Comments on: Etsy Search – How Potential Buyers Find You

By: Carrie

Carrie — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:07:20 +0000

Sadly, I don’t even hope for sales from the search. All my sales come from outside referrals. I would love it of people actually came to Etsy looking for something like what I make and found me (and bought, of course), but I don’t expect that to happen.

On the other hand, I have had a lot of boutiques find me through Etsy, so have gotten some wholesale business that way.

By: Andi

Andi — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:24:14 +0000

The “relevant” search has really gotten people into an uproar lately, mainly because a lot of usually-busy sellers believe it has cost them views and thus sales. I have no idea if that’s what has affected the views, but clearly things are changing at Etsy. It seems to me that my shop is being seen more now, and I have made more sales since “most relevant” became a search option (I don’t renew items every day, and even when I did, it never got me views). So the folks who had the system figured out and were doing well have lost business, but those of use who are new and haven’t picked up many sales yet have actually benefitted. Forum posts are bearing this out.

It’s also true that “most relevant” works different from the Etsy front page than from the various category and sub-category pages, which is a problem. Hopefully Etsy can get it worked out to function consistently soon.

As a buyer, I can certainly find items I’m looking for much more easily with all the search changes they have rolled out. I always use the relevancy sort, and usually specify a price range when I’m looking for something. It’s how I search every other shopping site–why should Etsy be any different? I can’t believe they went this long without any relevancy sort at all on their search engine–it’s usually the default on any engine you see.

In response to Walter: I don’t think shop hearts should be used as search criteria, for the simple reason that sellers often swap hearts out of mutual support, which renders the “interestingness” completely moot. Sellers can also encourage friends and family to heart their items–again, indicating the amount of support you can garner rather than how liked your items actually are. Hearts are a nice piece of “fluff” but the only real purpose I can see for them is for buyers to mark items they might want to buy later.

-particlesofstone at etsy

By: walter mason

walter mason — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:14:50 +0000

Good article!

I think that etsy search doesn’t work well because the site has ignored the most basic and fundamental usability rules. Its not engineered to work well, and instead of using the valuable data it collects to improve relevence it has flash animation.

I’m talking about item favorites. Flickr uses image favorites more than anything else to determine ‘interestingness’, and there’s no denying that the interestingness algorithm works. Etsy has the data, but ignores it. I believe the site is programmed wrong and that it can not be ‘fixed’. Etsy needs to use a completely different databank structure, which basically means reprograming the whole site from the ground up.

In answer to your question, I don’t find the new relevency search very helpful.

walter

By: dahlila

dahlila — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Yes, the Etsy search is awful, still. Getting found is so difficult. I especially have trouble because no one can remember how to spell Dahlila. I should have named my shop Jane.

I played around w/searching my own shop (full title: dahlila found) & was surprised that even typing in Found under seller search only brought up names beginning in found.

There are shops I know exist & yet I have had trouble locating them because of a missed space or lack of “and” or sometimes no apparent reason!

It’s disheartening, but I think Etsy is working on it now, so hopefully soon we will all be found, even me.

dahlila, dahlilafound@etsy