Search results (tags) for: "announcements"

DIY Wedding Crafts Contest Winner and Finalists

2009-11-04T14:00:00-05:00

Thanks to all who entered and voted in the DIY Wedding Crafts Contest with Etsy and Martha Stewart Weddings.

After carefully reviewing more than 3200 beautiful entries, a panel of judges from both Etsy Admin and the editors of Martha Stewart Weddings completed a secret ballot judging to select one winner and an additional 19 finalists. The winner and finalists are featured in an exclusive slideshow on Martha Stewart Weddings.

Congratulations to The DIY Wedding Crafts Contest winner, Ashley Anna Brown from fernanimals.etsy.com with her patchwork bird toppers, as seen above.

However, choosing a winner was no easy feat! Here are but a few of the talented finalists.

Better Together Wedding Topper by lollipopworkshop.etsy.com

Handmade Felt Bouquet by nestings.etsy.com

Wedding Sixpence Book by sweetscarlett.etsy.com

Bird House Boutonniere by HeartFelted.etsy.com

To see entries from the rest of the finalists, check out the DIY Wedding Crafts Contest slideshow on Martha Stewart Weddings. Thanks again to all who participated!

Looking for more Handmade Weddings posts? Check out our archive!

Wedding Invites and Favors Guide | Weddings Category | Wedding Attire Guide

Tech Update: Site Maintenance 2009 Schedule

2009-10-02T17:00:00-05:00

UPDATE: Our engineers will be working on the site on Monday, November 16, but the site will not be taken down for this maintenance window. That the site will be accessible during maintenance is actually part of the improvements that have been made.

We apologize for the back and forth. We are getting down to the final preparations before the holidays and we are working hard. One new factor appeared on the scene: the new baby of MCR, our chief Sys Admin, and his wife. No, this is not the sole reason for the shifting schedule, but it is the only one with a high enough cuteness factor to be worth mentioning.

As I wrote back in January, we have planned a number of behind-the-scenes changes and improvements for the rest of the year that will enhance the stability and scalability of the site, but require site downtime. To put those improvements in place, I announced monthly maintenance windows in which the site would be unavailable while we make these changes Since then, we have realized that we need more frequent maintenance windows to make these improvements more quickly, so we will now be doing these maintenance windows roughly every two weeks. To give everyone the most notice possible, we are publishing the new schedule below.

Our first maintenance window on the new schedule will be next Monday, June 8 from 2 a.m. - 6 a.m. ET. During this time period, all functions on the site will be unavailable, and all Etsy users will be directed to a page that notes that the site is undergoing scheduled maintenance. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com. (Note: Any sellers who have purchased a Showcase that would run during this maintenance window will receive a pro-rated credit for the 4-hour maintenance period. You can expect your bill to be credited within two to three business days after the date of the maintenance.) The new schedule for maintenance windows is as follows (all are 2 a.m. - 6 a.m. ET):

Monday, October 5 postponed to October 12 (2 a.m. - 8 a.m.)
Monday, October 19 (cancelled)
Monday, November 2
Monday, November 16

We are still thinking about and discussing the maintenance schedule for after November 16, since we want to be as sensitive as possible to the holiday shopping season and minimize any disruptions during that time.

We will communicate these dates in advance each time as a reminder. While there may still be occasional emergency maintenance windows, our goal is to use these regular planned maintenance windows to proactively make changes that will minimize emergencies.

Thanks in advance for your patience during our site maintenance periods, and thanks for using Etsy!

*To translate these times into your local time zone, please click here.

[The previous schedule was published on January 21, 2009.]

P.S. If you want to get the 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.

Etsy and SEOMoz: Helping the Etsy Community with Search Engine Optimization

2009-08-10T16:30:00-05:00

UPDATE: Join us for the first in a series of workshops with Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, a well-known search engine optimization consultancy. Rand will provide an understanding of SEO tactics, give tips to increase your Etsy Shop's visibility in search engine results, and take questions.
When? August 14, 2009 at 4 p.m. ET
Where? Etsy's interactive online classrooms, the Virtual Labs.

[The following was originally posted on July 21, 2009.]

We are pleased to announce that we have hired SEOmoz, a well-known search engine optimization consultancy, to assist in helping Etsy and its sellers to increase their visibility in search engine results. SEOmoz will work with us in the coming months on a comprehensive SEO strategy as well as an implementation plan.

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz’s co-founder and CEO, is a renowned SEO expert and has spoken around the world on SEO topics. We wanted you to meet him and hear from him directly as he begins his work with Etsy. Without further ado, here’s Rand.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by some of Etsy's staff, asking for my assistance. They explained to me that a lot of folks in the community have been thinking about search engine traffic and how Google, Yahoo!, Bing, & Ask.com can help drive business to their stores.

I was only too happy to help. After all, Etsy had been a crucial resource in one of the most important days of my life: my wedding. My wife's headpiece, the fascinators that her bridesmaids wore, and even her garter were from Etsy. She told me that she wanted something special that she could pass down to our children — not something mass-produced and sold at the mall. Etsy was her answer. Her experience was incredibly positive, and since then, Etsy's role in our lives has grown — from birthday presents to thank-you gifts to the holidays, Etsy has helped us time and again.

I know the value of Etsy, and all of the amazing creations that are offered on the site. But how could I get that message out to the millions of shoppers on the web? More importantly, how can I empower Etsy sellers with the skills they need to get the message out themselves? I've faced some of these same struggles myself — I started my SEO company with my Mom, out of a tiny office in Seattle. We were responsible for everything — managing finances, making sure we had satisfied customers, and having a steady stream of business coming into the company. It's very similar to what a lot of Etsy sellers have to do.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some Etsy sellers are very familiar with the term, and others aren't. My goal is to help everyone. There's a lot of misconceptions about SEO — some people think it's black magic or random luck. But like my friend Susan's perfectly knitted creations, it's more of an exact science combined with a dash of creative marketing. You start with some raw materials, and bit by bit, intricately weave them together to create something amazing — you just need to understand how all the pieces come together.

In order to do that, you need to know a bit about how search engines work to rank documents. The process can be complicated, but there are a few important things to remember:

Search engines rely on the use of keywords — the words and phrases people type into search engines — as indicators of relevance. Employing the right terms in the right places is a basic tenet of good SEO, but it's important not to go overboard or appear manipulative.
What you say about yourself is valuable, but when Google was conceived in 1999, they realized that what others say about you is both more credible and more useful for producing relevant results. Thus, the engines in the past 10 years have turned to links as a huge part of the algorithms they employ to rank the search listings. If many unique websites link to your page, you're viewed as a more credible, relevant result.
The engines don't just look at individual pages, they look at entire domains. If you've ever noticed low quality, half-empty pages from Wikipedia taking over the top rankings, you've observed this phenomenon in practice. Search engine algorithms have evolved to measure "trust" and "reliability" on a domain-wide basis, and thus, Etsy.com is a very exciting opportunity. Every member of the Etsy site who points a link to their shop and every news article on the web that links to Etsy.com helps every one of us rank a little bit better. In the SEO world, we call this phenomenon "the rising tide lifts all ships," and it works in precisely this fashion — the rising tide of Etsy, through the traffic that comes to the site and the links it earns, means that every page has a better opportunity to earn traffic.

So, as an Etsy seller, what can you do to optimize your page and get more business? There are a few quick tips I'll share now, but it's my goal to get a comprehensive "Etsy Guide to SEO" online in the weeks to come.

Research Keywords

Google offers a great tool for researching terms and phrases that people are searching for in their engine. By typing in a few words and phrases that relate to your products, you can see what keywords have higher and lower degrees of search volume. Remember that high volume keywords are going to be harder to rank well for, so taking advantage of the "low hanging fruit" can be a great tactic.

Get Links

Many of us have personal websites or blogs and networks of friends, colleagues and family who operate websites as well. Creating links to your products and stores is a terrific way of boosting your rankings and it also encourages direct traffic who will come through those links and see your work.

Read the Ranking Factors

Every two years, SEOmoz runs a survey of the world's top SEO minds, asking for their opinions about what factors matter most for high rankings. This collection of data is available here — SEOmoz's Search Engine Ranking Factors — and a new version is only a couple weeks away. If SEO is important to you, take a few minutes to browse through — while the engines use hundreds of factors to determine rankings, only the top 10-20 are really important to worry about.

Great SEO doesn't happen overnight, and the constant evolution and myriad of issues make it a challenging subject to master. But over the weeks and months to come, I (and possibly a few other staff members from SEOmoz) will be participating in the Etsy community and working hard behind the scenes to give us all the best possible opportunity to succeed.

What's impressed me most about Etsy is the sincerity of the site. Everyone puts their greatest creations forward, and stands behind their work. It's something I intend to do as well. Etsy has been a great part of my life, and I can't wait to spread the word to even more people through the power of SEO.

Sincerely,
Rand (a.k.a. randfish)

Thanks to Rand for his thoughtful contributions to the future of SEO here at Etsy. As Rand noted, a comprehensive "Etsy Guide to SEO" will be available in the coming weeks. We will provide further details here in our blog once this is available.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and suggestions. We'll close comments here so we can follow discussion in this Forum thread.

Kind regards,
Sara (a.k.a. saralouhicks)

Tech Update: Caching and Site Speed on Etsy

2009-08-10T15:05:00-05:00

In recent weeks, Etsy has been experiencing record site traffic, and we are grateful to the buyers and sellers who are visiting Etsy now more than ever, even in summer months. In fact, the past three weeks have been the three biggest traffic weeks in Etsy's history. With the surge in traffic, the demand on our systems has grown, and we have had to make adjustments to deal with the increasing demand. One of the methods we have used is known as "caching." In a nutshell, "caching" refers to the practice of saving a copy of the original source of information in a place that is faster to access than the original source of information. When lots of users visit the site, the speed of access is important, but since a "cache" is a copy, the copy can be slightly out of sync with the original information. In those cases, there can be a "lag" when the information is accessed from the cached location.

Many of you have experienced this in the past two weeks during our high-traffic period, as you may have noticed item listing edits appeared to lag in updating. In all cases, the price of an item has always been reflected accurately when a buyer places it in a cart. After further tuning of our systems to deal with the recent surge in traffic, I think we overcompensated with our caching approach on listing pages, and I have asked the Engineering Team to change our caching strategy back to the way it worked previously. In practical terms, this means that sellers' edits to item listing pages should show much more quickly. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Caching can be a complex subject. You may be familiar with the term "caching" from your use of a web browser like Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer or Opera. With this type of caching, your web browser pulls data (usually images) from remote systems on the Internet and saves a copy of (or "caches") that data on your computer to make access to the information faster. In that scenario, instead of going repeatedly to a far away server to fetch an image, your computer saves a copy of the image on your hard drive to make the web page load faster. As web sites have grown rapidly, computer systems that power web sites like Etsy have developed caching practices of their own to speed delivery of web pages. When a site like Etsy is slow, fewer buyers come to the site, and shopping is more difficult and frustrating.

There are different caches (or copies) of information that live in different systems inside a large web operation. At Etsy, we use Solr (open source search software) to provide the fastest search experience for users. Our use of Solr resulted in immediate increases in search speed and volume (see the post here), making it easier for buyers to find and purchase items on Etsy. To achieve that level of speed, Solr essentially acts as a high-speed cache, or copy, of the original listing data. As new listings are created on Etsy, they enter a queue that updates the items in the site search cache (or copy) in a matter of minutes in most cases, keeping the copy synchronized as closely as possible. Visitors to Etsy are rewarded with a fast search experience. Compared to a year ago, Etsy's search is roughly 10 times faster while handling twice the volume of listings.

We also use a number of other caching mechanisms to keep the web site fast and responsive as our traffic grows. We have always used caching as a means to increase the speed of the site with the ultimate goal of making it easier for sellers to manage their shops and for buyers to find and purchase products in those shops. Our goal is to always provide the freshest information possible to our buyers and sellers as they use Etsy. As we continue to grow, we may have to make trade-offs to keep the site fast and speedy for buyers and sellers, but we will do our best in the future to minimize any lags you may experience and do a better job of explaining up front any changes that might affect the user experience. In trying to provide greater stability on the site, we ultimately turned one of our system tuning knobs too far in one direction, and I apologize for the confusion it caused.

Please see this Forum thread for discussion.

Tech Update: Unscheduled Forums Maintenance 7/24/09

2009-07-23T12:00:00-05:00

On Friday, July 24, 2009 from 12 a.m. - 2 a.m. ET we will be doing unscheduled maintenance on Etsy's Forums. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) During this time period, all functions on the site will be available, with the exception of the Forums. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com.

We have published the scheduled site maintenance times for the rest of 2009 here.

P.S. If you want to get the 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: Unscheduled Site Maintenance 7/16/09

2009-07-15T19:00:00-05:00

Heads up! On Thursday, July 16, 2009 from 6 a.m. to 6:20 a.m. ET we will be doing unscheduled maintenance on Etsy's systems. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) During this time period, all functions on the site will be unavailable, and all Etsy users will be directed to a page noting that the site is undergoing maintenance. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but it's a sign of good things to come! Our engineers are preparing the site for new features currently being tested.

Talking Product: Etsy Site Feature Priorities for 2009

2009-07-01T19:00:00-05:00

Hi friends,

Following up on our recent Talking Shop podcast, I want to provide a few operational updates from the Etsy Product Team. We are excited to summarize what we’ve accomplished since my last Talking Product update and to provide a glimpse into the priorities for the second half of the year.

So, what have we accomplished in the last few months?

Search
As I noted in my last update, Search is our top priority for 2009. We made enhancements to Search designed to improve the Etsy shopping experience:

We simplified the Search drop down menu and launched an Advanced Search option.
We gave shoppers new options to sort search results by Most Relevant and filter by "ship to country."

Checkout
We’ve been working to make clarifications and improvements to the Etsy checkout process, and we launched several updates in the past few months to make it easier for shoppers to purchase on Etsy:

We made improvements to the Etsy checkout process.
We added the suffix “USD” across the site to notify users that our prices are listed in US dollars.

Seller Tools
We launched beta versions of two new features frequently requested by sellers: a new shipping tool which includes regional shipping options for Europe and the ability to rearrange items in your shop. We’re making a few updates to these features based on feedback we received during testing, and we will be rolling these new features out to everyone in July.

Payments
We provided sellers with the ability to pay their Etsy bill with PayPal. This was a highly requested feature for many sellers, and we hope many of you have opted in to use this new service.

Showcase
We gave Etsy Category pages a fresh new look, making Category Showcases more prominent. We also launched Subcategory Showcases for Jewelry and Art.

Sharing
We made it easier to share your Favorites and share Etsy with your friends on Facebook.

Developer Community
Lastly, we also launched the Etsy Developer Community and API and have seen some exciting applications enabled by it. Our Handmade Code series on Etsy’s blog, The Storque, has featured a number of them, including Craft Cult, Etsy Hacks, ColorMatch by 26OliveStreet and the “Etsy Addict” iPhone application.

What’s in store for the remainder of 2009?

Our top focus continues to be on helping shoppers find and discover unique items and making it easier for them to check out. Here are some further details on our top priorities going into the second half of the year:

Search and Browsing
Search remains our top priority. One important area of focus will be improving the category structure and introducing category-specific search refinements for shoppers.

As part of the improvements to our category structure, you will see in the coming months updates to certain categories. We’ve been working closely with sellers in specific categories to understand the best taxonomy for these areas, and we look forward to launching these updates.

Adding category-specific search refinements means, for example, if a buyer is searching or browsing for a sweater, we want to make it easier for them to refine their choices by options like size and color. In order to do this we will need to enhance the item listing process and update our category taxonomy. We think these enhancements will provide much needed improvements to finding, discovering and buying on Etsy.

These are very large undertakings as listing, tagging, searching and browsing are at the core of our site experience. Improvements will occur over time, and we will do our best to communicate major changes.

Checkout
As mentioned in my last update, we are working on “inline registration” (in other words, letting first-time buyers check out on Etsy without forcing them to confirm their registration first). The goal is to make it easier for first-time buyers to check out on Etsy. This will be launching before the end of the summer using a new A/B testing framework. This A/B test 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. This allows us to monitor performance and feedback before launching to everyone. We’ll provide further details as we get closer to launch.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
We are committed to implementing and sharing SEO best practices with our community. To that end, in addition to our own ongoing efforts, we are hiring SEO specialists to work with us on a comprehensive strategy as well as implementation plan. We're working to formalize an agreement with these specialists and will be sharing additional details in the coming weeks.

Community
We will be launching in the next couple months a redesign of the Community main page. The goal of this redesign is to provide better access to information to the community about important news, events and activities occurring on Etsy.

Help
Improving customer support is top of mind for us at Etsy. We will be updating our internal systems and processes in the coming months to provide better support to our members. This includes updating our Help pages to make it easier for members to find information more quickly.

There’s more ahead so please stay tuned. I’ll continue to provide regular quarterly updates on our progress as well as upcoming projects. As always, your feedback is important, so I look forward to a continued dialogue around our priorities. Please post your comments below.

Thanks,

Sara, a.k.a saralouhicks

Talking Shop Posts | Tech Updates

Billing Alert: Updates to Etsy’s Billing System

2009-06-25T16:05:00-05:00

UPDATE (6/25/09): With the migration to our new credit card processing system complete, some remaining sellers over the next billing period may need to re-enter their credit card information. This is a one time action; you will not need to re-enter your credit card information every month, unless your card expires. Additionally, sellers have the option to pay their bill with PayPal instead of a credit card.

UPDATE (5/8/09): Please be advised that Etsy is now enforcing our policy of revoking selling privileges for accounts that have become two months or more overdue. We are reviewing all seller accounts and any seller in violation of this policy runs the risk of having their selling privileges suspended until such time as overdue accounts are paid in full.

In order to avoid an interruption in Etsy's services, we ask that you make sure you are current in paying your Etsy account balance and that the email address you registered with Etsy is also current.

Etsy relies on its sellers to pay outstanding balances in full and on time each month. Etsy does not currently have the systems in place to allow for installment payments.

Please bear in mind that you may pay your Etsy bill by either PayPal or credit card.

Etsy Sellers,

Thank you for being a part of Etsy. We want to let you know about important changes to the way Etsy handles bills for seller fees. Etsy relies on collecting fees from our members in order to continue developing and growing our business. We are improving our billing and collections systems to accommodate our rapid growth.

Here is a quick review of how billing works currently on Etsy: The billing cycle starts on the first day of each month, and Etsy automatically sends you a billing statement by email for the fees accrued in the previous month. You have a grace period of 15 days to pay your bill. To pay your bill, you must sign in to your Etsy account and manually submit your payment by credit card or PayPal. If you have not paid your bill by 12:00 am UTC on 16th day of the same month, your account will be considered overdue. If your account becomes two months overdue your selling privileges may be revoked, and over three months overdue your account may be suspended.

Over the next month, we are moving to a new credit card processing system managed by Chase Paymentech, the industry leader for processing credit card transactions. As a result of this move, if you pay your Etsy seller fees using a credit card, then you may need to re-enter your credit card information at the time you submit payment for your Etsy bill. This is a one-time action; you will not need to re-enter your credit card information again as long as it remains current.

As you might already know, we recently introduced new functionality that allows sellers to pay their Etsy bills with PayPal. As an alternative, you may opt to pay your bill with PayPal if you do not want to re-enter your credit card information after we move over to the new credit card processing system. We know that most sellers on Etsy accept payments from buyers through PayPal, and now with a few clicks you can also pay your Etsy bill via PayPal.

Previously, Etsy only accepted payments of $1.00 USD or more from sellers. Now that we have implemented PayPal as a means to pay Etsy bills, we ask those owing less than $1.00 to pay their balances in a timely manner. For example, if you are billed $0.60, you can now pay $0.60, and you have the option to pay via PayPal or your credit card.

We will keep you informed of upcoming changes to our billing process and will communicate in advance of any major changes taking effect. If you have questions about your Etsy bill, please email billing@etsy.com for personalized assistance.

We appreciate you and your shop on Etsy. Thank you!

The Etsy Team

To pay your Etsy bill, sign in to your Etsy seller account and visit Your Etsy > Your Etsy bill, then click the green Make A Payment Now button. To ensure you receive important service-related announcements such as this one via email, please check that your email address is accurate and up-to-date in your account information by signing in to your Etsy account and visiting Your Etsy > Account Info. Thank you for supporting Etsy.

Tech Update: One Hour Site Maintenance at Midnight 06/03/09

2009-06-02T13:15:00-05:00

Heads up! Early on Wednesday morning, June 3, 2009 from midnight until 1 a.m. ET we will be doing we will be doing site maintenance on Etsy's systems. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) During this time period, all functions on the site will be unavailable, and all Etsy users will be directed to a page noting that the site is undergoing scheduled maintenance. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com.

For our regularly scheduled site maintenance times for the rest of 2009, please see this post.

(Note: Any sellers who have purchased a Showcase that would run during this maintenance window will receive a pro-rated credit for the 1-hour maintenance period.)

P.S. If you want to get the 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: Scheduled Site Maintenance 5/25/09

2009-05-18T15:27:00-05:00

It's that time again! On Monday, May 25, 2009 from 2-8 a.m. ET we will be doing scheduled maintenance on Etsy's systems. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) During this time period, all functions on the site will be unavailable, and all Etsy users will be directed to a page noting that the site is undergoing scheduled maintenance. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com.

We have published the scheduled site maintenance times for the rest of 2009 here. In the States, Monday is Memorial Day, so we're hoping you will be sleeping in and won't notice a thing.

(Note: Any sellers who have purchased a Showcase that would run during this maintenance window will receive a pro-rated credit for the 6-hour maintenance period.)

P.S. If you want to get the 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: Site Maintenance on Community Flash Applications 4/23/09

2009-04-22T13:43:00-05:00

We will be performing site maintenance on Treasury, Chat, Virtual Labs, and the Voter on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 from 3pm to 4pm EDT. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) We want to give you a heads up, since many of you use these site features every day. (For those of you who haven't tried them yet, you're missing out!)

Thank you for your patience while we keep these features performing at their best (in other words, with flying raccoons, gold stars, and satisfying "ping" sounds). We are not anticipating any problems with restoring Treasury lists, but we apologize in advance if your lists are lost.

Check out these Community site features and let us know which one is your favorite in the comments below.

How-tos about Treasury | FAQ about Virtual Labs | Voting Posts on Etsy's Blog

P.S. If you want to get the 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: Scheduled Site Maintenance 4/27/09

2009-04-22T11:00:00-05:00

Heads up! On Monday, April 27, 2009 from 2am to 6am EDT, we will be doing scheduled maintenance on Etsy's systems. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) During this time period, all functions on the site will be unavailable, and all Etsy users will be directed to a page noting that the site is undergoing scheduled maintenance. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com.

We have published the scheduled site maintenance times for the rest of 2009 here. Please mark your calendars, as these may be good times to have a snack with friends.

(Note: Any sellers who have purchased a Showcase that would run during this maintenance window will receive a pro-rated credit for the 4-hour maintenance period.)

P.S. If you want to get the 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: Seller Directory and Stocked Shops

2009-04-01T12:30:00-05:00

Hello friends,

Recently, we updated one of the ways to shop on Etsy — the Seller Directory on the Buy page of the site. We are now limiting this page to stocked shops (a stocked shop has at least one active item listing). Our goal is to improve the shopping experience on Etsy.

All Etsy shops will remain findable on the site. This change only affects which shops appear of the Seller Directory on the Buy page of the site. Unstocked shops will still be accessible via username search as well as direct URL (the username.etsy.com web address).

Shops with only inactive listings and shops in "vacation mode" will not be viewable in the Seller Directly for the duration of inactivity.

We continue to strive to improve both the selling and buying experience on Etsy, and we hope that this update to the Seller Directory is another step in that direction.

Get to know some sellers through our Shop Local series or check out the new Recently Listed site feature!

Tech Update: Scheduled Site Maintenance 3/30/09

2009-03-24T18:20:00-05:00

The time for our scheduled site maintenance is upon us once again. On Monday, March 30, 2009 from 2am to 6am EDT, we will be doing scheduled maintenance on Etsy's systems. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) During this time period, all functions on the site will be unavailable and all Etsy users will be directed to a page noting that the site is undergoing scheduled maintenance. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com.

We have published the scheduled site maintenance times for the rest of 2009 here. Please mark your calendars!

(Note: Any sellers who have purchased a Showcase that would run during this maintenance window will receive a pro-rated credit for the 4-hour maintenance period.)

P.S.
If you want to get the 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.

An Apology from Etsy's CEO, Maria Thomas

2009-03-16T18:45:00-05:00

Dear Etsy Sellers,

This is the kind of note CEOs generally don’t enjoy writing. Because, this is the kind of note that says, “We messed up, and we’re sorry.”

Over the weekend, Etsy messed up. We prematurely sent out notices to sellers whose bills we had identified as “overdue.” This overdue notification was a change in our billing process. We did a poor job of fully explaining this change and consistently messaging it across the site and in other communications with our seller community. In addition, the change was poorly timed relative to the March billing cycle and poorly coordinated with our recent introduction of enabling sellers to pay their Etsy fees via PayPal. Introducing PayPal as a payment option for seller fees also allowed us to accept payments of any size, so we simultaneously eliminated the $1.00 minimum payment threshold, whether paid by credit card or PayPal. We now ask those owing less than $1.00 USD to pay their balances in a timely manner, just like other Etsy sellers.

Regrettably, we did not lay all these messages out in an easily digestible form, and we didn’t deliver them to you in a timely and clear way.

I am ultimately responsible for this poor execution, and I apologize. I know that Etsy sellers need clear, consistent, timely communication from Etsy in order to plan your businesses. That’s our goal, and we will all work harder to be more diligent and timely with future announcements affecting all sellers.

I asked Etsy staff to roll back the changes (that is, to go back to the billing policies and process in effect prior to March 14, 2009) until such time as we are able to more thoroughly and consistently email all of you about what we’re doing and why. Let me repeat, we have moved back to the policies and process that were in effect prior to this weekend’s communications about overdue bills. Please note that sellers will still be able to pay your Etsy bills via PayPal, and you will be able to pay your bill even if the balance is below $1.00 USD.

Though I don’t particularly like to have to say Etsy messed up, I do want to set our goals and our missteps in the proper context.

As you’ve heard from us before Etsy is investing a lot of time into establishing a more efficient, scalable and market-based billing and collections system. (Please note: I am referring to the mechanisms by which Etsy sellers are billed and can pay Etsy; I am not referring to systems that enable buyers to pay sellers.)

Changing our collections’ policies is one piece of a larger group of projects intended to improve our overall billing and payment processing infrastructure, including enabling Etsy sellers to pay Etsy fees via PayPal. We also aim to make more efficient and effective our process for collecting overdue accounts.

These goals remain priorities and our recent poor communication should not overshadow this important message: Etsy is making investments in its billing and payment processing infrastructure that will allow Etsy to grow significantly and to provide better services to you.

I have asked Etsy staff to communicate important changes around billing and collections via emails directly to sellers such that any changes to our billing or collection policies can be fully communicated prior to our implementation of such changes. We are working to get the first one of these all-seller messages out in the next week or two. You should expect several emails in the next few months announcing a few positive changes and improvements in our payments processing and billing systems.

In the meantime, should you have lingering billing questions, please send them to billing@etsy.com.

Sincerely,
Maria

Billing Alert: Clarifications to the Billing Collection Process

2009-03-16T16:30:00-05:00

UPDATE: This article was corrected on March 16, 2009. We have removed the message on the Sign In page about overdue accounts at this time. We have decided to postpone implementing this billing reminder change until later this spring. We will communicate in advance when this will take effect. (The article was originally published on the evening of March 15, 2009.)

Dear sellers,

Beginning at 12:00 am UTC on March 15, 2009 until roughly 4:00 pm UTC, an automated email was sent out to sellers who had not yet paid their Etsy bills. In addition, if those sellers signed in to their Etsy account, they would have seen a similar message on the site. The automated email is a new billing reminder we began using with this month’s billing cycle. By mistake, these overdue notices were sent one day early, as Etsy policy states that a seller has 15 days to submit payment before the account is considered overdue.

We apologize for the confusion caused by the email and the related message on the Sign In page about overdue accounts. We can and will do better to communicate with our seller community. We have made some changes to Etsy billing collection recently that we communicated in December 2008 and again earlier this month, however, the entire process was not clearly communicated. Adding to the confusion, the new reminder email was sent at 12:00 am UTC, which for many sellers in other time zones was still the evening of March 14.

We have removed the message on the Sign In page about overdue accounts at this time. We have decided to postpone implementing this billing reminder change until later this spring. We will communicate in advance when this will take effect.

This article is intended to clarify our billing collection process. Our goal has always been to implement a fair policy, while also recognizing that Etsy relies on collecting fees from our members in order to continue developing and growing our business.

Here are the common questions we’ve seen related to Etsy billing collection:

When does a bill become overdue?
Billing statements are emailed on the 1st day of the month at 12:00 am UTC; these statements detail all the fees incurred by an account for the previous month. There is a payment grace period of 15 days; the balance must be paid in full by 12:00 am UTC on the 16th day of the month (this is the beginning of the day on the 16th). An account not paid in full by that time is considered overdue.

What time zone does Etsy billing use?
Etsy billing operates on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is essentially the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Etsy begins sending monthly billing statements on the 1st day of each. Unpaid bills are considered overdue on the 16th of each month at 12:00 am UTC. To translate 12:00 am UTC on the 16th day of the month into your time zone, please follow these links: March 16, 2009 / April 16, 2009 / May 16, 2009 / June 16, 2009 / July 16, 2009 / August 16, 2009 / September 16, 2009 / October 16, 2009 / November 16, 2009 / December 16, 2009.

Where on the site is this stated? I read something different.
We recognize that we have conflicting information on the site regarding the exact timing of our billing cycles. We will be updating all billing related content on the site to be consistent and accurate.

Why didn’t sellers receive an email stating the changes to the billing process?
We will be sending an email to all registered sellers this week. In that email, we will include the information reviewed here, as well as additional relevant information about Etsy billing.

Will an account be suspended if a seller does not pay their Etsy bill?
Right now, we are not taking this level of action for currently overdue bills. Eventually, yes, as specified in our policies, a seller’s account may be suspended for not paying their bill. This will happen in the future as outlined below. We will communicate in advance of this policy becoming effective, which we anticipate will be later this spring. In addition, the new process will include email reminders and a message on the Sign In page for accounts which are overdue.

Here is how the upcoming changes to the billing process will operate:

Etsy bills are issued for the previous month’s fees. Billing statements are emailed to all seller accounts on the 1st day of the month. There is a payment grace period of 15 days.
If a bill is not paid before 12:00 am UTC on the 16th day of the month, the bill is considered overdue. On the 16th day of the month, an account that has an overdue bill is sent an email reminder and is shown a message at the Sign In that their account is overdue.
An account that is overdue less than 2 months will be sent email billing reminders and see the message at Sign In until payment is made. The account still retains full capabilities.
After 2 months from the date the bill was originally issued, an account that has an overdue bill will lose the ability to list, relist and renew item listings until the balance is brought up to date.
After 3 months from the date the bill was originally issued, an account that has an overdue bill will be closed until the balance is brought up to date.

Do I have to pay if I only owe less than $1.00 USD (between $0.01-$0.99)?
Previously, Etsy only accepted payments of $1.00 or more from sellers. Now that we have implemented PayPal as a means to pay Etsy bills, we ask those owing less than $1.00 to pay their balances in a timely manner, just like other Etsy sellers. If you are billed $0.60, you can now pay $0.60, and you have the option to pay via PayPal.

More details about paying your bill via PayPal can be found in this announcement from March 10, 2009.

What happens to an account when the Etsy bill is 2 months overdue? 3 months overdue?

When the new billing process is in effect, an account that is overdue by 2 months, regardless of amount owed, will lose listing, relisting and renewing abilities.
When the new billing process is in effect, an account that is overdue by 3 months, regardless of amount owed, will be closed.

Why am I receiving errors when paying my Etsy bill with PayPal?
We have investigated these reports. There was an intermittent problem for some sellers over the past weekend. For those who attempted to send an Etsy bill payment via PayPal and received a failure notice, no funds changed hands. Please try again. We believe this issue to be resolved now.

Again, we are very sorry for the confusion and poor initial communication surrounding these changes. Should you have further questions, please email billing@etsy.com.

Tech Update: Freshening Up the Category Pages

2009-03-12T19:15:00-05:00

Etsy's Category pages have a fresh new look—check them out. This is the first set of enhancements we have in mind for the Category pages. Our goal in implementing these changes is to enhance the shopping experience on the site, making it easier to navigate and to find items to purchase. We also hope that the improved design will encourage shoppers to spend more time on these pages.

So what’s changed?

More prominent Category Showcases. The Category Showcases have been given greater prominence at the top of Category pages and are more clearly distinguished from the rest of the page with a slightly shaded background and the title “Sponsored Items from Etsy Sellers.” The images are larger than in the previous version, and we have also added the item title and price to make browsing more efficient. We will be carefully following the performance of these pages and listening to feedback from shoppers and sellers. We may make design adjustments based on that information.

To accommodate these changes, three items from the Category Showcase will randomly display each time the page is loaded or refreshed (versus the five smaller item images in the previous version). To browse through the entire Showcase, there are navigation arrows on each side as well a link to a page showing all items in a particular Category Showcase. Items will continue to be randomly displayed in this section from the full pool of relevant Showcased items.

New area for Category title, subtitle and illustrations. We have also added an area for each Category's title and subtitle, making the purpose of the page more clear, particularly for those who land on the page from searching on Etsy or via a link outside Etsy. As an additional benefit, this will help improve Etsy’s visibility to search engines since they principally read text. The new illustrations on each of Category page are meant to add a cohesive visual element from Etsy’s front page.

Nested subcategory list. Now when you browse to a subcategory, you will see a nested list of the other subcategories on the left side menu. This allows a shopper to quickly navigate from one subcategory to another.

Here's the big picture:

As noted above, we will have a few other changes to Category pages coming in the near future. One of these future enhancements will be highlighting related content from Etsy's blog on Category pages. Content that is relevant to each top-level Category will be featured in the left side menu. We have seen that engaging content draws shoppers into the site and can inspire people to discover new treasures. We’ll keep you posted on other improvements to the Category pages as we get closer to releasing them.

We welcome your feedback on these design changes to the Category pages in this discussion thread in our Forums. (We’ve closed commenting on this article to consolidate the conversation.)

Here's to a better shopping experience on Etsy!

ps
If you want to get the 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.

Talking Product with Etsy’s VP of Product Sara Hicks

2009-03-11T11:50:00-05:00

Hi friends,

Following up on the latest installment of Talking Shop with Maria Thomas, I wanted to provide a few operational updates from the Product Team here at Etsy.

We are excited to talk about what we’ve accomplished so far in 2009 and provide a glimpse into the priorities for the rest of the first quarter of the year (Q1) and into the second quarter of the year (Q2). Consider this the start of an ongoing series of regular updates.

So, what have we accomplished in the last few months?

Web Analytics (via Google Analytics) for Etsy sellers rolled out in January.

In February we introduced the Etsy Developer Community in beta form. We believe the full launch of Etsy’s API will unleash pent-up creativity and many new exciting applications for Etsy sellers and buyers.

We also rolled out three viral marketing tools:
- The first is a “Bookmark and share” feature, which is available on every item listing page, shop page and blog posting. This feature allows you to quickly and seamlessly share your Etsy discoveries on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
- We also updated the Etsy Shop application on Facebook. The Etsy Shop Facebook application is similar to the Etsy mini but it’s specifically for Facebook. More and more buyers and sellers are using Facebook to spread the word about Etsy items and events.
- In early December we made some relatively small but important improvements to the RSS “feeds” available from Etsy. Shop feeds now contain thumbnail images, are available on every item listing page and come pre-formatted for easy upload to Google Base. Scheduling item uploads to Google Base is a great way for sellers to help Google — specifically Google Product Search — find their items. Shoppers will then be able to find sellers' items via the 'Shopping' link on the upper left of any Google search page.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, starting in November and December, you should have noticed speed improvements when searching on Etsy and across the whole site. My colleague, Chad Dickerson, posted a technology update that has more detail on some of these improvements.

And, here are a few items we said we were going to deliver but, for various reasons, we opted to defer for the time being. We haven’t abandoned these items completely, but we have shifted some priorities. When we have further details on timing for these important initiatives I’ll be sure to let you know.

We have not yet introduced new tools for Etsy Teams as Maria outlined in her November 2008 Talking Shop article. This is something we know is important and intend to provide, but as Matt Stinchcomb recently explained in an Etsy Teams Virtual Lab, we have a few more urgent priorities in front of us first (I’ll mention those in a minute).

We did not roll out the Super Etsy Mini as described in Matt’s holiday marketing plan post. We realized that the Super Etsy Mini was probably trying to do too much, so we’ve gone back to the drawing board and are working on a broader “widget” development plan.

Now, where are we headed? As Maria said in her post, “2009 is a time to keep our heads down, replenish the soil, and focus on making better the basic elements of the site.” Here are some further details on our top priorities going into the second quarter of the year:

Search

Search is our top priority for 2009. We understand that Search is vital to your business and though we expect to make changes throughout the year, we won’t launch any surprises. We will test, preview, and communicate before we make significant alterations to Search. This week, Product Manager Sean Flannagan posted an article about our plans for Search. We anticipate numerous updates to Search throughout 2009 with the goal of improving the experience for both buyers and sellers. Many more details can be found in Sean’s article and we will provide additional details, in the form of Virtual Lab events, Blog articles, and Forum posts, as we get closer to each new feature.

Payments

Yesterday we launched new functionality enabling sellers to pay their Etsy bills with PayPal. Many sellers have asked for this, and we hope many opt in (sellers, this means you can use PayPal if you want, but you also have the option to use a credit card).

We’ve also evaluated our collection policies for sellers' Etsy bills. The result of this evaluation was announced in December and will go into effect in March 2009. Etsy relies on collecting fees from our members in order to continue developing and growing our business. The majority of Etsy sellers do pay their bills promptly and in full, and for that, we are very thankful. However, there are also some sellers who allow their bills to become overdue and these new policies are intended to help Etsy collect its fees from those sellers.

Checkout

You will see more clarifications and improvements to the Etsy checkout process in March and throughout 2009. We understand that Etsy’s checkout process (and the text we use to guide buyers through it) can be confusing, especially because items are marked as “sold” in Etsy’s catalog in a separate step from the payment processing. In March, we will be clarifying language around this process. In the coming months we will be working to better clarify the functional elements of the overall process, including introducing inline registration (i.e. letting first-time buyers checkout on Etsy without forcing them to confirm their registration first).

Safety, Security, and Trust

We continue to focus on creating a vibrant marketplace that is built on the principles of safety, security, and trust. While it may not always be possible for Etsy to disclose its fraud deterrence practices, you can have confidence that we are doing everything to make sure buyers and sellers on our marketplace are safe and community places like the Forums, Chat, Virtual Labs remain meaningful. Etsy takes these issues very seriously and thus we continue to update our infrastructure to keep fraudulent behavior off of our site.

Showcase

In March you will see improvements to the design of Etsy’s Category pages and, more specifically, the design of the Category Showcase promotional modules at the top of those pages. Our goal is to make these promotional slots more relevant and attractive to Etsy shoppers.

In the coming months, we are looking to expand Showcase placements to other relevant areas of our site to provide more opportunities for sellers to gain additional exposure. Again, more details will be provided as we get closer to launching these updates.

Seller Tools

I know that there are certain seller tools that are critical to managing your shops. According to many of the forum threads and support emails I’ve read, being able to rearrange items in your shop should be at the top of the list. We are going to provide some tools to let you do this in the next month.

Site Performance

This is listed last, but site performance is one of the features that we always keep on our minds here at Etsy. As mentioned above, Chad’s article details our progress in this area.

There’s much more ahead so please stay tuned. I’ll be back with regular updates on what we’ve accomplished from this list and what else we have lined up for the remainder of the year. As always, your feedback is important, so I look forward to a continued dialog around our priorities. Please post your comments in this forum thread (we'll close commenting here to consolidate discussion).

Thanks,

Sara

P.S. If you want to get the 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.

Billing Alert: Change to Overdue Bill Collection

2009-03-02T16:20:00-05:00

UPDATE: Sellers, we are bringing this post back up to the top as a reminder. If you have any questions about your bill, please contact billing@etsy.com privately. Note, you can now pay your Etsy bill using PayPal. Read about this new option here. We now accept payments under $1, so we expect all sellers to pay the full amount due, even if your bill is less than $1.

[The following post was originally posted on Dec 2, 2008.]

Hi Etsians, my name is Sinohe and I'm Etsy's Controller (aka bean counter). Behind the scenes, all of us have been working hard to improve the overall Etsy experience and to put Etsy on a path to be a lasting and profitable company. Like many other businesses, Etsy relies on collecting fees from our members in order to continue developing and growing our business. The majority of Etsy sellers do pay their bills promptly and in full, and, for that, we are very thankful. However, there are also some sellers who allow their bills to become overdue.

Etsy will be emailing a reminder to those sellers who have overdue bills. The email will outline how to pay and the consequences for non-payment. We want to provide everyone the opportunity to settle their account balances. We do realize that this is a busy time for everyone but think that it is important enough of an issue to address it with the November billing cycle.

Two weeks after the initial email referenced above, Etsy will begin to send seller accounts with bills over 90 days past due to a third-party collection agency. This means that if a seller still holds an unpaid balance from August 2008 fees or prior, then that seller may receive a letter or other communication from a collection agency on behalf of Etsy about settling his/her outstanding balance. Before sending a seller to the third-party collection agency, Etsy will attempt to notify him/her a final time by email. This new step of involving a collection agency as a regular part of our collection process is the only change to our billing procedure at this time. This is not an action we take lightly, but it is one that is important for building Etsy as a lasting company.

We hope to only use the collection agency as a last resort, and you can help us avoid it by responsibly paying your bill on time. If your bill is overdue and consequently you are unable to list, relist and renew items, please sign in and pay your bill to have your shop privileges reinstated. If your account is closed and you still owe fees to Etsy, please email billing@etsy.com to discuss paying your bill and reinstating your account.

For more information on paying your Etsy bill, check out our billing help guide, How Billing Works. If you have any questions about your Etsy bill, please email billing@etsy.com.

Site Maintenance: Etsy Forums Only, 2am Monday March 2, 2009

2009-02-28T14:23:00-05:00

UPDATE: All done!

Etsy forum-goers,

We want to give you a heads up that early Monday morning, March 2, 2009, at 2am we will be performing site maintenance on Etsy's forums. The rest of Etsy will be functioning normally. We estimate that the forums will return at 7am. To translate these time on a world clock, try this tool. We will be posting updates on the progress at fix.etsy.com, but commenting will be closed there in order to handle the resulting high traffic.

Thank you so much for your patience as we make necessary tweaks. Hang in there!

P.S.
If you want to get the 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: Introducing a New Recently Listed Items Site Feature

2009-02-27T19:00:00-05:00

Etsy admin/guru/spiritual leader Jared Tarbell has developed a new site feature: Recently Listed Items.

With Etsy's marketplace growing along with some sellers' concerns about the traffic jam of items being uploaded to the site, we want to do our best to show you as many fresh items as we can. Recently Listed Items will be linked to from, not surprisingly, the "Recently Listed Items" ticker on Etsy's homepage.

Check it out! It's a super fun way to "speed shop."

(Please note that we can't guarantee that this new site feature will show every single listing, but we hope this will help.)

All items below were found using: Recently Listed Items. See what you can find before the page fills up!

Let us know what you think in the comments!

P.S.
If you want to get the 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.

Survey Says: International Seller Survey Results Are In

2009-02-25T12:15:00-05:00

Thanks again to everyone who took the International Seller Survey, which was live from January 14-26, 2009. Below are some of the findings. Please bear in mind that this survey was not scientific and findings are provided for informational purposes only. Etsy makes no guarantees about the accuracy of the results.

International Seller Survey Demographics

Nearly 1600 people took the survey, and almost all (97%) were women. Sixty-seven different countries from around the world were represented—from every continent except Antarctica!

Here is a quick look at survey takers by country and/or region (e.g., Europe) – no country within a region had more than 3% of the respondents. (Note: Countries are not double counted in regions, e.g,. UK is not also counted in Europe.)

For languages other than English, 20%-25% of survey respondents speak French, Spanish or Dutch with another 10%-15% each speaking Italian or German. Many other languages, such as Hebrew and Thai, were also represented. Interestingly, however, when asked about what languages other than English respondents’ customers speak, the most common answer by far was French at over 40%, with German a distant second at 20%.

In terms of areas of the site our international sellers would like translated—either for themselves or their customers—Payment/Checkout was the number one choice. Other areas included Terms of Use, the category list, search and registration. Thanks to all of you who offered to help with translation. It’s something we hope to do longer-term and it will be great to have this information when the time comes to put it on our road map.

International Currency, Payments & Shipping

We have heard from many non-U.S. sellers that would like more currency options on Etsy, and that they would also like Etsy to more clearly indicate that prices are in United States Dollars (USD). We are looking at the best way to make this clearer. Although we don't have an exact timetable yet, we'll keep you posted.

In terms of payment options, nearly 100% of you chose PayPal as a preferred form of payment (multiple answers to this question were allowed), with the next most popular selection being credit card transactions processed by PayPal. Direct Debit/Bank Transfer was an option that 21% of international sellers would like, especially those in Germany, Singapore and Australia, where these sorts of transactions are most common.

Shipping preferences and standards differ from country to country and region to region. Almost all survey respondents are using local post offices to ship their items to customers, though the Italians noted their postal service was relatively unreliable. Not many survey respondents use a premium shipper, but if they did it would likely be DHL. Our friends in Canada are hampered by relatively high shipping costs—which they often do not feel they can pass on to their customers—and those in Singapore and Israel note that while their cost of shipping is not exceptionally high, home package delivery is not yet entirely commonplace in their countries.

One thing most survey respondents agreed upon is that buyers often do not realize their orders are coming from another country. As a result of this misunderstanding, many buyers often "convo" sellers outside their home countries to ask why shipment is taking so long. In speaking with a few non-U.S. sellers about the possibility of somehow identifying a seller as international (based on the location of the buyer), there were equal arguments for and against this idea. As it stands now, most sellers find that a "convo" or two is enough to properly set delivery expectations. Some survey respondents also mentioned that they make a note of their location in the “message to buyers” email that buyers receive after making a purchase—great idea!

International Seller Marketing Approaches

The questions around marketing elicited some interesting information. When asked how they had heard about Etsy for the first time, non-U.S. sellers said “word of mouth” most often (36%), with online avenues such as blogs or other websites making up the vast majority of the balance of answers.

The majority of international sellers also responded that their Etsy shop is their primary sales channel. Craft or art fairs and their own websites follow in relatively distant second and third places.

In terms of promoting Etsy shops, many respondents indicated that social networking tools are becoming nearly as popular as their own blogs. Multiple answers were allowed to this question, and Facebook, along with the seller’s own blog, are the dominant online promotion tools. Twitter is also quite popular.

Regional social networking sites like Mixi, hi5 and StudioVZ did not rank particularly high overall. Of the 1,335 non-U.S. sellers who answered this question, 204 (15%) said they do not use any social networking sites to promote their Etsy shops. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these respondents came from places (e.g., Israel) where offline sales accounted for a higher percentage of overall sales as compared to the international seller average. Be sure to check out the Resources area for tools you can use to help promote your Etsy shop!

Final Comments

Over 1,000 respondents chose to answer the question: If you could ask Etsy to do one thing for international buyers, what would it be? We received lots of useful comments and ideas, including several we’ve already touched upon like currency conversion and language translation. We also heard a more general plea for continued attention to issues unique to non-U.S. sellers. Our hope is that this survey is a step in that direction and we look forward to many more conversations with Etsians from around the world!

We also wanted to let you know that we want to make good on a couple of the more common requests, including an effort to add “Europe” as a shipping option. We will definitely keep you posted!

We are adding several countries and territories to the shipping options (e.g., Kosovo, Dominica, Aruba) and made a few corrections and clarifications in the shipping profile area. I’m sure these findings are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the learning we can glean from our sellers around the world, and again we really appreciate all of the international respondents taking the time to share your experience and ideas.

Etsy International Posts | Survey Posts | Shop Local

P.S.
If you want to get the 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.

Artwork for Every Room Showcase: On Sale February 26, 2009 12PM EST

2009-02-23T13:42:00-05:00

Back by popular demand, the Artwork for Every Room Showcase returns!

Looking at a few boring walls? Thinking about redecorating? The Artwork for Every Room Showcase will be a great place to find some art solutions to spruce up a tired room or add to your art collection.

We encourage sellers to promote their artwork in this Showcase. Examples might include sculpture, prints, original artwork and photographs, as well as frames to display this work. Sellers will need to have their items in one of these Categories: Art, Supplies, Vintage, Ceramics and Pottery, Glass or Woodworking.

Artwork for Every Room Showcase goes on sale Thursday, February 26, 2009 12PM EST. (Find this time in your zone.)
Go to the Showcase Gateway to purchase a spot.
This Showcase will run from Monday, March 2, 2009 12am EST through Sunday, March 8, 2009, 11:59pm EST.
For $15 USD, Etsy sellers can purchase a 24-hour spot, which will be linked from a prominent banner on Etsy's homepage.
Sellers, you determine which item will be featured in your Showcase slot. Sellers must use the tool in Your Etsy > Promote > Showcase. Learn more about this process here.

Future Showcases

If you are thinking about planning for other Showcases that may be more appropriate for your items, here are some of the front page Showcases we will be highlighting:

Spring Showers Showcase: On sale March 5, 2009; the Showcase will be live from March 9, 2009 through March 15, 2009.
- Think all things bridal shower and baby shower this spring.
Spring Fashion: On sale March 12, 2009; the Showcase will be live from March 16, 2009 through March 22, 2009.

What is this Showcase thing? For a general introduction to Showcase, read Matt's Storque article 13.5 Questions about the Showcase, and for deeper thoughts on figuring out if Showcase is right for you, see Beth's Showcase Deconstructed article.

Tech Update: Scheduled Site Maintenance

2009-02-16T13:02:00-05:00

UPDATE: All done!

On Monday, February 23rd from 2am EST until 6am EST, we will be doing scheduled maintenance on Etsy's systems. (Click here to translate this time on a world clock.) During this time period, all functions on the site will be unavailable and all Etsy users will be directed to a page that notes that the site is undergoing scheduled maintenance. For updates during the maintenance window, please see http://fix.etsy.com.

We have published the scheduled site maintenance times for the rest of 2009 here.

(Note: Any sellers who have purchased a Showcase that would run during this maintenance window will receive a pro-rated credit for the 4-hour maintenance period.)

P.S.
If you want to get the 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: Admin Announcement Forum

2009-02-05T13:51:00-05:00

Hello friends,

Today we launched a new Forum section for announcements from Etsy admin.

We are always striving to improve communication with our community, and we hope that this new Forum section is another step in that direction. Please understand that we will continue to engage with the community in the other sections of the Forums, and not all posts from admin will appear in the Announcements area. Instead, we plan to reserve it for those pieces of information we deem important enough to be exalted to this special section. As this is new for us too, there may be some "figuring out" about the best way to utilize this section and what types of information should be there. Nevertheless, we are excited that we have yet another tool to help get the word out to the community.

Please note: Only Etsy admin can post in this section of the Forums.

P.S.
If you want to get the 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.

Community Topics: Some Thoughts on Recently Listed Items

2009-01-29T16:53:00-05:00

Dear Friends,

Etsy has grown a great deal over the last two years, and in order to maintain site stability and speed we, like other large sites, are always tweaking the way things work. The engineering team at Etsy is constantly turning knobs and pulling levers to maximize site speed and availability, while also managing the growth in visitors, listings, images and many other variables. In the weeks ahead, Chad Dickerson, our CTO, will be telling you more about these efforts.

One lever that we recently adjusted was the way that listings, new or renewed, are delivered to the site (see this post). This adjustment involved delivering items in very frequent batches rather than continuously in real time. As an outcomes of this change, there is less of chance that an individual item will appear in certain ways of discovering items on Etsy, including the Recently Listed Items section of the Homepage, the Fresh Items list on the Buy Page, as part of Pounce, or in Time Machine 1 or Time Machine 2. Each of these product discovery functions works differently and the chances of sellers actually seeing their items appear in all of these places depend on many variables including listing volumes at specific times, site speed, and each user’s speed of navigation.

As many of you are aware, there have been several forum threads discussing this very issue. If you’ll bear with me, I would like to address some of the main concerns that have been coming up.

1. Etsy needs to communicate site changes more effectively.

Correct, and I take full responsibility here. I would like to apologize to the community at large. We did a poor job of addressing this issue in a timely or effective way. Several lengthy forum posts, a few days after the issue first arose is not acceptable. I didn't fully appreciate the need to communicate more comprehensively about this issue.

Many of you made suggestions about how Etsy can better communicate with sellers. One of the first steps we are exploring includes an “admin” (e.g. Etsy staff) announcement section of the Forums. Though the Forums get millions of unique page views per month, I realize that they are not read by all in the Etsy community. Nevertheless a dedicated Etsy admin forum might be helpful in making it easier to find our announcements about important changes. I will keep you posted on this.

In the mean time, I’ve learned a valuable lesson here, and will be working much more closely with engineering to make sure that important site changes and updates are communicated more effectively and in a timely manner.

2. Doesn’t my 20 cent listing guarantee me a spot on these features?

The 20-cent listing fee is the cost to list an item on Etsy. This fee provides a page displaying an item in your shop for four months, with up to five photos. Etsy does not guarantee that your listing will include exposure in other places on the site, like the Recently Listed Items section on the Homepage or other product discovery features. We will be making changes to relevant FAQs to make sure that this is very clear.

Having said that, Etsy does have a track record of creating innovative product discovery features that showcase the new and undiscovered on Etsy. We value those features and are always exploring new ways to engage buyers on the site by showcasing sellers and their items. We expect to continue that tradition as we grow, and are looking at ways we can improve the current features we have.

3. But Etsy has always told me to renew?

In various live workshops, the community moderated Etsy wiki, and in seller interviews such as "Quit Your Day Job", admin and community members alike have advocated relisting or renewing an item as a way to get it to the top of the heap, as it were. It is true, that Search and Category pages default to the most recently listed items in the search index.

Renewing may or may not get your item at the very top, but it will place it closer to the front in features that display listings in reverse chronological order. Nothing has changed there. That said, we think something should change. Renewing was never intended to be an advertising tool, but the way it was built – along with the emphasis on reverse chronological ranking throughout the site – allowed renewing to function as a promotional strategy.

In her Storque post in November, Maria Thomas, our CEO, touched on how we are beginning to think about changing Search. You can read it here. This work is still at a conceptual stage and nothing is changing in the short-term.

Next month Maria and Chad will be reaching out to the community again, to follow up on our thinking around Search and other matters.

I hope this clears things up. I know this is an important issue to many in the selling community and again, I apologize for how we communicated it initially. As always, you can reach me at matt@etsy.com. We're closing the comments here so we can follow your comments in one place in this forum thread.

Thanks, Matt

Etsy Alert: Scheduled Site Maintenance - Sunday November 30 at 4am EST

2008-11-28T13:15:00-05:00

UPDATE: Success! All fixed.

[the following was originally published on November 28, 2008]

During our last site maintenance window, we discovered an unanticipated network issue that prevented us from completing the network maintenance successfully. To correct this issue, we will be doing network maintenance on Sunday November 30 at 4am EST. Users may experience sporadic connectivity issues between 4-6am EST.

We will be posting updates on fix.etsy.com.

Etsy Alert: Site Maintenance November 21, 2008 from 4-5 am EST

2008-11-20T17:29:00-05:00

UPDATE: Success!

Tomorrow morning from 4-5 am EST (Friday, November 21, 2008), we will be performing emergency network maintenance that should not interrupt service to the web site; however, we wanted to let you know in case you experience any issues during that time.

We will be posting updates to fix.etsy.com during this maintenance window. Thanks for your patience as we continue to work to make Etsy better!

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Etsy Alert: Scheduled Storque Maintenance

2008-11-17T21:00:00-05:00

UPDATE: All done!

We will be taking Etsy's blog, the Storque, down for maintenance on Tuesday, November 18, 2008, from 10:30pm EST until 12:30am Wednesday.

When you return to reading the Storque — as we hope you do obsessively — you'll find pages loading a lot faster. Many of the other changes we're making will likely be invisible to you: optimization fixes and admin panel features. However, you will see neat little widgets to add a post to Facebook or Stumbleupon.

Thank you in advance for waiting through the downtime and let us know if you see any problems when we come back online.

TechUpdates | Join Etsy on Facebook | Opt-in for Etsy Email Lists

Tech Update: Scheduled Maintenance August 20 1pm EDT

2008-08-18T18:38:00-05:00

Dear Etsians,

Etsy will be conducting site maintenance at 1pm EDT (e.g. Wednesday afternoon eastern time U.S.), August 20, 2008.

We are not anticipating any issues or downtime — in fact, we hope you will not notice the change at all — but we want to give members a heads up. We are doing this maintenance at "prime time" so that the admin can be all hands on deck. That way, in the event of any issues we can switch changes back. Should you experience problems and are unable to post in the forums, please email support@etsy.com.

For now, if you have questions or concerns about the site maintenance, please see this forum thread. We will close commenting on this Storque post so we can consolidate info there.

Thank you for your patience while we continue to improve the site!

ps
If you want to get the 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 listserve.

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