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| Story by juln, kutty, magicjelly, TechUpdates, Vanessa Published on May 29, 2009 in Spotlight | Photo by |
As part of our Handmade Code series, we're bringing you news and how-to's about the innovations emerging from the Etsy Developer Community. Located atdeveloper.etsy.com, the Etsy Developer Community serves as a hub for third-party software developers who are making neat and helpful programs for Etsy shoppers and sellers. In this edition, magicjelly presents her and juln's site, Craft Cult, which includes the incredibly useful apps The Heartomatic for sellers and The Vault for shoppers.The Heartomatic was first developed by Julian, a.k.a. juln, back in 2007. He really only intended it for his own use, but told a few of his Etsy friends about it, too. One of them posted about The Heartomatic on the forums and word spread fast — soon there were thousands of people using it! In November 2008, Julian and I launched Craft Cult, a collaborative project. Julian is the programmer, I’m the designer, and we have lots of plans for new features. I think one of the reasons for Craft Cult’s success is that we are artists and Etsy sellers (and buyers) ourselves. I think that experience has really helped us develop tools that Etsians find useful.
What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
The idea behind Craft Cult is to enhance the Etsy experience for both sellers and buyers. Utilizing Etsy’s public API, The Heartomaticprovides sellers with statistics relating to their shop hearts, item hearts and views in a time-saving, user-friendly format, as well as providing information that isn’t readily available via their Etsy shops. The Featured page also shows sellers when they’ve been picked for Etsy’s home page, Gift Guides or in The Storque so they never need miss the excitement. We often hear people comment that Craft Cult is totally addictive!
Our utilities are a lot of fun and very easy to use, but from a more serious business perspective, they also provide shop owners with invaluable information about their shop activity that can really help when it comes to product development and market research.
We haven’t forgotten about buyers. We recently implemented The Vault, which is an archive of all the home page featured lists. The Vault is pure eye candy, very inspirational, and a great place for window shopping.
Our newest addition to The Vault is a “Share This List” button that takes you to a page where you can create an animated widget featuring items from Etsy’s home page, which you can embed on your blog. It’s a fantastic way to add some visual appeal to your blog while spreading the word about Etsy, and it’s a way for Treasury curators and sellers to preserve their moment of home page glory and show it off to the world.
Where do we go to find it? What's the URL, etc?
You can find us right here… http://craftcult.com
Who is it for? How many people are using it right now?
Craft Cult is for Etsy addicts and people who love handmade and vintage. There are a LOT of them using our site, about 45,000 unique visitors and 2 million views a month, and growing steadily. Since installing Google Analytics a couple of months ago, we’ve had over 90,000 unique visitors using Craft Cult!
How do you use it?
The Heartomatic is really easy to use, just input your Etsy username or id number and hit “Enter.”
There are tabbed sections to the Heartomatic where you can check your hearts and views, as well as check to see if you’ve been on the home page or featured elsewhere.
One of The Heartomatic’s benefits is that you can see at a glance who has hearted you, what time they hearted you, whether they’re sellers or have buyer accounts, and you can see all of your item hearts listed without having to view each of your listings. We also show you how many new hearts you have, “new” being hearts accrued in the last 24 hours. The Heartomaticalso calculates a views per heart ratio for your items — that is, how many views it takes on average before someone hearts you. This information can give you great insight into the popularity of your products.
The Vault is just as easy to use. You can search the archive by member (list curators and featured sellers) or by date.
Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
Anyone can use our site and it’s totally free. Craft Cult serves a dual purpose because, in addition to the Etsy-related utilities, we also offer sellers the opportunity to benefit from our high site traffic and promote their shops and products. Our advertising space helps fund the site so we can devote time to customer service and developing new features, and it’s also really gratifying to know that it’s providing independent artists and crafters, who usually have a modest marketing budget, with good quality, affordable advertising. Each of our advertisers receives in excess of 10,000 impressions per day, and we hear lots of good feedback from them about the results they get from their ads. If you’d like to take a look at our advertising info, you’ll find it right here.
What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
The idea behind Craft Cult is to enhance the Etsy experience for both sellers and buyers. Utilizing Etsy’s public API, The Heartomaticprovides sellers with statistics relating to their shop hearts, item hearts and views in a time-saving, user-friendly format, as well as providing information that isn’t readily available via their Etsy shops. The Featured page also shows sellers when they’ve been picked for Etsy’s home page, Gift Guides or in The Storque so they never need miss the excitement. We often hear people comment that Craft Cult is totally addictive!
Our utilities are a lot of fun and very easy to use, but from a more serious business perspective, they also provide shop owners with invaluable information about their shop activity that can really help when it comes to product development and market research.
We haven’t forgotten about buyers. We recently implemented The Vault, which is an archive of all the home page featured lists. The Vault is pure eye candy, very inspirational, and a great place for window shopping.
Our newest addition to The Vault is a “Share This List” button that takes you to a page where you can create an animated widget featuring items from Etsy’s home page, which you can embed on your blog. It’s a fantastic way to add some visual appeal to your blog while spreading the word about Etsy, and it’s a way for Treasury curators and sellers to preserve their moment of home page glory and show it off to the world.
Where do we go to find it? What's the URL, etc?
You can find us right here… http://craftcult.com
Who is it for? How many people are using it right now?
Craft Cult is for Etsy addicts and people who love handmade and vintage. There are a LOT of them using our site, about 45,000 unique visitors and 2 million views a month, and growing steadily. Since installing Google Analytics a couple of months ago, we’ve had over 90,000 unique visitors using Craft Cult!
How do you use it?The Heartomatic is really easy to use, just input your Etsy username or id number and hit “Enter.”
There are tabbed sections to the Heartomatic where you can check your hearts and views, as well as check to see if you’ve been on the home page or featured elsewhere.
One of The Heartomatic’s benefits is that you can see at a glance who has hearted you, what time they hearted you, whether they’re sellers or have buyer accounts, and you can see all of your item hearts listed without having to view each of your listings. We also show you how many new hearts you have, “new” being hearts accrued in the last 24 hours. The Heartomaticalso calculates a views per heart ratio for your items — that is, how many views it takes on average before someone hearts you. This information can give you great insight into the popularity of your products.
The Vault is just as easy to use. You can search the archive by member (list curators and featured sellers) or by date.
Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
Anyone can use our site and it’s totally free. Craft Cult serves a dual purpose because, in addition to the Etsy-related utilities, we also offer sellers the opportunity to benefit from our high site traffic and promote their shops and products. Our advertising space helps fund the site so we can devote time to customer service and developing new features, and it’s also really gratifying to know that it’s providing independent artists and crafters, who usually have a modest marketing budget, with good quality, affordable advertising. Each of our advertisers receives in excess of 10,000 impressions per day, and we hear lots of good feedback from them about the results they get from their ads. If you’d like to take a look at our advertising info, you’ll find it right here.
What should one do if there's a bug or a problem? Who should one contact?
Julian is the brains behind the technical side of the site, and he’s very helpful and obliging when it comes to customer service, so please don’t hesitate to email him at julian@craftcult.com with any tech issues. He’d really appreciate the heads up if you run into any difficulties. We’re also on Twitterand post news and updates there. Come and say hi!
What's one surprising/fun/amazing story you've heard about someone using your app? Or what is your favorite part about the app?
Every time I hear back from our advertisers that their ads are working for them, it makes me really happy. One of our regular advertisers recently emailed us to say she’s been able to quit her day job and run her Etsy shop full time, thanks in part to her Craft Cult ads. The idea that we may play a part in people’s success is so amazing!
Anything else you'd like to add?
Thank you for the opportunity to tell Storque readers all about Craft Cult!
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