Etsy has a lot of tools to help us as sellers succeed. We have forums and teams, shop stats, search ads, and the super informative Etsy Seller Handbook. All of these are great tools (especially teams like PromoFrenzy). One of my favorite things offered by Etsy is their prototypes. I’m a member of five out of the 15 currently available, and while some haven’t really affected me one way or another, some have proved invaluable.
What is an Etsy Prototype? Straight from the Etsy Prototype page:
Prototypes are projects from Etsy
Admin that explore different ways of using Etsy. Each prototype is released with the goal of
gathering data and observing how people use them. Note: Given their nature,
these projects may come and go at any time, and they may not always work as
expected. Etsy offers limited support for prototypes.
Basically, by joining an Etsy
Prototype, you’re becoming a sort of beta tester, helping Etsy experiment with
potential new features that they may or may not decide to roll out to everyone. Some are by invitation only, some you have to
apply to, and others still can just be signed up for with the click of a
button.
Over the holidays, I was lucky
enough to be invited to join a shipping prototype that let me offer a variety
of shipping speeds to my customers. It
was amazing, and once I got it set up, it was a huge time saver. My customers could choose what speed worked
for them without either of us having to jump through extra hoops, and, as a
special little treat, items that would arrive on or before December 24th
were surfaced to last minute shoppers. I’m
fairly certain being a member of this prototype was a huge contributor to my
shops success at the end of last year.
I was so bummed when the decided to
do away with the changes rather than roll them out, but that’s the nature of
prototypes. It was still really awesome; not only was I able
to experiment with the potential changes, but I was
also able to provide feedback and discuss improvements with Etsy
admins. I felt like I had some say in
the future of such a great site.
There
are about 15 current prototypes on Etsy right now. To learn more about each one, you can visit http://www.etsy.com/prototypes and
scroll through the list. The following
are four of my favorite:
I
added this prototype last year, shortly after I joined Etsy, so I’m not 100%
positive what the difference between shop stats with and without this might be. I think the biggest difference is that on
your shop stats page, down below the “Listing Favorites” section, there’s a “Treasuries”
section that lists all the treasuries you’ve been featured in for whatever time
period you’ve selected, and what items have been featured.
This
is one of my favorite prototypes, and it’s just invaluable for creating
treasuries. Once you’ve joined this
prototype, you can add items to your treasury with one click, and it’s
automatically saved.
When
I click on that link circled in red, I’ve given the option to add it to an
existing treasury, or to create a new one:
And
then, whatever option I pick, it automatically saves the item to the assigned
treasury, which is a huge help, because sometimes I forget to save, and wind up
losing entire treasuries.
This
is another really awesome
prototype. I believe there’s currently a
waiting list to join, but once you do, you can upload your digital products (up
to 5 files per item, or 20MB, whichever comes first) and when a customer’s
payment is processed, they get a link to download the item automatically. It’s a huge time saver (once you’ve uploaded
all your files), and while there’s still some drawbacks, it’s such a handy
tool. I can’t wait to see what else they do with it, and I’m hoping they’ll decide to roll it out to everyone.
This
is one I’ve only just joined, but I’m really excited about the concept. I accept custom orders, in fact I love custom
orders, but communicating that to potential customers has been a challenge from
day one. By joining this prototype,
there’s now a very prominent button on every item page that says “Request Custom Order”
that
when clicked on, brings up a contact box
Pretty cool, right?
There are plenty of other great
prototypes, all of which can be found at http://www.etsy.com/prototypes
They're definitely worth checking out, and who knows, you might find something that makes your life a little easier.
Happy sales to everyone!
