Previously, we chose what to feature on the homepage editorially, each homepage being a “theme” we created. We’ve trialed using Pinterest to get other people to curate homepage themes with our Facebook “Folksy Finds” competition (there’s one running this week actually with £100 to spend at Fred Aldous as a prize). We’ve been really impressed with your collections and have started to supplement our weekly rota of curated content with competition entries. Now we want to increase the use of Pinterest boards a be a daily feature (providing that there are enough boards that are created with relevant items that promote Folksy in the best light to shoppers). We think this is the first use of Pinterest to drive homepage promotion in this way, but we could be wrong.

Why do it?

It makes it more engaging for buyers and sellers who can get involved in showcasing their creativity. And more creativity is a good thing.

How does it work?

• You need a Pinterest account – if you haven’t got one then blag  ask for an invite from someone who has
• Curate a selection of items from Folksy around a theme, for example “Camping”, you will need a minimum of 16 items to be eligible.
• Use “Folksy” in your Pinterest board title for example “Folksy Camping”.

We’ll keep track of all the Pinterest boards and pick relevant ones to promote on the homepage. We’ll be looking for interesting, relevant and quirky themes, a good choice of different items (by price and type) and also of course great images. Great images are vital to promote work on the homepage.

If your Pinterest board is chosen we will credit you by stating your name, shopname and a link to the shop as well as a link to your Pinterest board. You get to be the homepage Queen (or King) for the day.

But Pinterest is the run by evil aliens bent on taking over the world isn’t it?

We’ve heard it may be. But it’s a brilliant way to show how creative you are and a really useful tool for us to promote your creativity without building lots of additional functionality into Folksy. Also, since the change in their terms of use, we’re not sure they are bad at all. But if you don’t like it that’s fine, don’t use it and if they do prove to be evil and do take over the world and destroy all the flowers then you’ll be well within your rights to hunt us down and poke us in the eye

We released an improvement to search yesterday. Now you see a grid of up to 60 images (similar to the category views). We’ve had some great feedback already and we think it’s a much improved search and browse experience. Now even more reason to procrastinate!

One of the things we’re keen to do in the design of Folksy is to improve ambient findability, facilitating browsing behaviour across the site. This is really important when you have thousands of items as people don’t always know what they’re looking for. We believe good browse behaviour is about being lost but feeling safe. Rebecca Solnit has a lovely way of putting it:

Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing….

It’s great when you see the unfamiliar appearing as you type in search.

April Monthly Update from Folksy on Vimeo.

Here is April’s where you can find out what we did in the last four weeks as well as what we have planned for May. We also introduce Emily, the editor on Folksy.

This issue has affected some of the Folksy sellers who received their monthly bill today. If you have paid your bill it may still be marked as outstanding because PayPal have not sent notification of payment to us.

PayPal have stated the issue is now resolved (although we are still not getting notifications) so we expect your account to be marked as paid soon. If this does not happen automatically in a timely fashion via PayPal we will undertake this process manually ourselves.

We will update you with any more information as we get it from PayPal.

Thank you and apologies for any inconvenience caused.

UPDATE (12:15 on the 1st May):

This issue has now been resolved and we are receiving IPN notifications.

Image: MrsEliotBooks

Folksy is continuing to improve with the aim of being the best platform for designer makers to sell handmade work and supplies. As part of the improvements next week (sometime during the week of the 30th April 2012) we’ll be launching a significant change to Folksy which will affect how you list and manage stock as well as the ‘value’ of your listings and also the cost to you of listing and selling. We’re calling this New Listings and it’s an improvement on what already exists in the market.

The existing / old system

1. The old system which is being replaced had listings expire after six months.
2. You could add up to 5 items to a listing.
3. If you wanted to add any items to that listing after the expiry date you couldn’t.
4. You lost the “Google juice” that those URLs had built up from any marketing work you had done.
5. You paid 20p (+VAT) for the listing and 5% commission (+VAT) on sale price.

What we wanted to improve

Link Value. It didn’t seem right that URLs should expire and lose their link value or “Google juice”, all those links that builds up over time which are used to determine your search rankings and which you’ve worked hard for. It also didn’t seem right that old listings were being ranked more highly in Google than recent, live listings.

Stock Management. We also found that many designer-makers using Folksy were wanting to amend their stock quickly – for example when selling offline. You also wanted to make items unavailable to buy when you were taking stock to craft fairs. So we’ve made it simple for you to change items from “active” to “inactive” and vice versa.

The new listings

1. Each listing you make will have a permanent URL (web address) which you can re-stock – keeping valuable “Google juice”.
2. You can add or reduce the number of items in a listing at any time until it expires. You will only be charged for any additional items you include in the listing.
3. Listings last for 4 months at which point you can “renew” for another 4 months (maintaining the URL)
4. You can add up to 100 items in a listing.
5. You can make your listing “inactive” for any period during your listing period and “re-activate” it when you like – helping you to manage stock when you are, for example, exhibiting at craft fairs.
6. The cost of a listing is now tied to the number of items. Each item listed costs 15p (+VAT). If you list 3 items it will cost you 45p (+VAT). The commission fee will rise from 5% to 6% (+VAT) on sales.

Improved dashboard

As part of this release we’ve improved the dashboard. We’ve brought the existing information you need to manage your stock to the forefront:

Pricing change

Pro Seller

Help with the new listings

We’ve designed it to be super-simple to use and be consistent with other functionality on the site. To help you familiarise yourself with the new listings we’ll also make available a screencast talking you through it.

We just released the Guest Login work. This is quite a significant piece of work as it means people do not have to register to buy on Folksy and should lead to higher conversions (more people intending to buy, actually buying).

What does this mean for designer-makers?
As we announced in our previous post Helping Sellers With Legal Compliance, your contact email address is now passed to the buyer so as to comply with EU Distance Selling Regulations. Shortly your full address will also be included in the email and both the email and postal address will soon be on the order page for buyers to see too.

If you sell on Folksy you need to make sure your full postal address is up-to-date so you are complying with UK law. You can input or edit your address in “Edit Shop Appearance and Settings” via your Folksy dashboard.

Legal stuff can be pretty dull and is often wrapped up in dense language which probably accounts for the fact that many sellers don’t take time to understand what they need to do to comply with UK law. If you’re selling things you are bound by law to do certain things.

As a marketplace Folksy should try and make it as simple as possible for you to comply. This post sets out how we’re going to do this*.

Compliance

In the UK consumers have certain rights and these rights are more specific when buying through the internet on a platform such as Folksy. The specific rights of consumers when buying on the internet (or via mail order or over the telephone are enshrined in Distance Selling Regulations (PDF 130kb) and these apply across the European Union. See also the Folksy support page on legal compliance.

Examples of things sellers are required to provide according to the Distance Selling Regulations (DSR), include:

• Contact details such as email address in a durable medium, visible to the buyer before payment
• The business address, visible to the buyer before payment for an item has been made
• A refund on an order cancellation within seven days, unless the item is bespoke for the buyer (for example, made to order)
• A refund for an item that is faulty up to six months after purchase – to include any cost incurred in returning the item (the item does not have to be returned for you to be required to pay a full refund).
• Delivery or postage information (i.e. when and how the item will be delivered)
• A full description and payment details for the item

Whilst these are the main points there are more requirements and we urge you to read the document above on Distance Selling Regulations more fully or seek legal advice if you are unsure. Your local Trading Standards office can usually help.

Misunderstanding

Many sellers contact us under the misapprehension that they can dictate their own shop policies and often include these in their profile pages. However, in reality and under UK law they have to comply with the above regulations and they have to do so in a way that the buyer can see them in the process of buying an item. So, firstly there is very little that you can state as your own policy that wouldn’t contravene UK law and secondly, the way that people currently try to comply isn’t helpful to buyers as they are buried away on profile pages.

So, what can you state as your own distinct policy?

You can state your own terms in respect of:

1. Shipping or postage policy – when you post the item and when the buyer can expect to receive it.
2. Returns and cancellation policy – if the item is made-to-order then you can state if you are willing to accept cancellations of orders (you are not required to).
3. Returns and cancellation policy – if the item is not faulty you can optionally chose to pay for the cost of returning the item (the buyer would usually be expected to pay for the cost of returning the item).

How we plan to make it easy for you to comply

We want to make it easy for buyers and sellers to er, buy and sell! We don’t want legal complexity or confusion to get in the way.

This is how we are going to help you comply.

1. Standard terms that buyers understand. We’ll provide standard terms on all item pages which you can accept in the listing process.
2. Item specific terms for shipping / postage and returns. This will be introduced to the listing page as both postage and returns are item specific.
3. Returns requests. A field for you to politely request certain things in order for a refund to be made (but this is just a request).
4. Provide contact information about you to the buyer in a way that is contextually relevant. We will be be providing this information at the end of the checkout process and in order confirmation email.

What is good for buyers is generally good for sellers

Buyers like certainty and look for signs of trust in any relationship, especially one where they are buying online. We want to provide a simple set of standard sales Terms on Folksy that buyers and sellers understand. These sales terms will be things that you agree to in the listing process. By providing information where buyers want it – on the item page – we will be providing clear information to create a pattern in which they trust where they’re buying.

Your personal data

We will be providing the contact email address and also the physical address (business address) of the seller to buyers when an order is made. We will be providing the information before the payment stage (i.e. before PayPal payment) on the Folksy site and also in the confirmation email to buyers. This is necessary to comply with Distance Selling Regulations and consumer rights. The contact information will not be easily accessible to people who are not ordering. As someone selling online you need to provide contact information in the form of an email address and a physical address of the business, it is not something you can choose to opt-out-of. You need to be comfortable that your contact details (which is often a home address) will be shared.

What you need to do now

We have added a new field to the shop edit page to collect your physical address. Please fill this in. We will be notifying existing sellers on the dashboard page and requiring this information from any new sellers.

We’d prefer it if Profile Pages were used to say more about the story of you, how you make things and the why you’ve chosen to do what you do. That’s what the Profile Pages were intended for and buyers like that.

These changes will start to be released in the next few days in the new checkout pages (with Guest Login work) and continue for the next month with the improvement to the listing process.

*  This post does not constitute advice on compliance (for which we advise you should speak to a solicitor), merely how we aim to help you be compliant.

So we pushed out a few things today which you should know about.

1. Note to seller – In the checkout process now buyers are able to leave a “note to seller”, thus helping to communicate decisions about things like sizing, colour etc. if offered as variables in your listing.
2. Paypal – Multiple addresses was released yesterday (see post) and today we released the improved single payment PayPal work. So PayPal Postage and Seller Protection will now work as they used to. More info on PayPal Postage and Seller Protection.
3. Print receipt – In your dashboard go to “Your Shop” > “Your Orders” and you’ll see “Print Receipt” on your orders that have been paid for and that are awaiting postage. A nice thing to include when posting your work to customers:

That went quick. Here’s our video update for March following on from the inaugural update last month.
We forgot to mention the Fred Aldous and Moo offer which if you haven’t seen already we recommend you check out.

Have a great Easter and see you in April :)

One of the improvements to the buying experience we’ve been working on is for buyers to be able to specify different delivery addresses and to optionally save these addresses to use for future purchases. We’re calling this Gift Addresses and it goes live this morning (27th March 2012) and we’ll be celebrating this minor win with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

PayPal integration update
Soon, all sales will again be eligible for PayPal Seller Protection and also PayPal Postage, which many of you said you used and which wasn’t supported by the PayPal API for multiple payments we were integrating with. The PayPal single payments work will be released with the Guest Login work shortly.

Update: as of the 29th March the PayPal integration work is now complete.

That’s it, have a nice day.