I like etsy, but there are certain design flaws that make me wonder if etsy's creators have ever heard of usability.
Why do they use flash for statistical data? I have to wait for a whole flash animation to load when i want to see who has 'faved' my shop, and instead of just showing the number of favs next to the view count for my items, i have to click my way through; first to the item's page, and then to the tedious flash animation.
Anyway, they've promised to start using the ranking people give each other's items to help the search relevancy;
"Future phases of Search will include upgrades to the relevancy and ranking of the results. The way current search results are displayed (ranking) is based on chronology (most recently listed items first). We believe that Etsy buyers will be better served by a system that takes into account both ranking and relevance in a way that helps them find items they’re looking for according to various criteria by category. And, for those buyers who may not know what they're looking for, we also hope to introduce later in 2009 tools to foster discovery based on all the hearting and curating that takes place across the Etsy community every day."
Why they didn't use it to begin with will remain a mystery to me, but i hope they make these changes sooner rather than later.
Etsy has too many buying options (i count 15), and none of them work satisfactorily. If only etsy would have an interesting algorithm like flickr, it would work better (and more profitably), and i'd be sellíng more.
Etsy's creators have made some very altruistic statements about helping atists/artisans, and cutting out the dealers ie. connecting consumers directly with makers, but the truth is that if etsy is to succeed (and i hope they will), then they will replace the dealers, and even if they aren't as greedy as ebay or amazon, they will profit by it. So if they want to be good, they should build something that works, not something that just looks like it should work.
Here's a link to my etsy store just to make this more relevant.
