Vintage Champagne Bustle by Talulahblue

Fashion designers of Folksy have been invited to enter a rather swanky competition this week. In a new television series for Sky Living, pop superstar Rihanna will be searching the UK for the next generation of raw, undiscovered designer talent and has picked Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts to head up the challenge for her. Sky Living announced:

Over eight weeks twelve unknown designers will be challenged by Rihanna and Nicola to create outfits for a string of musicians and celebrities. The show will celebrate the extraordinary talent and creativity in the British fashion scene. With Rihanna, a fashion icon herself, and Nicola, who created her own Dainty Doll make-up range, at the helm, the show will recognise the increasing influence popstars have on mainstream trends.

The final challenge and ultimate task for the winner will be to design a unique stage outfit for Rihanna’s Wireless performance in Hyde Park in July 2012. The chance to dress one of the world’s most famous women for an event that will attract worldwide coverage is the perfect springboard for the aspiring designer’s future fashion career.

If you think you’re up to the challenge then visit Sky Living or e-mail applications@twentytwenty.tv

Applications must be received by Wednesday 15 February. Womenswear, menswear and accessories designers welcome. Filming takes place over 8 weeks in the UK from April 2012. Good luck!

We are very excited to announce a great little competition from the National Trust magazine. Two For Folksy pieces will be given away every day this week via the @NTMagazine twitter feed, with a bespoke craft tool kit up for grabs on the final day of the competition (this Friday).

For Folksy includes collaborations with some of Folksy’s talented designers, all hand made in England and Wales. Pieces include a cosy knitted hat, hand stitched wallet and fairtrade organic denim apron.

To be in with a chance to win, simply retweet the message from @NTMagazine, beginning “RT by 1.30pm for chance to #win @Folksy…”. It will be tweeted at 12.30pm (UK time) every day by @NTMagazine from 30 January to 2 February inclusive. You MUST retweet before 1.30pm (UK time) on the same day to be entered into the prize draw.

The crafty toolkit includes twelve hand crafted design pieces including a beautiful bamboo and cotton crochet bag from London based designer Leanne Garrity, who runs her own independent label, Chi Chi Dee, a set of five bespoke Danish wooden buttons from Yorkshire based Tree Gems, and hand printed fabric from Scottish designer Astrid Weigel amongst other designer goodies and the ultimate crafts tool – the Singer sewing machine.

The Crafty Couture toolkit will be given away on Friday 3 February. To be in with a chance of winning this fantastic prize, just reply with the correct answer to a question tweeted by @NTMagazine  at 12.30pm (UK time) on Friday 3 February. You will have to be quick – entries will close 15 minutes later, at 12.45pm.

Good luck!

We analysed the categories according to their performance around:

• Views / Visitors versus stocks levels
• Sales performance (this is actually measured as the people transacting after visiting the category rather than from that category)

The criteria for changing (merging, moving or deleting) categories is based on their performance but also on requests from designers and makers.

The following changes to the categories are described, below and the most significant changes affect men’s clothing, home decorations and ceramics:

• Panniers in both Men’s and Women’s “Bags and Cases” category to be merged with rucksacks to create a “Panniers and Rucksacks” sub-category
• Merge all men’s clothing sub-categories except for “costumes” into one sub-category in a renamed category “Clothing and Accessories”. So there will now be a “clothing” and a “costumes” sub-category in “Clothing and Accessories” category in “Men”
• Merge the “tables” and “chairs” subcategories in “Babies and Children > Nursery and Bedroom” into one sub-category
• “Lamps” sub-category in ”Babies and Children > Nursery and Bedroom” to be deleted and items moved to main lamps sub-category in “Home and Garden > Decorations and Furniture”
• Change “tea cosies” to “cosies” in “Home and Garden > Kitchen and Dining”
• Add “teapots” sub-category to ”Home and Garden > Kitchen and Dining”
• Create a “Placemats and Table Runners” sub-category in ”Home and Garden > Kitchen and Dining” to replace “Placemats”
• Delete the “Placecards” sub-category in ”Home and Garden > Office and Stationery”
• Change “Decorations and Furniture” to “Home Decorations” and adding the new subcategories “Hanging Decorations”, “Ornaments”, “Decorative Dishes” and “Doilies”
• Create a new category “Furniture” in “Home and Garden” and adding the new subcategories “Drawers”, “Stools” and “Rails & Hooks”
• Move all items in “Everything Else” in “Living Room” to Everything Else” in “Home Decorations”
• Move “Cushions”, “Blankets”, “Rugs”, “Bookends” sub-categories from “Living Room” to “Home Decorations”
• Move “Doorstops” from “Kitchen and Dining” to “Home Decorations”
• Move “Storage”, “Tables”, “Bookcases”, “Cabinets”, “Chairs”, “Shelves” from “Home and Garden > Home decorations” to “Home and Garden >Furniture”
• Merge ”Musical instruments” and “Musical Accessories” in ‘Home and Garden > Games and Activities” and rename it “Musical Items”
• Create new category in “Art and Cards > Art and Photography > ACEO’s”  and merge all categories in ACEO’s into that new category
• Rename the category “Clothing and Shoes” in “Weddings” to “Clothing” and move shoes and petticoats to “Everything Else”
• Rename “Weddings > Stationery > Menus” to “Weddings > Stationery > Menus and Orders of Service” merge items
• Add “Gemstones” sub-category to “Commercial Supplies”
• Add “Ceramic Art” sub-category in “Art and Cards > Art and Photography”
• Move “Stained Glass” from ”Art and Cards > Art and Photography” to “Home Decorations” and rename “Glass and Sculpture” category to “Sculpture”
• Add “Memo & Notice Boards” sub-category in “Home & Garden > Office & Stationery”
• Add “Sketchbooks” sub-category in “Home & Garden > Craft room & Workshop”

We have had a lot of requests to create a ceramics category. The information architecture was orientated to support directed browsing of products and we thought most ceramic work would be listed in the functional categories, for example “bowl”, “vase”, “mug” etc. And we have facets in each of the categories to filter results by material which also helps people refine to see only ceramic work. However, we recognise that some ceramists make works of art that may have functional value but which they see as having more decorative or artistic value.

Practices

Going forward we are going to be creating an additional way to find things through Folksy: practices. You’ll be able to browse by practice across designers and makers (sellers) and also items. This is really important to us in supporting craft and provenance and the making of things. We’ll be saying more about the timeline for this work soon, but we wanted to raise it now as it is relevant to the many requests we receive that ask for categories to have more of a materials focus. Materials are important, but we believe more as a means to filter items than as a core browsing experience and actually practices will be far more helpful for people wanting way to browse Folksy that isn’t based on the function an item performs.

I’m sure there will be lots of questions about the category changes so please comment here or post a question in the Q&A in the forum on the 5th or contact support.

So we trialled the question and answer in the forums last night, as mentioned in yesterday’s blog post. We intend to provide a round up of the main points covered in the weekly Q&A’s to help people review them and see what happened (as scrolling through a forum thread can be quite time consuming).

Photo by Rich701

Thank you to everyone who provided questions and apologies to those I didn’t manage to cover off in time.

Main points covered:

• Gift Guides. The banners promoting the new Gift Guides may give the impression to buyers that they are a list of all things in that theme e.g. Valentines. We’re working on making these banners clearer so as not to confuse buyers. We are also adding to the items in the gift guides and aim, going forward, to pick out a broad range of different themes and items.
• Finding items / ambient findability. There was some concern that with keywords being dropped people were unable to find some items as easily as they could before. We will be introducing the concept of “practices”  soon which will apply to both crafters, designers and makers and also items of work (so you’ll be able to search by “knitting” or “ceramics”).
• View counter: The view counter which Folksy used to provide was a popular feature and you want it back. We took the view counter away because it was actually a rather outdated bit of code and also because Google Analytics (GA) can provide far better and more accurate analysis of your traffic. However, we do appreciate people don’t like using GA and we are planning to create a proper dashboard for sellers but this will not happen in the near future; this piece of work is not slated in with an estimated start date.
• Search results view: Search results show a list as a default and there was a question about whether this would change – yes it will. The user interface for search will be changing to a grid view (like the default around the site) and will also allow you to filter results by category and key facets like price. More about timescales etc for this work (scroll to the bottom).
• “Show More”. Search results also have the default “show more” pattern for displaying content. This has caused some frustration as when you go to look at an item and then go back (via the browser button) you are not necessarily taken back to the place on the page you were looking at.  We got rid of pagination because of a lot of research work that showed people could scan images far more quickly than text and also that pagination was very off-putting to people browsing. So, the way that the “show more” behaves is actually done in the browser – different browsers do different things – some do attempt to take you back to where you where. However, many don’t and it’s not something we can solve, but something that we hope browsers will adopt. Some people get around this by opening items in new tabs in their browser – which is a bit of a hack but does work
• Page fade. We brought in a slight fade on the page to try and make the browsing experience more active and feel more tactile. Many people have reported not liking it as it makes their work look dull. We’re undertaking more usability testing (with a buyer quota)  in the next few weeks and we’ll be looking at this and reporting back on how buyers find it and make a decision on what we do about it then.
• Terms of use / Policing the Handmade policy: The terms state that things have to be handmade and we have a definition around that but many items on the site seem to break the definition and yet despite being reported are still there. This does penalise those people who abide by the terms as our post-moderation system can be time consuming (checking the item, liaising with the maker and often debating the specifics of the item). We are working on a couple of ways to improve the policing of items but we’re also keen to find a more workable policy too and part of the (qual) research we’re conducting in February will be looking at this issue further.
• We also had quite a few feature requests such as: better seller messaging for custom orders and things like specifying sizing – which we’re scoping out; different postage options for each country – rather than just one, which will be looked at when we re-do the listing page which will have better ways to manage postage / shipping;  automatic discounting on goods – something we’d love to offer in conjunction with discount codes and we’re looking at this as but have no plans to develop this in the near future; Printable receipts to send with items – yes! we’re working on something which we’re rather excited about which will do this (an uber shipping note).

It was great fun doing the Q&A and moreover, we’ve found it really valuable feedback. Andrew will be doing next week’s Q&A on Thursday, same format, so look out for the thread which he’ll post in the morning of the 5th Feb.

Please do look at Knowledge Base if you have any queries and if you can’t find your answer there then do contact support.

Thanks.

This particular piece of research will take place in Sheffield on the 9th February, where we’ll be running two fairly informal group discussions. We’d like a broad range of people to take part, whether you currently use Folksy or not, so if you’re interested please complete the form (Google form, no sign-in required) and we’ll be in touch.

 

In the past few weeks we’ve taken some time out from coal-face design, development and marketing work to assess how we liaise with you, the community of designers and makers who constitute the thousands of people selling through Folksy.

We currently have a few different ways in which we listen and feedback – email and support (usually private correspondence), the forums, Twitter and Facebook as well as more niche services like Flickr and Instagram. As you’ll know, each of these spaces has its own ‘ecosystem’, its own form of etiquette and rhythm, and we try and work to these differences when we talk with you.

Different types of communication

There are lots of different types of things that we both want to talk about, for example:

1. Needing help with something (technical, legal etc.)
2. Wanting to report an issue or a problem or a bug
3. Just saying “hi” and reaching out to chat with other designers and makers – informal support
4. Sharing things you’re doing
5. Announcing something new or different
6. Getting feedback on something you’ve done (could be a new development at Folksy or some new product you’ve made)

Some of these things are better suited to more private conversations because they relate to personal experiences and some only work when they are publicly stated. We try and be involved in all these communications wherever you feel comfortable having them. However, to try and be as efficient as possible with the limited resources we have we tend to ask people with communications 1 & 2 to go through the support channel where we can log it and get the right staff member looking at it and check that it has been dealt with. In short we have a process for that kind of communication.

Many of the issues raised in 1 & 2 are actually covered in the Knowledge Base on Folksy, but we don’t feel this support area is effective enough and we’re currently reviewing different tools which will provide more accessible ways to find answers to questions and also allow feedback on features and functionality (and request new features, currently rather clumsily managed through a forum thread) more easily.

Listening and feeding back

When we do something you don’t like you generally tell us through all the channels. This can be really helpful but it can be a challenge to respond effectively through all those channels so you feel you have been heard. In the forums and on Twitter particularly when we respond to one issue, other people with the same issue don’t hear us. When the site is down, for example due to maintenance or when there’s a problem as there was last week with images being indexed on the site, we use the status blog to provide updates and refer to that on Twitter and Facebook and in the forums. A single point of reference for announcements is generally best – then everyone can see the same thing (rather than trying to provide updates for people individually).

Forums tend to be the heartbeat of any community – they are where fans live. The Folksy forums have always been a lively and usually very supportive environment and we have sought to moderate them with a light touch. This light touch moderation is partly out of a recognition that it can be very time consuming – being visible in one thread can then create the expectation that you will be as visible and responsive in another thread and if you’re not then that may be construed as unfair (why are you listening over there, but not over here?). Managing how we talk with you in the forums is one of the things we’ve found hard to get right.

Could do better

Recently you have let us know that we haven’t been active enough, that we haven’t been listening to the things you want to tell us and that perception started last year with the clarification around the definition of “handmade” and then the re-design work, with a sense that there was a lack of consultation. This sense is felt most keenly in the forums but has surfaced on Twitter and Facebook. It’s largely irrelevant to state now that we were listening and that a lot of feedback through support channels went into both decisions, the perception is we weren’t listening and that’s what we want to address: we want to find ways to listen and feedback with you more effectively.

So what are we going to do about it?

We have a few suggestions (well actually one of the suggestions came through the forums the other day!) that we’d like to trial:

• A weekly Q&A with members of the team on the forum.
• Respond to queries, where possible, as ourselves in the forums so you get a sense of the voice and us as individuals.
• A monthly round up of activity, work undertaken, work planned (including marketing and PR as well as development) and feedback on general issues raised across all channels (forums, Facebook, Twitter and support etc.). We’d like to trial this as a video posted to the blog so you can actually see us, real human beings (mostly).
• More regular announcements on the Folksy blog about what we’re up to, almost like extended tweets.

We’re going to kick-start the weekly Q&A today. It is a trial and we’ll be listening to see how effective it is before deciding how it could be improved. The other initiatives will also follow in the coming days and weeks (the first video update coming in mid February).

I hope this can be the start of a more constructive way of working with you, the community of designers and makers on Folksy, to progress the service and promote craft and your craft work to a wider audience.

Link: Forum Q&A

(image by moneyblognewz)

External Search

How does Google index items for sale on Folksy?

Overview

Google constantly crawls the web, revisiting pages already in its index, and crawling new pages if finds along the way.

In terms of a Folksy item page, that means Google will usually first find the existence of the item through a link on another page. Some of those links may be from other Folksy pages, for example:

• Category pages
• Shops pages
• The homepage
• Other item pages
• Blog posts
• etc.

Improving your item’s chances of doing well in Google search

Bearing all of this in mind, how can you maximise your chances of your items being seen in search?

We’ve had a couple of questions about discrepancies and changes recently too, so we thought we’d try to clear those up.

Question 1: Are view counts artificially enabled by Google spiders?

The discrepancy some people have noted between the view counts we used to provide on the admin screens and the metrics Google provide through Google Analytics which many people have integrated, is probably explained by the fact that the count we used to provide was probably influenced by ‘spiders’ or robots used by the search engines when indexing the web. Each time a spider / robot indexes a page it is generally counted as a page impression.

Whereas Google Analytics only measures views in a browser where javascript is enabled so is a more accurate measure of actual people looking at a web page.

Question 2: Has the re-design affected results from Google Image Search?

On researching this we found that it is explained by Google changing the way Google image search worked. They did this in mid-July last year in the UK, and this meant almost all image search traffic was re-categorised from being ‘referral’ traffic to being treated as search traffic. Here’s the graph showing where the ‘referral’ traffic appears to drop:

The search traffic wasn’t lost, it seems most of it was re-classified as organic search traffic.

Changes to the naming convention of images on Folksy (we append image file names with the type of image they are e.g. main etc) have had no bearing on how they are indexed or returned in results. Interestingly, people coming to Folksy via image search convert into sales far less than ‘normal’ web search (which is explained by most people looking for an image to use rather than looking to ‘shop’).

There’s more info on the Google Images change over on Search Engine Roundtable

Internal Search

How does internal search work on Folksy?

For items, the current search technology we use creates a searchable string by joining together a number of different fields such as title, item description, category name. We then have an algorithm that gives these fields different “weights” which equates to a higher score when the search string is queried. If someone searches using multiple words then only those items that match all of those words are returned, so if you search for “pink floral skirt“, only items matching all of those words will be returned (33 as of now). These words could appear separately anywhere in the listing.

If you use speech marks to define a term, for example “pink cushion” you will return all items that have that exact term (in this instance 8). If you search for “pink” and “cushion” without the speech marks it returns many more (799 items as of now) as search is returning all mentions of cushion and pink. Ideally we would like the results to return all those results with the term “pink cushion” first, this is called n-grams for approximate matching and is something we will be working on in the next phase of development on search (see below).

Shop search works in a similar way to item search, using the fields shop title and also shop description and username where we append an appropriate weight to the different fields in the string we create.

The advice on how to maximise the likelihood of your items being seen in search is to describe your item really well, both in the title and description and inspiration fields but also using facets such as colour. The fuller and more accurate the description, the better.

Next stage developments

Search is quite a complex area and one which is constantly being looked at by any service with a large amount of content.  There are three areas of search we are enhancing:

1. Relevancy – creating a more advanced algorithm to return more relevant results (including n-gramming – basically term matching – and stemming – a process for reducing words to their root form e.g. plural to singular etc.)
2. Filtering – providing functionality to allow people to filter search results by price and also by category
3. UI – improving the search field to incorporate auto-suggest based on popular search terms, best suggestions in the search results as well as grid view and list view

This work falls into our workstack after Guest Login and Checkout improvements have been delivered. The estimated start date for the search work is March 1st.

The launch in November was very much the first phase with several significant new features and enhancements to the platform planned for this year (plus various minor usability fixes bundled in a number of smaller releases). A couple of these features specifically look to resolve how we surface and showcase a wider range of quality content making it easier to browse for gifts. Both are slated for design, testing and release over the next couple of months. We’ll let you know more about these nearer their completion.

A huge congratulations goes out to our competition winner Charmaine Beaumont-Rixen of Folksy shop LittleNestBox who cheered us all up with her Colourful Christmas collection (seen below). There is a fantastic Singer sewing machine winging it’s way to her from the lovely folk at Coopers Sewing Machines (thanks guys!).

Well done Charmaine!

Folksy Finds – Colourful Christmas

1. PDF Reindeer Ornaments  2. Knitted Beret Hat  3. Dot Earrings  4. Cable Knit Tote  5.North Pole Badges Set  6. iPhone Case  7. Snowflake Studs  8. Knitted Mittens  9. Baubles Cards

10. Robin Print  11. Neon Moka Print  12. Reindeer Gift Tags  13. Lego Men Crayons  14.Nordic Paper Garland  15. Holly Card  16. Cardinal Ornament  17. Cake Topper  18. Crochet Cushion