Whilst I am grateful that James B @uxtest gave a Q&A session today timing it for 2-3pm on a monday afternoon with only 2 hours notice to post questions rather excluded those that do not run their shops as their sole business and are out at work at that hour of the day. Hopefully future Q&A sessions, which I would love to see take place BTW, will happen with a little bit more notice.
I would like to say thank you though James for taking the time to answer questions
The cynical me would say that setting up a Q&A in the hour before mums have to collect their kids from school, or when those of us working full-time would not be able to participate, was a calculated decision.
I still donât like the use of words like âprobablyâ in Jamesâ answers. I work with techy people all day long and I know what it means when they use words like that.
But at least the Q&A was done. Maybe one in the evening one day, or at the weekend too would be good with a bit more notice.
Missed it where was it advertised?
Gill
It wasnât really Gill @rainbowsnmore, or at least if it was I missed it. It just popped up on the forums this afternoon.
You didnât miss much.
We still have the big button, and we donât know how long for. We donât know if itâs having a negative or positive effect either.
I am still none the wiserâŚother than knowing my views have gone up but my sales have gone from 34 last month to 1 so far in DecemberâŚbut I knew that before the Q/A.
Sorry to be inflammatory, but I donât think Folksy are really interested in their sellers. They are, however, very interested in their buyers. I wonder when Folksy HQ will realise that you canât have one without the other?
Roz, it also excluded some of us that DO run our online shops as sole business - crazy timing! Monday is always a busy day dealing with orders that have accumulated over the weekend, and this Monday in particular, so close to Christmas. I worked flat out today making custom orders and packing them up to make 4.30pm post office deadline - certainly could not have taken an hour or so out for this âeventâ.
And in case anyone is wondering, I must report that not a single one of the many items I packed today was a Folksy order 
Well done on your sales Julie and Roz I totally agree with you.
Doesnât that just sum up what they really think and where we fit into the grand scheme of things
Gill
I did try and point out that they need to look after us sellers not just the buyersâŚbut I think it fell on deaf earsâŚ
Kim
x
Totally passed me by. Not at home therefore not on the PC during the day and had no prior warning. .
Yes, prior warning would have been nice. It was only by luck that I stopped by the forums and found the thread. Think they were scared of the amount and type of questions that would be asked if they gave us notice 
Ditto me.Busy away from machine returned to a fait accomplit.
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I agree - exactly the point I made yesterday - before the thread was locked by James
âMY listing behavior HAS changed as has my promoting behaviour as a result of this. As one of your key stakeholders our behaviours as shopkeepers affect your revenue stream directly via fees/commissions that we pay to you, in terms of promoting our shops and folksy generally and in the recruitment of new shopkeepers. I do not get sense that this is fully understood or embraced by Folksy ⌠and that the lack of understand of shopkeepers as stakeholders and indeed customers of Folksy continues to result in this kind of issue. Again I would bring up the subject of Focus groups incorporating all your stakeholdersâ
But Folksy donât need to attract sellers - there are plenty of people wanting to sell on here - they do however need to attract buyers, otherwise whatâs the point of having sellers? And without buyers, all the sellers will be unhappy as they have no salesâŚitâs a bit of a circular dilemma, but at the moment, itâs buyers that are in short supply, not sellers, so that is their priority. I can fully appreciate that, but it can still be frustrating for us, as we are all competing against each other for the small amount of business coming through the site.
I would LOVE Folksy to do something for the buyers!
Step one would be getting Folksy known about. Try putting âcraft shopâ into Google and see how many pages of other sites come up before Folksy. Even WHSmith and Dunelm Mill are listed earlier!
Oh, and Kaspersky tags it as grey flag - unknown safety, you may not wish to risk going to this site. I donât know what needs doing to fix that, but it surely needs attention!
But once we have got them here the buyer experience needs to be smoother. Every few days thereâs someone on the forum saying they had problems with an order not processing properly. Fixing bugs may not be as exciting for the programmers as creating a new big red button, but thatâs where the priority needs to be.
Hi Roz,
It was suggested on the blog over a week ago and we thought it would be an informal Q&A about testing specifically (although it broadened out!). Happy to do more as I mentioned in the Q&A itself, if thereâs a demand for it.
The buyer experience we have from Satalytics data scores the buying experience highly. The only below 5 score recently turned out to be a mistake!
Kapersky - a internet security tool - ranks many sites as grey and probably does so as we use a very common security certificate operated by a third party (GANDI) rather than our own, like Amazon. Https has varying grades of security and we have the most common which most ecommerce services use and which is secure and safe. Banks and very large orgs etc use a slightly higher grade.
Can I ask you why a buyer looking for gifts would search for âCraft shopâ rather than the description of the thing they are looking for? Searches for âcraft shopâ on google are low at around 270 a month. Use googleâs keyword planner tool and put yourself in the mind of a buyer for popular search terms (rather than the seller) and you should find we rank well.
Best,
James
Thatâs interesting about the security thing because I had a buyer here that refused to buy through Folksy as it was flagged up as insecure or something like that. I explained that I buy 90% of all my gifts and cards from Folksy and have had no problem but she wouldnât be reassured. The next time I bought something I noticed that Opera puts up a flag saying non-secure content not displayed - Iâd not noticed before, but it does now come up for every purchase I make. This really is putting people off using Folksy. I donât think my worried buyer will return and that affects all of us not just me, because if she thinks the site is dodgy she wonât come back to buy from anybody.