It’s very interesting, but a bit depressing for me! So many impressions, so few views…I’m thinking now that I need to make my thumbnails more eye catching, perhaps by using a more colourful background…?
Must admit I wish my views were better but at a loss about what to change, my backgrounds are neutral as that’s what most of the advice in the blogs advises and I think my prices are fair
I can’t even see it, just says oppps sorry can’t find this page lol
You can’t see the stats page or the blog about it? I think there is a problem with some of the links to the blog on shop dashboards but the one at the top of this thread works, if it’s your stats page you can’t access you need to let support know.
Hi – Doug here. I’ll zip through the questions I’ve spotted and if I miss any be sure to let me know.
Oh, but before I do, can I just say thanks for the feedback so far? As we’ve said, this is a work in progress with further development planned for it, so your input really is appreciated.
Anyway…
It’s not working on my device / browser
We have a sort-of unofficial policy about the browsers we support. The issue we face is that older browsers take much more time to develop for, and the older the browsers that we support, the more development time it takes. So we split development into two streams with regard to browser support.
-
Buyer-facing. Obviously the buyer experience has to be as pain-free as we can reasonably make it with the resources that we have. The law of diminished returns still applies here, of course, so we can’t support everything ever made. It’s not really possible to give a comprehensive list of what is ‘supported’, as browsers/devices and the features they support are much more of a moving target these days. But we aim to support anything reasonably in use, and try our best to ensure that the buyers’ experience on the site is still as pleasant as possible even where relatively recent features aren’t supported.
-
Seller-facing. This would typically be the dashboard. Here we still want you all to have a great experience. That is paramount. But in order for us to be able to be innovative and bring new features as expeditiously as possible, we will rely on more recent browsers and system updates. We think that we’re better able to ask of our sellers that they are using reasonably recent browsers or devices with all the system updates applied. This is because whereas our buyers are straightforwards customers (of ours and yours), our sellers are our partners as well as customers. Our hope is that you will accept the practicality of us being able to deliver more features more quickly by not having to worry about technology that’s years out of date. The alternative would be to add much more overhead to development for an ever-diminishing number of users who aren’t using a modern browser or haven’t applied system updates for whatever reason. It’s no exaggeration to say that days and weeks of development time could be added to every bit of work we want to release to support a couple of users on ancient systems. Weeks of work that could be going into the next feature.
The cases that have been mentioned in this thread fall into these categories:
Internet explorer doesn’t work
The last version of IE was released in 2013, and it can’t really be considered a modern browser any more. Microsoft now ship Edge, which is a modern browser that supports modern standards well. However, users of older systems can still install the latest Chrome (our unofficial recommendation, in that it’s the main one I use!), Firefox or Opera to have the best experience. Other browsers are available, but those three are the main ones I have experience of.
If you’re already using Chrome, or one of the others, and are still seeing issues, it could well be that you’re running an older version of it and need to update.
Not working on my mobile device
When we were testing on a few different devices, where we saw this issue it was fixed by making sure the system was up-to-date, with all application and system updates run. Then everything ran just fine.
If you do this and still see an issue, could you let us know what device (and operating system version) and browser (and version) you’re running so that we can try to replicate the issue?
Those users seeing a flashing “Folksy” sign, could you let me know what device (and OS version) and browser you’re seeing it in? Really it should be showing you the “not supported” message, so it would be good to figure out why it isn’t.
A final note on updating your system and/or browser
I hope I’m not overstepping bounds when I say that really people should keep any devices and browsers they use up-to-date, regardless of Folksy’s policy on dashboard development. A lot of work goes into creating the system and browser updates – this is because an awful lot of work goes into trying to subvert the systems and browsers by nefarious hackers trying to steal your identity, money, etc. It’s all too easy to become sanguine about running your updates later, or never, but this really is, in my opinion as a software engineer, really quite ill-advised.
What is the difference between Views and Impressions?
This can be a little counter-intuitive, sorry – the terminology is a work-in-progress as well as the page!
An Impression is registered when your item appears in a list of other items in a search page or a category page or the recently listed page, etc. Basically any time your items is shown in a page that isn’t that item’s specific listing page.
If someone then clicks on your item to view the listing page, that is registered as a View.
Does that make it any clearer? Please don’t be shy to say if it doesn’t, I know I’m no Shakespeare.
Are my own views counted in the View count for my items?
Usually followed by a sentiment of “I hope not”.
Umm… Yes they are.
When I wrote the system to track events, I just thought of the events, not the person generating them.
That said, I can totally see the point of not including a seller’s own views, so that can be something that gets fixed as part of the ongoing work on this page if people generally think it important.
I totally take the point, so sorry if this isn’t as you would want it to be in this initial release.
Like I say, we’re collating feedback, and this will be added to the list of requests and tweaks to prioritise.
There’s a discrepancy between the sold item counts on the stats page and my shop’s page
The count on the shop page records all items that have been added to orders that made it to checkout. The count on the stats page is more accurate in that it is a count of all items that have been successfully paid for.
What does the “Misc” in the visitors section mean?
Basically it means we’re not sure where the traffic comes from. Whilst this is to be expected for a smaller proportion of traffic, the figure is currently higher than we’d anticipate it being, as some of you have observed.
The reason for this, we think, is that our system currently fails to recognise when people arrive from some links in some mobile applications. This is because some mobile applications use non-standard ways of identifying themselves to a page they link to. We think there are some significant mobile apps in there, like Facebook, so this is a priority to research and fix.
Feature requests
Things like the suggestion to track search terms used, etc. This release is pretty much an exercise to see if the page is useful, and to petition you all for such suggestions, so… Thank you, and please keep them coming.
Oh, and a final note – thanks for letting us know about broken links – they should be fixed now.
I hope that answers most of your questions so far – let me know if I’ve missed any and I’ll try to answer them, or let me know if I’ve been unclear at all and I’ll try to be clearer (I’m a geek – human languages aren’t really my thing. ;)).
I’m getting the flashing Folksy graphic, page not loading.
Using…
Samsung Galaxy Tab A
Android- 6.0.1
2016
Well, I would prefer it if my own views do not count as that would be misleading. If I’m working on my shop then my views will be high. If there is any way this can be looked at in the near future, that would be great.
As for the impressions…do you mean that when someone does a search and my item comes up (and no one clicks on it) it is counted as impressions? Or even when someone does not do a search, my item appears in various pages due to the tags I have selected? Not sure if this makes sense…
“There’s a discrepancy between the sold item counts on the stats page and my shop’s page
The count on the shop page records all items that have been added to orders that made it to checkout. The count on the stats page is more accurate in that it is a count of all items that have been successfully paid for.”
Really? I have 1737 sales showing on my shop page, and I’ve kept track as the sales have been made, and the number has never gone up for no reason, or I (and I’m sure others) would have been questioning the discrepancy. If items didn’t get paid for I returned them to my shop, and the number of sales went down again. However - according the the stats page my sales total is 1,455. That’s a huge difference! Almost 300 - and I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that I could have not noticed almost 300 non-sales being added to my tally. That simply doesn’t make sense.
I’m not sure that I’m going to believe anything on a stats page when it can’t tell me accurately the number of sales I’ve had, as I know what I’ve sold as I keep check when the number on my shop page goes up.
To me that explanation for the difference in numbers doesn’t add up!
@dougfolksy I have to agree with @DandelionsGallery on the discrepancy with shop sales.
I have just counted all my orders in my dashboard and they add up to 159 as it states on my shop front. All these orders were paid for and shipped. In the new stats page it states that I have sold 148 items in total, a difference of 11.
Is it possible that the lower figure is because they are counting orders instead of individual items.
Then orders of more than one item would count as one purchase instead of multiples.
But I agree,it is confusing!
That was a good suggestion @thesherbetpatch but I just checked and no, that isn’t it…that figure is 109…
I have fewer sales so easier to count
But I have actually had 14 orders, covering 17 items.
The new dashboard says, correctly, 17 items.
My shop page shows 18 items. That seems to be the one which is wrong.
ok…I think I have sussed it.
If a customer buys more than one of the same item in the same order it is only counted as 1.
I have a number of orders where people have bought 2 of the same item at the same time, and one where the person bought 4 of the same item. If I count the actual number of items purchased I get to 159, which is what it says on my front page. If I count the multiple purchases as just 1 item then I get 148, which is what it says on my stats page. Am I right @dougfolksy ? Is the new system just seeing the URL’s within an order? So if a person buys 2 of them same item, with the same URL, at the same time it is only counting it once?
That sounds a bonkers system - a sale is a sale whether it is several of one item or all different items. I’ll stick to looking at the number of sales on my shop page and just ignore the stats page, I think
I’m going to throw a spanner in the works here - it says in the last 24hrs I have sold 4 items, I have actually sold 5 items.
1 was a singular order = 1 item
1 sale was a multiple order, 2 strawberries, 2 pears = 4 items
But if we are saying that multiple orders of the same thing in the same order only count as one item then the second sale would -= 2 items.
That would then make it 3 items sold - so the figure of 4 items is wrong however you look at it - lol!
@thedotterypotter Oh dear…I thought I had sussed it!..maybe not.
Just out of interest, where have you taken your ‘last 24 hours’ from. I had a sale on Wednesday evening for 2 items. The sales didn’t show on my stats until the next day, so I think they update at midnight…
ah…ok - I assumed it was in real time. If it hasn’t been updated for my sale this afternoon - then 4 items would be correct. But they were duplicates, so if the doubles theory would have worked out, it would have only been 2 sales!
Even those stats are enough to addle my little brain!
In total though - the sales on my page and on my stats page has a discrepancy of about 800 sales - I can’t imagine that many people changed their mind at checkout!
I thought it would be real time too, but my sale happened about 8.45 in the evening, and when I checked the stats about an hour later it still said 0 sales for the last 24 hours so assume it updates at midnight (wasn’t up to check!).
As you say though, the doubles theory is wrong then if your duplicate items have been added as 4 items. It fitted in with my discrepancy 11 exactly, but maybe that’s just coincidence.
I don’t know what else it can be. I know in my case the shop front figure is the correct one as I have gone through all my sales manually and checked.
Yay! It’s great! Well done
@thedotterypotter I just made a sale (yeah!!) and checked the new stats. I set it for the last 24 hours…it knows I have made a sale because the total sales ever has gone up by 1 to 149, but it still saying 0 sales in the last 24 hours…so some bits update straight away and others don’t.