Hi Kim,
That’s exactly as I mentioned in my comment, I was advised that as a small team Folksy hadn’t the resources to change the system (at the time of the email I was sent) to make the search engine more accurate,
No misunderstanding here, but it’s good to hear you are able to improve the system. As I’ve said, Folksy is a good way to display (shop user friendly and good graphics etc), but as Folksy isn’t yet a household name, it’s more difficult for sellers to experience much traffic in order to sell easily direct from the site.
I’ve worked hard on my shop, tags etc and folksy forums as well as promoting Folksy on my IG account, so am obviously a friend of Folksy and would so love for it to become more recognised. The quality of craftsmanship is fantastic, that’s why I contacted Folksy originally in order to express my concerns as is evident with some other sellers on here.
No criticism just a real hope that Folksy and supporters of the site such as myself, see improvement in sales.
Meant to add Kim, there are many others on here who have also raised this issue (I was in fact replying to another seller with same problem) so I’m assuming you are also relating to their concerns and not just my comments, as you’ve only replied to my post which concerned me of being singled out thanks.
As a positive move, would there be anyway Folksy could announce improvements so that sellers are kept in the loop at all?
Well thought out plan and totally agree with all you’ve said. We all love and support Folksy but they need more investment clearly, as there are comments years old on some of the forums saying exactly what we are today and nothing has moved on.
Strangely, I replied another sellers comment to me this evening out of the blue and someone from Folksy responded to me, saying there may have been a misunderstanding as they are trying to improve it ?! Noted I appear to be the only time Folksy have responded on here which I am perplexed about as to why my comment has been singled out as we are all clearly saying similar things.
Like you say, I have really bigged up Folksy to friends and family and most of my sales are via that route and I’ve even asked them to purchase via my shop which has cost me more but to help Folksy and my shop.
Any hoo, I assume this forum was so Folksy could get feedback, and as far as I can see from comments on here everyone has raised constructive points, such as yours and hopefully mine amongst them too.
Hi Kim - you mentioned that there’ll hopefully be an announcement regarding improvements to search soon; do you have any rough idea of timescale for us? Are we talking days/weeks? Months? Years (gulp)? We can all appreciate that Folksy is run by a small team, but this is a critical matter that needs sorting urgently. Any information would be gratefully received!
I’m sorry if you felt singled out Lynn. My response was to you because you mentioned that Folksy had said we don’t have the resources to change this. I know you’ve contacted us at support a number of times about this, but we have always confirmed to you that this will be getting fixed, just that it would take some time. Yes it will require changes to the system, but we didn’t mean by that that we wouldn’t be doing it, just that it would be trickier and require more time.
I just didn’t want anyone to read that as we’d responded to you and said it wouldn’t be possible!
We know that there are some things which have been requested for years, and that we’ve wanted to do for years, but us being so small does limit how much we’re able to do. Our team has slowly been increasing over the last couple of years though, which means we’re now in a slightly better position to work on these improvements than previously.
@PhotoFairytales I’ll check with the rest of the team how close we are, but it’s definitely not months/years.
Thanks for your reply and I did wonder why it was only my comment that had been responded to.
However, I am so pleased to hear some positive news from you, that will going forward hopefully benefit Folksy sellers like myself who are disappointed with not only the low traffic but inaccurate search engine.
I think some of the comments on here are really relevant and well thought out and it’s pleasing to note, that Folksy hope to be able to improve things.
We Folksy sellers are very loyal, making our contacts aware of Folksy and what it’s all about. The concept is great and really deserves to be a household name.
There is so much genuine talent using Folksy, I myself would like nothing better than to see Folksy thrive and benefit all users, so I am pleased that you are actively within your resources, working on these matters.
I know it has been asked for several times - but option to add video. Doesn’t need to be huge, 10 - 15 seconds tops and maybe something like 800 X 600 to keep file size down for a quicker display.
I guess I am in the minority, but I am not bothered about having a video option. It would just be one more hurdle to jump in the listing process, one more thing to have to battle with, spend time on etc, one more thing that some people would be really good at and others struggle with, thus potential buyers being wooed by the quality or not of the video and the sellers videoing ability rather than their ability to make the actual product. Just my thoughts!
I know what I’ve just realised I would like, and that’s some option to have all the tags you have used available some way to choose and click, rather than having to write them all out individually each time. I know it’s not a big thing, but it’s just one of those petty annoyances!
I would like bulk editing of tags, sometimes the theme of the day is shown as a plural, I might have that tag but singular i.e Bear instead of bears and it’s so frustrating to have to go to every listing to change it or add another tag. Half the time I don’t bother as it’s too time consuming.
More advertising, people need to sell their items. No matter how lovely a site is, they will go elsewhere if not enough traffic. Folksy needs to advertise more.
I’ll join the chorus of voices calling for better advertising for the site, I know about folksy because I’m crafty, your average person will just go to the site that shall not be named for ‘handmade stuff’. Eventually people will migrate as it just gets more traffic.
The seller app for me though is what I would like to see improved. It’s very basic, I would like to be able to manage more of my shop from there on the fly, as navigating the website on a phone can be glitchy. I would also love a notification from it when I make a sale. It can be done, other selling sites have very good apps. The folksy one is somewhat of a let down.
I would also like more advertising, recently there seems to be reels of sellers creating but not as many photos of sellers products. I think paid advertising might help get the name out there.
