What’s happening at Folksy – February 2011

A selection of items tagged with the word ‘Love’

Hello, or as it’s February should that be ‘mwah’ – It’s the beginning of the month and that means we’re back with a little round-up of what we have been up to at Folksy HQ. We also have a few stats to share to show you how we are growing (and we are!).  We have learned many lessons from our bumper Christmas traffic and while January in comparison has been a little less full on, we have been busy behind the scenes planning and developing the next round of  improvements to the site.

January 2011

• We saw a 49% increase in orders this January compared to Jan 2010.
• We have had 579,895 visits from 306,416 different people
• 205,138 visits came through internet searches – up 158% on Jan 2010
• 6,418,127 pages were viewed this month –   up 112% on Jan 2010
• Our visitors came from all over the world, here are the top countries this month
  
  United Kingdom – 447,955
  United States – 53,390
  Canada – 7,382
  Australia – 5,481
  Germany – 3294
  Spain – 3248
  France – 3183
  Italy – 3101

Site Development – Email Registration

Most recently our technical team have been working on redesigning the registration process to make buying from our shopkeepers easier.  The current registration process requires an email activation step, this can discourage new buyers to the site from finishing their purchases.  We are moving this email check to the point where a member might decide to create a shop as that’s when we need to be sure that an email address is valid for notifications of sales.

On registration, new purchasers will be logged straight into the site and taken back to the page they were originally on,  increasing the chance of them completing their transaction or adding the item as a favourite.  Once they have made the purchase they will be taken to Paypal where they can pay securely as usual, so the removal of email verification will not impact security for sellers.

We have the bulk of the work for this improvement completed and should be rolling out the updates in the next 2-3 weeks.  We want to be sure it’s all perfect, so bear with us while we add the fine details!

Folksy Socialites!

We’re extremely pleased that so many of you are coming to visit the blog as well as commenting and liking our Facebook page and following us over on Twitter.  Our blog content is now rich with resources to help out our shopkeepers with selling handmade goods online and we’re regularly featuring shops through ‘Shop of the Day’ on facebook, and here on the blog with Folksy Friday, Seller Interviews, Featured Sellers, Featured Suppliers and more recently our gift guides which are going down very well.  So if you aren’t already, please become a fan on facebook or a follower on twitter and you’ll be updated with all these great posts.

You should have also recently received the second of our regular email updates by now, a Valentines day special.  If you haven’t received it take a look at this post which explains how to set up your account to receive newsletters, then you’ll be sure to get the next one.

Suggested Features Forum

If you have any suggestions for features you would like to see added to our site please add them to our ‘Suggested Features’ forum which has a useful list of the most commonly requested features at the top.  We find your feedback here invaluable, so please let us know what you would like to see happening with any aspect of the site and any ‘lightbulb’ moments you may have.

See you next month! :) The Folksy Team – James, Rob, Sarah, Doug, Andrew, Toni and Hilary.