Etsy likes to nag. . .

Etsy has always loved to use auto-emails and reminder emails nagging buyers to leave reviews but now they have changed to a more "in your face" method. 😏  For those sellers who do not purchase often you may not be aware of what etsy is doing to your customers.  Some sellers have said they seem to be getting more reviews and in some cases reviews from people who have not even received their items yet. 😐  Now in my case at least I had received my order before the persistent review request appeared on my home page, but once it appears it seems to be there until you click it and go leave a review. 

They are literally putting it right in your face when you log in (this is my home page this morning).  Now that I have left a review for the order the persistent nagging reminder has gone away. 😉  I have checked and although I received an order confirmation email, and shipping notice email and even a delivery email, there was no review request email this time.  Maybe they are thinking, since some have issues with receiving emails and many do not follow through after the email, but by putting it on the home page at log in more people will respond, which would make sense because they are already at etsy and logged in so no extra steps. 😎

Now I am not saying this is necessarily a bad move but I am wondering how many people will end up getting mildly annoyed by the home page nagging.  I am also concerned about international orders or orders shipped without tracking, which is I think what leads to the review request popping up before orders have even arrived which may in fact be what is behind the rash of bad reviews of "I haven't got my stuff yet".  😟  Now maybe if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic with severely delayed shipping all over it wouldn't be such a big deal but this particular issue at this particular time has the potential to be a really BIG deal to a lot of sellers.  

Here I go again. . .photos

I am still working on transferring listings to my newest platform, there is no easy magic button.  There is an import process but it's a process and it does not transfer ALL the listing info and it would just lead to a ton of editing and messing with them after, so one at a time creation is the method I've chosen. 😏   It is slower doing them one at a time but I get to decide what order stuff goes up in, I get to pick and chose which things get transferred, and I get to customize the listings as I create them.  

I've been doing them in groups by sections mostly and there are some things that will not get moved like my "clearance" section on etsy, yeah not putting "clearance" in a brand new shop on a brand new platform. 😉  Basic math says I cannot move everything, my etsy has close to 300 listings and my new goimagine shop has a 250 listing limit currently.  There is a larger plan but it's a 1000 listings which seemed like overkill to me.  ~LOL~ 

So there will be no clearance section, no leather jewelry section, and I am considering ways of re-working listings so that I can combine some things.  In some ways this is the exact opposite of what I do on etsy.  On etsy you cannot put a listing in more than 1 category, so sometimes I have more than 1 listing of something like a necklace bracelet set will have a listing for the set and another listing for the necklace by itself.  Also on etsy people seem to like cheap prices, they are looking for "bargains" so the low price points of the leather and clearance draw attention there but that is not a strategy I want to employ on goimagine.  😇

So as I am approaching the half way mark with moving things over, I have hit a bit of a snag, in that I cannot find some of my older photos. 😏  My etsy shop is 5 years old and way back then I had a different laptop and I often edited my photos on my old desktop.  Now neither of those is really alive anymore or easily accessible at the moment.  ~LOL~  You know life happens. . . I got a new laptop, now I'm not entirely sure where the old one is. . .when we were moving out of NY I think the old desktop computer got gutted so somewhere is a drive in a box but who knows where and then you'd still have to re-install it in something to access it. 😌  

Then I realized that those really old photos were not that great anyway and the backgrounds, yikes!  So I am planning a massive photo shoot to take new updated photos for almost all the earrings and necklaces and basically any listing with photos so old they have weird backgrounds.  😉  Now I just have to shuffle through and sort out my entire chainmaille inventory to make sure everything I plan to list is in stock and make lists and piles of stuff to photograph. 😇  I am also considering trying some photos of my walls of art, where I can take 1 photo of a wall and then put it in multiple listings, since I hung the canvases in groupings by style I think I can get away with that.  

I have plenty of time, I have been applying the "slow and steady" wins the race approach because technically goimagine is still in "beta". 😎  The plan is to have my shop fully stocked in a few weeks and the site's plan is to "launch" with PR and advertising shortly after that, so back to school time-ish.     

Maybe next month. . .

I think I'm going to "Resume business" sometime in July.  

The state of Indiana plans fit that timeline, although festivals/fairs and such large events (ya' know the kind I sell at) are in the final stage of the re-open plan. I have been looking to schedule things for fall but I dislike trying to plan months in advance in such an unpredictable time, especially since many of the events are now having a no refund policy on booth fees, even if events are cancelled.  😕

I have still been working on filling up my store on the new platform, which I have not named, linked, or advertised yet. The site is still in beta and although things are going well and improvements are happening every week, many sellers are getting orders already. Actually, on the whole the site has had tens of thousands of dollars of sales already, so I think it's going great for just starting. They are planning for their public launch and to start the PR and advertising for the site in July, I believe, so that aligns with my plans. 😇   

Hopefully, things will continue to stabilize and improve in the next 30 days and I'm not just planning for the fun of it. 😏