You may have noticed our search has just got a new look! We’re using a new search technology to drive search results and we’ve also slightly changed the way you interact with search. These changes are designed to improve the results you get for any given query and thus help people find relevant things to buy.
One change you’ll notice is a specific ‘shop search’ as we found someone wanting a specific shop would often find it difficult to identify it amongst items that were returned. We think pulling out shop searches as a specific search makes it easier for that niche (but important) need to be met.
The results you get will obviously very much depend on the type of query you make, but we’ve run it across a variety of test queries to check it works as expected. On balance we believe the new search returns more relevant results but we’d appreciate your feedback to help us improve upon it. There is a feedback button on the search page for you to share any thoughts you have - please be as specific as possible as to where a search result has not met your expectations.
We will review our guidance on search to check if anything needs updating after we’ve reviewed the user feedback, as it may be there are more changes we need to make to get the best set of results.
Thanks for your assistance in helping us improve Folksy!
Just had a play and sent in some feedback. Didn’t we used to be able to see the shop name on listings in the search results, or did I just imagine that? Either way it is/was/would be really useful to be able to see it especially when trying to pick things from 8 different shops for a Folksy Friday board!
That’s the sort of advice that will need to wait until after we’ve got more feedback, as tweaks we make due to the feedback could change exactly what’s considered to make sure the right results are coming up.
Our focus has been on how buyers use search, as to increase sales it’s our priority that search works well for them, so that may mean there are some things we’ve missed which are more useful to a seller than a buyer, if you notice something missing that’s important to you though please include it in the feedback.
Search is working well for me apart from a few odd things showing up in the results, but it may be because i’m searching for things like “purple flowers”. Personally, I’m not too keen on the different sized product pictures in the results. It means that when i’m scrolling down, my eyes are all over the place rather than being able to look at a row at a glance. I fed back on the search screen re the partial shop name search.
Thanks so much for updating us @folksystaff, and offering us the chance to give feedback. I am doing some test searches and will feedback on on specific issues as I find them.
Can I offer some general feedback about the style/layout.
Overall, it has a clean and professional look, and I like the way the title and price are displayed. I also like that you actually have to click search first - the old way allowed you to start typing in the small box and then jumped to search, often losing the first couple of letters.
However, I don’t like the different size images - it really does look like Pinterest - and I find my eye is jumping all over the place. It doesn’t feel a restful way to shop, and items with a bigger box (portrait images) are having prominence. I believe you want us all to move to portrait for the first image because it works well with other platforms/interfaces, but that will take time.
But the main issue for me is the promotion of the Gift Guides in the middle of the first page. It could actually stop customers from looking at anything after the half of the page, as the rest of the page and links to other pages are lost below “the call to action” banner. Customers that are unfamiliar with how Folksy Search used to look may not even realise there are more items that meet their search requirements, and will either click on the guides to find something else, or even go and shop elsewhere.
One of the fairness about Folksy’s “search” was that any shop could get found as long as their items matched the search criteria. Mixing the results up with a signpost to Gift Guides seems unfair as they only include items chosen by Folksy staff. Perhaps the Gift Guide promotion box could be moved to the bottom of the page, after the links to other pages? Customers would then have a more informed choice - either continue to search, or jump to the guides.
@TheOldButton I very much agree with you Sharon. I thought that the section/selection had ended when I got to the gift guide section. I also agree that featuring products taken from the Gift Guides is from what is essentially a curated selection, and not from all sellers, so rather unfair. There was also still a lot of ‘clumping’ in results when I put in a search for ‘ceramics’ - several consecutive products appearing from single sellers which doesn’t show variety of choice. I do like the fact that the results appear when I’ve finished typing in the word though, instead of whizzing to the selection as it used to do!
I tried typing in ‘ceramics’ in the search for shops box and found that my shop didn’t appear at all in the selection, even though my shop is Judy Adams Ceramics. There didn’t seem to be another page to look at either, so anyone looking for my shop would presumably never see it. I wondered why this was the case… It works OK if you put in the entire shop name, but for someone just wanting to look at ceramic shops, then they don’t see all of them, or they have to remember the entire shop name if they want to find a particular shop.
I also like to see the shop name on the items returned in the search.
I do like the new look however…
Search ‘Teddy bears’ I would expect actualy teddy bears to appear first but 2 pages of cards with bears on, which all looked similar so possibly from the same shop. if I was looking to buy a bear I would immediately think there wern’t any. As a customer I would not know that teddy beàrs and similar were hidden under ‘homeware’ then under another sub category of dolls and collectables. I know that hasn’t changed but I don’t think homeware is right for them, I’m sure this must apply to other items as well. If I was new to Folksy and I looked down the list of categories I wouldn’t look any further I would just think there wern’t any listed. Although the card results were rightfully returned within teddy bears I think the page should be a mixture of items and I would expect to see actual teddy bears. I understand that might change with each search and I have only done it twice.
I will do some more searches on different items.
I don’t like the ‘gift guide’ ad that’s in the middle of each search page, does it need to be there? it spoils the look of the page and only because I knew there must be more did I scroll past it, it would be easy to think the few items above it were the only results.
I’m not really sure whats happened with the search..
I typed in Doll
I would expect that items with the word Doll at the very beginning of the title would come up first, the first page images were tilda style rabbits so the word ‘doll’ was not at the beginning of the title. There were also a few of them clumped together.
There was a webinar thingy on searching last year and by using for example the word ‘doll’ at the beginning of the title and desccription then again in the tags means it would appear at the front of the search results but this is not happening,
I dont think the searches have worked as well since the changes were made a few months ago.
Has this info now changed or is the title, description and tags still the most important for being found in searches ?
I’m definitely agreeing with the main points others have mentioned - the Gift Guide bit is too in-your-face and too soon, it stops the scrolling the flow completely. And shop names need to be on there. And the clumping of pieces from the same shop, that always drives me mad and it’s still there! The Pinterest look doesn’t bother me, I quite like it but I’m on a big computer screen, it’s probably not good on a phone?
When you first go into the search function the layout looks good, it has a professional look and showcases a range of items really well. However when you search for a specific item the clumping is a major issue and the fact that the images are different sizes makes this look messy.
I also noticed that search only brings up 7 pages maximum as far as I could see which means that there are hundreds of items that won’t show up which is very unfair.
I typed in flowers and didn’t come up at all. Crochet flowers put me on page 3. I struggle to know how to get seen in Folksy searches despite reading all the advice so it might be me not putting the right tags etc. any advice welcome
The Pinterest style layout is pretty if it was a static page but when you are scrolling through, it makes your eyes dart all over the place, so you can’t keep any kind of order to your search.
The gift guide in the middle of the page is jarring and makes you think you have come to the end of the page.
Clumping by one seller is a problem - not enough variety.
Only 7 pages gives a very limited selection. (Are they shown by date order - newly listed items making it onto the first 7 pages?)
Please bring back shop names - I just want to know if I am looking at pages of stuff by the same shop.
I’ve just searched retirement cards and it returned pages and pages of different car cards all saying happy birthday, I know retirement is an option that this maker offers but this does make it look like an error!
I’ve been wondering how the search works too, as last night when I searched ‘backpack’ I was way down on page two - also after all sorts of things that weren’t backpacks and that gift guide - but this morning at least some of my backpacks are near the start of the search!! After spending a lot of time optimising listings following all the Folksy advice, this seems really depressing
I will agree with everything said so far. When I saw the gift guide banner I thought “was that it?” and then accidentally scrolled down and saw there were more. An even bigger issue is that it appears on every single page. It feels like I’m brain washed to visit the guides, when I am looking for something specific.
The different sizes of the pictures makes me scrolling without being able to see any results really, the rectangle images draw the attention on them and make the rest invisible. Not sure the whole set up is phone friendly, but it put me off even on the laptop. It also creates big empty spaces just before the banner starts and when the page finishes, which is another indicator that relevant items might have come to an end (while they haven’t).
Clumping is still terrible, it looks like once it has picked up a title from a shop, it brings up all the similar titles from the same seller no matter what the “point scoring” as a whole is, so it overrules items from other shops that score higher. On top of that, not being able to see the shop’s name doesn’t allow me to pick up shops easily and remember them, I have to click on them which can take me away from what I am looking for very easily and be more time consuming. Not practical for the boards like folksy Friday at all.
The search algorithm and whatever we were told about how the search works doesn’t seem to be working correctly anymore.
I searched sympathy card. My only sympathy card has these exact two words first on the title, then on the first sentence of the description, and is also first on the tags. I have used all the characters in the description (or very close to the limit) as we were told it also counts. It is also in the right category. It appears on page 5, with cards that don’t have the same wording on the title (or in that order), with small descriptions that don’t contain the two words together or not at all, don’t have them as an exact tag or they are lower in order, appearing on pages 2 and 3. Which means the point scoring isn’t working properly and probably confirms that my listing has been overruled because of the clumping, despite scoring higher.
I like how faster it is and that the results don’t change as we type in though.
I too feel really despondent about it. My search for ‘vases’ this morning showed only three of mine, with the majority of the results being engraved memorial vases on gravestones (10 on the first page). Could the Folksy team explain what is the criteria for the selection order? Do the top sellers come on the first pages? Or the most recently listed? Or Plus Members rather than basic? And can anything be done about clumping from single sellers? At a quick look at my shop I have 18 item titles with the word ‘vase’ either at the front or in the first five words. Why aren’t they appearing in the search when other sellers’ items are? And items are showing which aren’t vases at all? I don’t know what else I can do.
