Launching New Categories

On the 12th September we announced the results of the category review in which we stated we were moving away from gender specific navigation. This had implications for categories and sub-categories.

In that post we said we were making some changes as a result of an extensive review and these would go live in early October. But first we wanted your feedback on the changes. You gave us that feedback and it was all really useful, thank you.

The feedback we got was broadly very positive about the suggested changes but offered four areas for improvement:

1. Brooches and Cuffs were seen as being Jewellery items and not Accessories (even though many brooches and cuffs are textile based).
2. Materials were important for sub-categories in Jewellery (e.g. stone, semi-precious gems, silver plate, copper, polymer clay etc.) even though you can filter results by material.
3. Prints as a separate category to cater for reproduction artwork.
4. Artwork should be categorised according to subject / content (e.g. Still Life) as much as practice.

The first two suggestions are straightforward and make sense. The third and fourth suggestions were out of the scope of our initial review but on reflection we felt that we would benefit from art and cards being improved and a “print” category adding and that Art should be pulled out as a separate section allowing us to have more categories for art each with it’s own subcategories, some of which are practice and subject based.

The New Improved Categories

Firstly, we have new sections which will be:

• Jewellery
• Clothing and Accessories
• Homeware
• Art
• Cards and Stationery
• Weddings
• Supplies

Only the Supplies section is unaffected, but changes it’s title from Craft Supplies to Supplies. Every other section has some changes to its category structure.

See the full list of the new categories (PDF).

What does this mean for you?

Around 35% of items will require categorising in a new category. Most Jewellery and Artwork will be put in a sub-category labelled “All”. You should move this as soon as you can into a more relevant sub-category.

For example, if you have a necklace listed in Women -> Jewellery -> Necklaces this will move to Jewellery -> Necklaces and Pendants -> All.

Why “All”? We have added new sub-categories to better able people to find specific necklaces. So now people can choose from the following subcategories in “Necklaces and Pendants”:

Beaded, Enamel, Platinum, Beadwork, Chainmaille, Textile, Charm, Choker, Silver, Felt, Gold, Glass, Locket, Metal, Acrylic, Polymer Clay, Rosary, Shell, Stone, Copper, Gemstone, Jewellery Set, Semi-Precious Stone, Wire Wrapped, Wood, Ceramic, Painted, All, Everything Else.

Where we have created new sub-categories (mainly in Jewellery and Art) we need you to decide where to put them . We can’t move your work ‘automatically’ as we don’t know if that necklace, for example, should be in the sub-category “platinum” or “silver” without actually looking at each item ourselves and with over 40,000 items that need categorising this way, that just isn’t feasible. You know your work best and will know where to put it.

Babies and Children

As we’re changing the main navigation to move away from gender and “people” we split out Babies and Children categories like this:

• “Nursery and Bedroom” becomes a room in “Homeware”
• “Clothing and Accessories” becomes a category “Babies and Children” in “Clothing and Accessories”. We have merged types of children’s a babies clothes into one. So where there used to be Babies Dresses and Children’s Dresses we now have “Dresses”.
• The Babycare category is merged into Babies and Children in Clothing and Accessories (e.g. mats and bibs and cloths).
• “Toys and Activities” moves into the category “Nursery and Playroom” and becomes one big category (which is dominated by “Toys” anyway).
• The sub-categories in “Parties and Events” are moved out to “Cards and Stationery” with “Invitations” and “Christenings” going into the category “Stationery and Bookmarks” and “Gift Bags” going into “Gift wrap, tags and bags”.

When will this happen?

Now! This deployment is already underway and you will see the changes on the morning of Monday 8th October. We wanted to get these changes in place well before the Christmas rush.

We suggest you look at the new categories (PDF) and see if your work is affected and then move your work to a more relevant sub-category or category as soon as is convenient, from Monday. Of course, even if your work is in a new sub-category “All” it will be still be visible and can be bought.

Questions?

We’re going to run a special forum Q&A to cover any queries you have on Monday 8th from 10.30am until 11.30am. The forum for that is now live so please add any questions you have or leave them in the comments here.

Thanks,