Hi everyone. We just wanted to let you know that we’re about to release a few changes to the homepage. We’ve identified the bits of what we termed “the smorgasbord” (pictured below) that performed best and we’re pulling those out into separate sections – eg Folksy Favourites, popular right now - with the aim of making it easier for buyers to navigate the site, find what they’re looking for and also find inspiration.
Logged-in buyers will now see ‘New Items from Your Favourite Shops’ at the top of the page so they get a more personalised view and see more things they like.
The ‘smorgasbord’ itself is disappearing because feedback from buyers was that they found it confusing - and it also required a lot of memory to run. The only thing for that which is not going to be in the new homepage is the “being bought now” feature. Everything else will still be there, it’s just the format that’s changing. We just wanted to tell you it was happening, and explain the reasoning behind it
I’m a misery-guts, I know, but I’ve just un-favourited a whole lot of shops because I just had a front page full of them and their items, nobody else. I don’t want a front page JUST full of them and their items. Sorry, but I liked the old smorgasbord, as it showed me things I hadn’t seen before from sellers I hadn’t seen before. I appreciate the reasons behind the change, so I’m just going to have to adapt. No more favouriting shops from me. Pity…
It looks clean and simple and straight to the point. The see more buttons are great if you want to look at more of the section and I think it has everything you need.
I only favourite items and shops which I like so I have no issue with my page being full of things I don’t :).
I think 8 items from shops I already Love; followed by 8 Folksy Favourites (likely from sellers I don’t know…); a few Gift Guides, the featured seller,… Enough for a taster of each and more if I choose to click. Certainly, works really well on my PC (and I’m sure you have tried it for size on phones, I don’t have one).
Especially like the idea of Popular Right now - however you are choosing them (and maybe if we don’t know, we can’t bias it!!)
Happy enough with the new format but I’m with Lois @Beesandblossoms on the new items from your favourite sellers bit at the top. I can easily visit my favourite shops and look at their items using the favourites tab and I like to see new items that perhaps I wouldn’t have found before and now I have to scroll down to do so. Perhaps the same sections but in a different order would work better for me.
Maybe if the new things from favourite shops just had one item from each of the most recent listers in favourite shops that would suit everyone more? So you don’t just have lots from one shop? That said, I’m very happy with the changes. The layout is fresh and easy to navigate
I just went to check but got completely distracted by some lovely hand dyed cotton I found there What do you mean, short attention spa… ooo, what’s that over there?..
I know what you mean…I would prefer this section further down the page too, but maybe it works better from a buyers point of view depending on how many shops they follow…
I used to like the box which showed the item that had just sold…but I can’t see that now…
Hello – thanks everyone!
As @folksycontent said, we’ve pulled the various bits of the smorgasbord out into modular sections that we can more easily track and move around depending on how well they perform with buyers. The old design made it difficult to update regularly in response to feedback and so ended up being fairly static for periods of time.
We’ve a few more things to add in there to see how they behave, and also a couple of ideas from these comments: for instance your comments suggest that a ‘Popular right now’ page of its own might be a good idea, too. @KBCreations & @bekokodesigns – the ‘sold N minutes ago’ box was a pretty frustrating experience for a buyer, as most items on Folksy have a quantity of 1. By the time a potential buyer clicked on the item in that box it was often already gone! Would I be right in thinking that you miss the box because it’s a quick, rough & ready glimpse into what might be selling? If that’s the case, maybe we need to have a think about how to satisfy that need better with some sort of view that handles that explicitly.
Oh, and @KBCreations again – thanks for the spot with there only being 3 items in ‘popular right now’ – I think that’ll be a bug and I think I know what the issue is – I’ll jump on to investigating that as soon as I’ve responded here! @Beesandblossoms – I’m sorry you don’t like the changes. It honestly didn’t occur to us that some people might not like to see new things from their favourite shops. It’s always fascinating to hear about the different, unanticipated ways people interact with what we design, and we clearly need to have a think about your response and why we didn’t forsee it at all. Hopefully the fact that the homepage can be more regularly changed in response to users’ needs will reassure you the page will at least be evolving in response to buyers and sellers. Oh, and you’re definitely not a ‘misery-guts’! This is all part of the negotiation between us and our brilliant community to try and get as much as possible right for the greatest number of people. @HelenCliffordArt – thank you! @OrchardFelts – and thank you! We’ll be measuring how the new items from favourite sellers performs in comparison to the rest of the page and using that data to order the various elements. To be honest, our metrics so far suggest that it will perform well, but we definitely will keep an impartial eye on it. @bekokodesigns – That’s a really good suggestion about limiting the number of items per seller in that view, thank you – I’ll schedule some time to have a look into that!
Thanks so much for your feedback so far!
Doug. x
Yes @dougfolksy the ‘Sold’ items box was a good indicator of what sort of items are selling and for me, I got a tremendous buzz if it was one of my items…and it may even have encouraged others to look in my shop for something similar, even if that particular item was gone. I thought that it was only the ‘being bought now’ box that had been removed so am a bit dissapointed that the ‘Sold ? minutes ago’ box has also gone…
Could you answer if the ’ popular right now’ is items that have just been ‘loved’…this may impact on various threads on the forum if they no longer show on the front page…
I love that you warn us about these things, so much more friendly than that other lot
But I’m sorry to say that I hardly ever look at the front page. Who cares what has just been sold to somebody else? “There was only one and you can’t have it!” seems a bit mean to me.
The New Items and New Sellers sections are a major irritation to someone who has been with Folksy for many years and does not list or relist several times a day. I would be happy for those to disappear completely in favour of more space for Gift Guides.
Also, like Roz and Lois I don’t need to see favourites on the front page. If I’m signed in to do shop maintenance my favourite shops will be for supplies. If I don’t need any buttons right now, showing me that Supplier X has just listed another 20 types of buttons is boring. You might catch my eye with 20 different items from 20 different sellers though.
If you want to do something clever and always changing what about a themed section? So every day (or week or whatever) there is a new theme, say flowers, or seagulls, or purple, or jazz . . . Search for the theme creates a list, then a selection from that list with only one item per seller is displayed, with the selection changing every 20 minutes or whatever. It would showcase the huge variety of items available on Folksy and give everyone a chance to be seen.
I really like that idea. Maybe we could use the tags to show that view - ie one day ‘blue tit’ would be the featured tag with a selection of items and a link to the tag page to show more, and the next ‘oak’ or something. That would be a great view and would introduce people to lost of new items and shops. I wonder how much work that would be to implement, @dougfolksy? We could even have a thread on here or in the Clubhouse (or both) suggesting the tag/themes for that week.
Could be lots of fun.
That’s the good thing about this new homepage layout though, we can add new features, increase certain sections and play around with things based on what you need, our buyers need and feedback.
At the moment, the next thing we’re planning to add in is the Bestsellers list. That should hopefully address some of your needs @KBCreations about seeing what’s selling.
The popular right now list is based on items that have been recently favourited - does that impact on the threads? Based on comments here, Doug’s going to create a landing page for ‘recently favourited items’ which will be linked to with a ‘see more’ button. Might be a few days’ work though
@folksycontent That sounds good…some of the threads on the forum involve us ‘favouriting’ each others work in order to get a bit of exposure on the front page to get our items seen…
I’m with the others on not liking favourited shops at the top and I’ve just unfavourited all mine which has pushed it down the page and now I have list of suggested favourites which is better.
Keep up the good work Doug xx
What do you mean, short attention spa… ooo, what’s that over there?..
