy search, track your listings' hearts and views across time, find out who hearts you most, and get notified by email when you're featured on Etsy's front page!

Who is it for? How many people are using it right now?
Any Etsian with a shop! And my statistics say that there are about 7000 of them!

Where do we go to find it? What's the URL, etc?
The tools live at http://statsy.org/

How do you use it?
Well, everything is quite simple! For Vutrac, simply enter your shop name, and hit enter, and wait a bit (the tool needs to get a lot of data about your stuff from Etsy). And...

Ta-da! A table with the counts of new views and hearts since your last update (it needs something to compare the new data to) shows up, and you can even click on the number of new hearts, to see who's hearted you! The Biggest Fan tool is just as simple to use, and tells you who has hearted the most items in your shop:

The Featurator, apart from your shop name, also needs an email address, so it can know where to send the featured-on-the-front-page notification and the Locator just requires a shop name or listing # and some keywords!

Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
Nope! Statsy is free for anyone to use and enjoy! However, sellers can support the site and promote their shops by getting advertised.

What should one do if there's a bug or a problem? Who should one contact?
Just drop me a line at info@statsy.org or send me a convo.

What's one surprising/fun/amazing story you've heard about someone using your app? Or what is your favorite part about the app?
My favorite parts of the app would be Vutrac and the Locator. I usually use the Locator to tweak my tags, and then use Vutrac to see if it made a difference! Granted, I'm not a great seller, but it's still a lot of fun! They also happen to be the most popular tools, and I get a lot of feedback on them.

Anything else you'd like to add?
I work a lot on Statsy, and I've got a couple of incoming new tools up my sleeve, so stay tuned!

Calling all Statsy users! Post in the comments below and let us know what you think.

Handmade Code: ESellerAds

2009-12-04T14:37:00-05:00

As part of our Handmade Code series, we're bringing you news and how-to's about the innovations emerging from the Etsy Developer Community. Located at developer.etsy.com, the Etsy Developer Community serves as a hub for third-party software developers who are making neat and helpful programs for Etsy shoppers and sellers. In this edition, Kael Goodman tells us all about his application ESellerAds.

I run a web development shop called Blank Slate Factory that’s located in the awesome Brooklyn neighborhood called DUMBO. Etsy moved its offices to DUMBO recently and this led me to taking a deeper look at the tools Etsy offers to software developers. Developer tools are to software developers as knitting needles are to knitters, or brushes are to painters. We had already made some great software that makes ads and just needed to figure out how it would work with the Etsy developer tools. So, over a few weeks we made a couple of versions of ESellerAds and launched it on October 26, a little over one month ago.

Kael with his son Max, who is wearing a T-shirt by charlieandsarah.

What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
The idea behind ESellerAds is that your customers should be able to shop anywhere and buy your products on Etsy. Etsy has given us the means to do this through the Etsy API. All we needed to do was make an ad builder. When I say make ads, I mean with a single click... and maybe (in the future) customizable ads with a few more clicks. This is the ESellerAds home page where you enter your Etsy username or seller ID to make your ads.

In order to really show your products, we designed ESellerAds as slide shows with photos as big as we could get them. Your customers can scroll through the items, left and right, and zoom in to see more detail. We made the ads in standard sizes so that they can fit anywhere on the Internet, for example on ad spaces available on blogs, on social networks, and on websites. We currently have three sizes: rectangle, wide skyscraper, and narrow skyscraper. We can make more sizes if people need them. Here's an example from Craftsquatch.

Another important aspect to ESellerAds is that you can place them all over the Internet by clicking the Share link in the lower left corner of the ad. It opens up some screens that look like this.

There is also an embed code that you can copy and paste into a web page yourself. Once your ad is on the Internet your friends and customers can also copy the ads onto their sites. If you want to put the ads on your Facebook fan page or tweet a link to your ads, you can do that too.

Where do we go to find it? What's the URL, etc.?
Go to www.esellerads.com and type in your Etsy username or seller ID number.

Who is it for? How many people are using it right now?
ESellerAds is only for Etsy sellers. ESellerAds does not work with other shopping venues. Over the last four weeks about 300 sellers have registered. Here is a chart from zero to 40,000 impressions per day. Dips are weekends.

Here are the countries where people have installed ESellerAds so far.

How do you use it?
Go to our site, enter your username, wait a few seconds for your ads, and then enter your email address to activate. You'll get an email with a link to your dashboard where you can access your ads and performance reports. Here is a sample performance report that shows views for a charlieandsarah ad on a site called brooklynheightsblog.com.

You can also track how many visitors come to your Etsy shop from ESellerAds through your Google Analytics account. Here is a report that shows traffic from an ESellerAd on www.brownstoner.com to Tinahdee's Etsy shop. Notice that the ad sent 105 visitors in just under two weeks.

Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
ESellerAds is free. Why is ESellerAds free? In the future, we plan to offer enhancements and additional products that we will charge for. Also, we are actively looking for people to get involved: developers to help us add new features and make additional products, experienced sellers to help us get the word out.

What should one do if there's a bug or a problem? Who should one contact?
We provide an FAQ and you can always reach us through the Feedback tab on our website.

What's one surprising/fun/amazing story you've heard about someone using your app? Or what is your favorite part about the app?
I love to see the amazing range of things that people are selling on Etsy. I often go to the ESellerAds Gallery and scroll through the ads.

This was the first review of ESellerAds that I saw:

"With a tag line of 'Shop anywhere, buy on Etsy,' it's clear that this free ad producing site is geared towards the Etsy handmade seller. Basically, it's an upgrade to the regular Etsy mini used on blogs, social networks, and other sites. It's easy to set up with only having to enter your shop name and a click of a button. There are three sizes to choose from and each ad features an animated slideshow of items from your shop. When you update your shop items, they automatically update. People can also share your shop by clicking share and copying the html." — Akane Designs

We found the items below using the ESellerAds Gallery.

Sellers, let us know what you think in the comments below!

Read Posts About Etsy Addiction | Handmade Code Posts

Tech Update: Introducing Rearrange Your Shop

2009-09-03T15:15:00-05:00

Today we released a new feature for all sellers that allows you to rearrange the order of the listings in your shop. When the preview video got a record-breaking response, we knew this was a feature many sellers wanted as soon as possible! We want to thank all of our beta testers over the last few months who provided feedback and greatly improved the feature during development.

Below, we have detailed instructions on how to use the Rearrange Your Shop site feature. Please note the following:

We will throttle the feature to all sellers over the next two days, so for a short period only a subset of sellers will have access. The selection process is random. You will know if the feature is turned on by going to Your Etsy > Shop Appearance and viewing the bottom of the page.
You need to enable the feature before you can start using it. See instructions below on how to enable this feature.
We recommend that you have a high speed internet connection when using Rearrange Your Shop. The feature pulls a lot of data to your browser and requires a cable, DSL or other high speed connection for best performance.
The feature was tested on and is confirmed to work with the following browsers: Internet Explorer versions 6 to 8, Firefox version 3 and higher, and Safari version 3 and higher. We do not recommend using this feature on browsers that are not listed above.
This feature was built with a systemwide "on/off switch." What does this mean? Under extreme circumstances when Etsy needs to manage the load on our servers, we could temporarily disable this feature for all sellers. Sellers would be notified with a message under Your Etsy > Shop Appearance. In short, our Engineering Team could turn off this one feature without taking down the rest of the site — be it for maintenance or for site speed and performance reasons to maintain the shopping experience on Etsy.

Here is how to get started:

Sign in and go to Your Etsy.
Click on Shop Appearance.
At the bottom of the page you will see a section for Rearrange Your Shop:
Enable the feature and save.
Go to your shop's homepage (yourshopname.etsy.com).
Under Featured Items (if you have that enabled), you will see a link to "Rearrange Your Shop."
When clicked, you will be placed in an new mode where you can drag and drop listings. Here is a screenshot of when you mouse over a listing:
Finally here is screenshot of moving a listing:

For additional questions, you can reference the brief FAQ below.

What is the Rearrange Your Shop feature?
The Rearrange Your Shop feature allows sellers to rearrange the item listings in their shops to any order they wish.

How does the feature work?
To rearrange your listings, you click and drag your item listings to change the order on any page of your shop. Remember, each shop page has a total of 21 listings. If you want to move a listing between pages, you can click on a listing and select the page it should be moved to. Note, if you hold down shift when you move a listing between pages, it will keep you on the current page. Normally when you move a listing to a new page, you will be taken the new page.

What happens when I add a listing or relist after I change my shop layout?
When you add a new listing to your shop, that listing will appear first, even if you rearranged your listings previously in your shop. Once a listing is added, you can rearrange it in your shop as well.

What will shoppers see when they view my shop after I rearranged my listings?
The default view for shoppers will be the new custom layout you created. Shoppers can still choose to sort listings based on time listed and price.

Does rearranging listings change the way I feature items in my shop?
No, the Featured Items section will remain the same and is managed separately.

How do I turn the feature off?
You can turn the feature off by going to Your Etsy > Shop Appearance. From there you can disable the feature. When you turn the feature off, shoppers will see your listings sorted by the time they were listed.

Can I rearrange listings for each of my sections?
At this time, you can only rearrange listings for the main portion of your shop, not each section.

What are some features Etsy might add to Rearrange Your Shop in the future?
In the future, we would like to add the following enhancements to Rearrange Your Shop:

Adding more keyboard shortcuts for faster rearranging.
Including the custom order in more areas of Etsy, including the shop view under Your Etsy and the Etsy Mini.
Changing behavior such that when you edit a listing or relist, it stays in the same location in your shop.

We are so happy to be launching this new feature for all sellers! Please let us know if you have comments or questions in this Forum discussion thread. (We'll close commenting here in order to better follow the conversation.)

P.S. If you would like to receive breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox — then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Tech Update: Beta Test of New Rearrange Your Shop Feature

2009-09-01T14:30:00-05:00

UPDATE: We have completed the final phase of beta testing for the Rearrange Your Shop feature. During this final phase, the shops included in beta testing will be available for everyone to view. If you come across one of these shops, you will see that the sort order for the shop's items will say "Custom" instead of the default, "Most Recently Listed."

The final step after this phase is to provide the feature to all Etsy sellers. Thanks so much for your patience while we test the new feature — we know sellers are eager to use it!

[The following was originally published on June 9, 2009.]

Today we began a closed beta test of our new Rearrange Your Shop feature with a handful of selected Etsy sellers. This feature allows sellers to arrange items in their shops by dragging and dropping items. To give you a sense of how this works, we recorded a quick product demo. (Watch the video above.)

Over the course of the next few weeks we will gather feedback on the user experience, expand the beta to include more sellers, and we will post an announcement on the blog when the feature is available to all Etsy sellers.

For additional questions, you can reference the brief FAQ below.

What is the new Rearrange Your Shop feature?
The new Rearrange Your Shop feature allows sellers to rearrange the item listings in their shops to any order they wish.

How will I know if I am part of the beta?
We will send an email to beta participants. Sorry, we cannot accept additional beta testers beyond the original group at this time.

How does the feature work?
To rearrange your items, you click and drag your items to change the order on any page of your shop. Remember, each shop page has a total of 21 items. If you want to move an item between pages, you can click on an item and select the page the item should be moved to. When moving an item to a new page, the item will always appear as the first item on the new page. Finally, when you've completed your new layout, you can save or cancel.

What happens when I add or relist items after I change my shop layout?
When you add a new item to your shop, that item will appear first, even if you rearranged your items previously in your shop. Once an item is added, you can rearrange that item in your shop as well.

What will buyers see when they view my shop after I rearranged my items?
The default view for buyers will be the new custom layout you created. Buyers can still sort items based on time listed and price.

Does rearranging items change the way I feature items in my shop?
No, the Featured Items section will remain the same and is managed separately.

Can I rearrange items for each of my sections?
At this time, you can only rearrange items for the main portion of your shop, not each section.

We are looking forward to sharing this new feature with everyone — we just want to make sure it's the best it can be!

P.S. We closed commenting on the Storque post because the record-breaking number of comments was slowing down the load time on the post! Please continue to give us your feedback in this forum thread.

P.P.S. If you would like to receive breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox — then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Tech Update: New Shipping Tool Available

2009-08-28T10:46:00-05:00

Sellers,

We are happy to announce that we completed our beta test of the new shipping regions tool. Sellers will now have the option to use the existing Shipping Profile page or you can use the new Shipping Profile page, which includes the option to ship to a geographic region as well as to an individual country. Sellers can also find the link to the new Shipping Profile on the existing Shipping Profile pages.

For now, we have included just two new regions, but we may add more in the future:

Europe non-EU countries
European Union countries

Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about this feature:

Using regions in your shipping profile is completely optional. You need not change your current shipping profiles, and you can still create "custom shipping profiles" just as you have done in the past. The regions are predefined and cannot be altered.

These regions are not necessarily tied to specific shipping profiles used by postal services or shipping companies such as UPS or DHL. This level of customization is something we'd like to offer in the future, but it is not possible at this time.

We cannot create regions at the province or state level at this time. This means, for example, that we can't offer regions within the U.S. or Canadian provinces or other such groupings.

A country shipping cost will override a regional shipping cost if that county also appears in the region. For example, if there is a country cost listed for France and a regional cost for the European Union (which includes France) the country cost will be the one used. The country cost can be set either higher or lower than the shipping cost for the rest of the region.

The order in which countries are displayed on the View Listing page has been updated. The item the country ships from will be listed first (except in rare cases where the seller does not ship to her own country), and all other countries and regions will be listed alphabetically thereafter. Finally, "Everywhere Else" (if offered) will be displayed last.

The shipping cost will be applied based on the mailing address the buyer enters at Checkout. (This part of the tool remains the same.)

Here's an example of how a hypothetical seller from France could set up her shipping costs:

Ship to France: $5 USD
Ship to Canada: $8 USD
Ship to Europe non-EU countries: $7 USD
Ship to European Union (EU) countries: $6 USD
Ship to United States $8 USD
Ship to Everywhere Else $10 USD

Note: It is OK to have the same price to more than one country or region as in this example.

In this example, buyers who check out and enter France in their shipping address would be charged $5, since the country shipping cost would override the regional European Union (EU) cost, even though France is in the EU. Similarly, buyers from Germany (in EU) would pay $6, buyers from Switzerland (non-EU) would pay $7; buyers from the United States and Canada would pay $8. Buyers from Australia would pay $10, as they would be from "Everywhere Else" in this example.

Using shipping regions is completely optional; as a seller you don't have to do anything differently if you prefer to continue to set shipping costs individually for each country. These changes to shipping are compatible with the shipping profiles you currently use on Etsy.

To start using this new shipping regions tool, you can find a link on both the create a shipping profile page and the edit a shipping profile page under Your Etsy. Remember: If you change your shipping profiles, you need to apply the revised profiles to your listings by going to Your Etsy > Batch Shipping.

We are closing comments on this post so that we can follow your discussion in this Forum thread.

Shipping How-To's | Tech Updates

Tech Update: Checkout Updates and Buyer Conversion

2009-08-27T16:20:00-05:00

UPDATE: In the post below, we described testing improvements to the registration process for first-time Etsy buyers. For the last few weeks, we've been testing in-line registration, which enables first-time buyers to register as a part of Checkout instead of having to leave Checkout to complete registration. We're happy to announce that our tests showed that in-line registration resulted in more first-time Etsy buyers completing Checkout, and we have now rolled in-line registration out to 100% of Etsy's traffic.

Here's to making it painless for shoppers to check out on Etsy! We still have many more changes in mind, so stay tuned as we continue to improve this aspect of the site.

[The following was originally published July 22, 2009.]

As we move into the latter half of 2009, one of Etsy's main projects is to update Checkout in order to make it a smoother, simpler experience for shoppers. Here among Etsy's Product Team, this is part of what we call "improving buyer conversion." Buyer conversion is simply the percentage of buyers who both start and complete Checkout. The higher the conversion rate, the more shoppers are buying from you!

For example, one of the improvements we are working on has to do with first-time buyers on Etsy. Often, first-time buyers have not yet registered for Etsy, and so it's during Checkout that they first encounter the membership requirement. In other words, they are required to both register and check out to complete their first purchase. We know we can make sign-up during Checkout more convenient for shoppers (and therefore good for Etsy sellers).

We will roll out these changes gradually, using an A/B testing framework, which Sara, Etsy's VP of Product, described in her recent post. This A/B testing framework will give us the ability to launch this new functionality to only a small percentage of our users, while a majority of members will still experience the existing functionality. Therefore we can compare the two and quantify the effectiveness of the new process. Once we optimize the best way of flowing through the process, we will roll out these improvements to all of Etsy's traffic.

Looking to the future, we have additional improvements for conversion that we will test and implement between now and October 2009. If you have suggestions on how we can improve conversion for buyers on Etsy, please visit this associated Forum thread.

Handmade Code: Find Fabric with morecloth

2009-07-10T10:15:00-05:00

As part of our Handmade Code series, we're bringing you news and how-to's about the innovations emerging from the Etsy Developer Community. Located at developer.etsy.com, the Etsy Developer Community serves as a hub for third-party software developers who are making neat and helpful programs for Etsy shoppers and sellers. Recently, Etsy Admin daniellexo suggested we interview Catherine about her application, morecloth.

For years I've been fascinated by textiles and textile design. I like looking at fabric, stitching it into one-of-a-kind quilts and potholders, creating fabric designs of my own, and writing software for that purpose. I wrote the morecloth app partly just for myself ⎯ as a window through which I could look at emerging design and color trends in the make-it-yourself fabric world. But I also wanted to do something that might benefit small fabric-related businesses and, indirectly, the many ingenious designers whose work appears in this milieu.

What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
There's a lot of attractive fabric for sale at Etsy. This application selects some of what's available and groups it according to color, giving buyers a new, color-oriented way to browse through fabrics in many shops at once, as well as giving sellers another way to reach buyers.

Where do we go to find it? What's the URL?
Go to http://www.morecloth.com.

Who is it for? How many people are using it right now?
It's for anyone who wants a quick, distraction-free glimpse of Etsy fabrics sorted by color. This is just a glimpse, not a comprehensive view; there are many ways to sort by color and far more fabrics at Etsy than the thousand or so currently visible at morecloth. But this changing sample of what's available has caught and held some people's attention. In the month since I started this project, over 4,800 have visited morecloth. And many have spent over an hour there.

How do you use it?
On the front page of morecloth, there's a collection of striped bands of color. Clicking on a band will take you to a page of fabric swatches in that color range. Clicking on a fabric swatch will take you to the corresponding Etsy listing.

Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
No costs — the application is free for both buyers and sellers. Each week I add a few more Etsy shops. If you're a seller specializing in fabric, your shop may already be included, but you're welcome to email me (catherine@morecloth.com) to make sure I've come across it.

What should one do if there's a bug or a problem? Who should one contact?
If there's a problem, please email me: catherine@morecloth.com.

What's one surprising/fun/amazing story you've heard about someone using your app? Or what is your favorite part about the app?
Maybe the best feature of this app is its simplicity. It samples a wild abundance of textile patterns and colors, and presents them in a way that feels manageable.

Anything else you'd like to add?
For you sellers out there, I talk a bit about how listings get selected for inclusion on my blog.

Have you used morecloth before? Post in the comments below!

More Handmade Code Posts

Browse for Fabric on Etsy | Shop by Color on Etsy

Handmade Code: ColorMatch from 26OliveStreet

2009-06-11T10:30:00-05:00

As part of our Handmade Code series, we're bringing you news and how-to's about the innovations emerging from the Etsy Developer Community. Located at developer.etsy.com, the Etsy Developer Community serves as a hub for third-party software developers who are making neat and helpful programs for Etsy shoppers and sellers. In this edition, Staci and Alex of 26OliveStreet tells us all about their application called ColorMatch.

Love finding and hearting (favoriting) new shops and items? Get chills when the Treasury’s about to open up? Brainstorming for tomorrow’s blog post? Have something in mind for that gift and want to find it in a specific hue? Buying craft supplies by color palette? …Yes, we thought so. Try out 26 Olive Street’s ColorMatch!

Alex, the developer and web designer half of 26 Olive Street, whipped up ColorMatch after the exciting news of Etsy’s API release to not only enhance our own Etsy experience (we’re avid sellers, buyers, and browsing addicts), but also that of our fellow Etsy users and any other website or blogger fan of all things Etsy handmade and vintage.

What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
ColorMatch is designed to allow anyone to easily upload an inspiration jpeg and have the hues analyzed into a paint palette used for searching items on Etsy by color. Get even more creative by adding optional keywords.

Discover new Etsy favorite sellers. Find an Etsy item in that color you’ve been searching for. Find color-specific inspiration for Etsy Treasuries and/or blog posts.

Where do we go to find it? What's the URL, etc?
You can visit us and try it out at: http://26olivestreet.com/colormatch

How do you use it?
ColorMatch is a breeze! Here’s a little step-by-step tutorial if you’d like some visuals. Here we are…a fresh ColorMatch palette:

Start by clicking the "browse" button to open up a "file upload" window to locate your chosen image from your computer. (You’ll know if this worked if the image title shows up on the image line after the "file upload" window closes.)

(We used FoundVintageStyle's vintage buttons.)

If you’d like to narrow down your results, type in a keyword or multiple keywords at any time. Example: soap, purse, illustration, felt, bead, etc… Keywords are optional. You can leave this space blank if you’d like ColorMatch to give you a set of random Etsy items in your image’s colors.

Click the "analyze" paint splotch button, and voila! ColorMatch will start loading and extract out the different color hues of your image and compile an Etsy item grid with items that...well, match!

The first ColorMatch "quilt" is made of a random selection from the palette.

Now here comes the extra fun part…. Go on and click any and/or each individual palette color and ColorMatch will find images that match that hue predominately.

See an item in the "quilt" you want more info on? Click it and a new window will appear that shows a mini Etsy listing hosted on the 26 Olive Street website.

Click the item title, picture, or "see additional details" link to go straight to that item on Etsy. Click the shop name to go straight to that shop on Etsy.

Easy as pie! And more colorful!

Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
ColorMatch is free to anyone who would like to use it and free to anyone whose item happens to be viewed. Ah yes, that explains the traffic coming from 26 Olive Street! :) Yes guys, we advertise you for free!

We’re in the process of allowing an option to customize size and embed your ColorMatch color "quilt" results straight to your blog or website! Keep an eye out on the news section of our blog for updates.

What should one do if there's a bug or a problem? Who should one contact?
If you having trouble or have got some questions, please don’t be shy! The idea behind ColorMatch is for others to enjoy it, so we will be more than happy to help in any way we can.

There’s also bound to be some bugs, so if you run into any, let us know! We want to keep everything running smoothly.

Suggestions? Send ‘em over! We like a good brainstorming! Contact us regarding ColorMatch at colormatch@26olivestreet.com.

What's one surprising/fun/amazing story you've heard about someone using your app? Or what is your favorite part about the app?
We just relocated cross-country from NE to CA. Alex happened to mention ColorMatch on his first day of work at his new faculty position at a nearby university and found to his surprise that several colleagues already knew of and use the application! Small world!

We’re so glad to see people using ColorMatch and have been featured a few times out there in the blog world at The Glass Onion and by Celeste Frittata. Celeste actually said, “Using ColorMatch is like being in heaven!” Ah, an Etsy user after our own heart!

Below are a few of our favorite listings from the above tutorial including our inspiration image and some of our reviewer shops…

Post in the comments below if you use ColorMatch. And tell us your favorite color!

Tech Update: New Shipping Tool Now Beta Testing

2009-06-03T15:15:00-05:00

Sellers,

As many of you have expressed through the Forums, in surveys and at meet-ups, there’s a big demand for regional shipping options. We are happy to announce that we are currently conducting a closed beta test of new shipping regions. This tool will give sellers the ability to set shipping costs for a predefined region, thus alleviating the problem of setting the same shipping costs across many countries.

Below is a list of the regions we are testing. (We may add additional regions at a later date.)

Africa
Central America
European Union (EU) countries
Europe non-EU countries
South America

When using the tool, beta testers can see which countries are included within these regions.

Below is a preview screenshot of the new Your Etsy > Shipping Options page with Shipping Regions:

As you browse items on Etsy, you might notice that our beta testers' listings may display shipping costs using the new regions. Below is an example of shipping information on a listing that uses Shipping Regions:

If you see listings that look like this: don't be alarmed! This is a sign of good things to come. We do not anticipate problems with transactions involving Shipping Regions, but please communicate with the seller (who is likely a beta tester) and contact Etsy's Support Team if you experience any transaction issues related to Shipping Regions. Thanks for being patient while we work out the kinks during this testing period.

Shipping How-To's | Tech Updates

Handmade Code: Craft Cult

2009-05-29T15:00:00-05:00

As part of our Handmade Code series, we're bringing you news and how-to's about the innovations emerging from the Etsy Developer Community. Located at developer.etsy.com, the Etsy Developer Community serves as a hub for third-party software developers who are making neat and helpful programs for Etsy shoppers and sellers. In this edition, magicjelly presents her and juln's site, Craft Cult, which includes the incredibly useful apps The Heartomatic for sellers and The Vault for shoppers.

The Heartomatic was first developed by Julian, a.k.a. juln, back in 2007. He really only intended it for his own use, but told a few of his Etsy friends about it, too. One of them posted about The Heartomatic on the forums and word spread fast — soon there were thousands of people using it! In November 2008, Julian and I launched Craft Cult, a collaborative project. Julian is the programmer, I’m the designer, and we have lots of plans for new features. I think one of the reasons for Craft Cult’s success is that we are artists and Etsy sellers (and buyers) ourselves. I think that experience has really helped us develop tools that Etsians find useful.

What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
The idea behind Craft Cult is to enhance the Etsy experience for both sellers and buyers. Utilizing Etsy’s public API, The Heartomatic provides sellers with statistics relating to their shop hearts, item hearts and views in a time-saving, user-friendly format, as well as providing information that isn’t readily available via their Etsy shops. The Featured page also shows sellers when they’ve been picked for Etsy’s home page, Gift Guides or in The Storque so they never need miss the excitement. We often hear people comment that Craft Cult is totally addictive!

Our utilities are a lot of fun and very easy to use, but from a more serious business perspective, they also provide shop owners with invaluable information about their shop activity that can really help when it comes to product development and market research.

We haven’t forgotten about buyers. We recently implemented The Vault, which is an archive of all the home page featured lists. The Vault is pure eye candy, very inspirational, and a great place for window shopping.

Our newest addition to The Vault is a “Share This List” button that takes you to a page where you can create an animated widget featuring items from Etsy’s home page, which you can embed on your blog. It’s a fantastic way to add some visual appeal to your blog while spreading the word about Etsy, and it’s a way for Treasury curators and sellers to preserve their moment of home page glory and show it off to the world.

Where do we go to find it? What's the URL, etc?
You can find us right here… http://craftcult.com

Who is it for? How many people are using it right now?
Craft Cult is for Etsy addicts and people who love handmade and vintage. There are a LOT of them using our site, about 45,000 unique visitors and 2 million views a month, and growing steadily. Since installing Google Analytics a couple of months ago, we’ve had over 90,000 unique visitors using Craft Cult!

How do you use it?
The Heartomatic is really easy to use, just input your Etsy username or id number and hit “Enter.”

There are tabbed sections to the Heartomatic where you can check your hearts and views, as well as check to see if you’ve been on the home page or featured elsewhere.

One of The Heartomatic’s benefits is that you can see at a glance who has hearted you, what time they hearted you, whether they’re sellers or have buyer accounts, and you can see all of your item hearts listed without having to view each of your listings. We also show you how many new hearts you have, “new” being hearts accrued in the last 24 hours. The Heartomatic also calculates a views per heart ratio for your items — that is, how many views it takes on average before someone hearts you. This information can give you great insight into the popularity of your products.

The Vault is just as easy to use. You can search the archive by member (list curators and featured sellers) or by date.

Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
Anyone can use our site and it’s totally free. Craft Cult serves a dual purpose because, in addition to the Etsy-related utilities, we also offer sellers the opportunity to benefit from our high site traffic and promote their shops and products. Our advertising space helps fund the site so we can devote time to customer service and developing new features, and it’s also really gratifying to know that it’s providing independent artists and crafters, who usually have a modest marketing budget, with good quality, affordable advertising. Each of our advertisers receives in excess of 10,000 impressions per day, and we hear lots of good feedback from them about the results they get from their ads. If you’d like to take a look at our advertising info, you’ll find it right here.

What should one do if there's a bug or a problem? Who should one contact?
Julian is the brains behind the technical side of the site, and he’s very helpful and obliging when it comes to customer service, so please don’t hesitate to email him at julian@craftcult.com with any tech issues. He’d really appreciate the heads up if you run into any difficulties. We’re also on Twitter and post news and updates there. Come and say hi!

What's one surprising/fun/amazing story you've heard about someone using your app? Or what is your favorite part about the app?
Every time I hear back from our advertisers that their ads are working for them, it makes me really happy. One of our regular advertisers recently emailed us to say she’s been able to quit her day job and run her Etsy shop full time, thanks in part to her Craft Cult ads. The idea that we may play a part in people’s success is so amazing!

Anything else you'd like to add?
Thank you for the opportunity to tell Storque readers all about Craft Cult!

Calling all members of the Craft Cult, post in the comments below!