It sounds interesting but like you, I’m scratching my head about some of the UX design. Perhaps the recommendation component is to help build cross pollination with artists/makers you like and hope they reciprocate. In theory it seems solid, provided everyone plays along, but there’s no guarantee. They might also be looking at it from the perspective of if a customer of yours sees that you like a specific artist work then that artist/maker is legitimized via your approval. It’s hard to say if either of those scenarios will work. The fixed email push is just bonkers. There’s no way of knowing with any certainty that 6:00 AM on Thursday is the sweet spot for everyone, and with no option to schedule your own, subdivide lists based on reviewing things like open rates etc it’s a bad approach in my opinion. The fixed email length I get. They’re probably looking at data that tells them most readers scan emails and that less than a certain number of words gets higher click through rates, but as we all know opens don’t equal click through and click through doesn’t equal conversion and conversion doesn’t necessarily mean your shopping cart won’t be abandoned. Plus the whole seeing another vendor’s offerings half way down your page might lead potential customers to jump to another page and abandon your product line all together. It’s a bit early to tell. I’m willing to give it a go, but I have a feeling that the platform is going to be evolving as they ramp up and receive feedback from customers and vendors alike
Yes to all of this. I really think they are keeping things sparse and fielding questions and requests so they can get a sense of what sellers are looking for.
I went there when you mention it the other day and it felt like a pretty immediate no to me. Like you, I dig some of what they are doing. Building a network of recommendations is a good thing but that should be very seller maintained and secondary to getting people to buy things from your shop.
And I really found the regimented mailing list odd and the sort of thing that possible customers would tire of very quickly. Especially odd since I am guessing that most of their possible customers will come from Substack and why would we start newsletters on another service?
It is weird, but I can also see it as beneficial from people that don’t like to write that much. They just want to update their customers of new products and such.
Yeah good for folks that don't really want to maintain a newsletter but as a customer I would want to hear from a shop maybe once or twice a quarter—certainly not weekly. We'll see of course, I have been very wrong about many things in the past!
Oooh! I stumbled across this too and poked around a little bit. Agree 100% with what you've noticed. It's not clear to me how this platform doesn't remain a closed system of creators selling to other creators. Like, I am not my target market, and neither are my fellow artists who are also working hard to keep their business going. My target market is (obvs) people who have enough disposable income to buy art. I don't see any space in the flywheel they've built for shoppers who aren't also creators. Maybe I missed this? But frankly, I'm not interested in a sales platform that functions like social media and requires me to hustle to network with other creators because again, they're not who I'm marketing my work to. I love having them as friends! But not as something I need to spend time on in order to build a sales channel/recommendation network where I am one option among many. Would love to hear how it goes if you decide to set up shop there!
So I think it’s coming in stages. Stage 1 is to attract makers. Stage 2 is to seek out shoppers. I’ve seen a few ads from them so far and the only people they’re pitching is sellers. That’s a total guess though.
Also, the “community” aspect is fairly passive from what I can tell. Some will try to game the system and do the follow/unfollow thing I’m sure, but that will become tiresome after a while.
I think if I was going to use this platform, I would only sell my smaller works and things like scenes and such. I’m still really unsure of how taxes and shipping work because there’s really no information about it right now. I tested adding something to my cart to see what would happen if I tried to check out, and there was no information about tax or shipping at all , which is odd, but they may be so new they haven’t established a system for it yet.
That scares me a little because I would think they would want to get the logistics handled for people first, but that’s just my thinking.
Stages makes sense! Yeah, I wish there was better documentation about how everything works, especially fees, because it's hard to be informed enough to agree to the TOS without that information 😆 I'm gonna play with it and add the same work there and on my website and see what works better. I don't see myself promoting a sales channel on someone else's platform but it may be so amazing that there's a reason to do it.
It sounds interesting but like you, I’m scratching my head about some of the UX design. Perhaps the recommendation component is to help build cross pollination with artists/makers you like and hope they reciprocate. In theory it seems solid, provided everyone plays along, but there’s no guarantee. They might also be looking at it from the perspective of if a customer of yours sees that you like a specific artist work then that artist/maker is legitimized via your approval. It’s hard to say if either of those scenarios will work. The fixed email push is just bonkers. There’s no way of knowing with any certainty that 6:00 AM on Thursday is the sweet spot for everyone, and with no option to schedule your own, subdivide lists based on reviewing things like open rates etc it’s a bad approach in my opinion. The fixed email length I get. They’re probably looking at data that tells them most readers scan emails and that less than a certain number of words gets higher click through rates, but as we all know opens don’t equal click through and click through doesn’t equal conversion and conversion doesn’t necessarily mean your shopping cart won’t be abandoned. Plus the whole seeing another vendor’s offerings half way down your page might lead potential customers to jump to another page and abandon your product line all together. It’s a bit early to tell. I’m willing to give it a go, but I have a feeling that the platform is going to be evolving as they ramp up and receive feedback from customers and vendors alike
Yes to all of this. I really think they are keeping things sparse and fielding questions and requests so they can get a sense of what sellers are looking for.
I went there when you mention it the other day and it felt like a pretty immediate no to me. Like you, I dig some of what they are doing. Building a network of recommendations is a good thing but that should be very seller maintained and secondary to getting people to buy things from your shop.
And I really found the regimented mailing list odd and the sort of thing that possible customers would tire of very quickly. Especially odd since I am guessing that most of their possible customers will come from Substack and why would we start newsletters on another service?
It is weird, but I can also see it as beneficial from people that don’t like to write that much. They just want to update their customers of new products and such.
Yeah good for folks that don't really want to maintain a newsletter but as a customer I would want to hear from a shop maybe once or twice a quarter—certainly not weekly. We'll see of course, I have been very wrong about many things in the past!
Oooh! I stumbled across this too and poked around a little bit. Agree 100% with what you've noticed. It's not clear to me how this platform doesn't remain a closed system of creators selling to other creators. Like, I am not my target market, and neither are my fellow artists who are also working hard to keep their business going. My target market is (obvs) people who have enough disposable income to buy art. I don't see any space in the flywheel they've built for shoppers who aren't also creators. Maybe I missed this? But frankly, I'm not interested in a sales platform that functions like social media and requires me to hustle to network with other creators because again, they're not who I'm marketing my work to. I love having them as friends! But not as something I need to spend time on in order to build a sales channel/recommendation network where I am one option among many. Would love to hear how it goes if you decide to set up shop there!
So I think it’s coming in stages. Stage 1 is to attract makers. Stage 2 is to seek out shoppers. I’ve seen a few ads from them so far and the only people they’re pitching is sellers. That’s a total guess though.
Also, the “community” aspect is fairly passive from what I can tell. Some will try to game the system and do the follow/unfollow thing I’m sure, but that will become tiresome after a while.
I think if I was going to use this platform, I would only sell my smaller works and things like scenes and such. I’m still really unsure of how taxes and shipping work because there’s really no information about it right now. I tested adding something to my cart to see what would happen if I tried to check out, and there was no information about tax or shipping at all , which is odd, but they may be so new they haven’t established a system for it yet.
That scares me a little because I would think they would want to get the logistics handled for people first, but that’s just my thinking.
Stages makes sense! Yeah, I wish there was better documentation about how everything works, especially fees, because it's hard to be informed enough to agree to the TOS without that information 😆 I'm gonna play with it and add the same work there and on my website and see what works better. I don't see myself promoting a sales channel on someone else's platform but it may be so amazing that there's a reason to do it.