My store's visibility rose to 990 this holiday season, but a day later it dropped below normal and dropped to 200 and even my bestseller products do not appear in searches, please correct this if it is a system error.
@TheButlersCorner Excuse me? How was I attacking you? If you read something I wrote that way, it certainly wasn't how it was intended!
Glad to know you do sell elsewhere in addition to Etsy. MANY sellers don't, even those who have been here for many years, so it was intended as an honest question. The "why" part was because, if the answer was "no," I was genuinely curious why you weren't selling anywhere else. Because I feel knowledgeable about other places to sell, I was prepared to offer that information, which actually would have been very supportive!
“And yes they have outsourced customer support from other countries, that's part of the problem.”
Where the support is based is irrelevant. Etsy is a global site, not a US-only site. Support may be useless but it has nothing to do with them being in Guatemala or Timbuktu. That does not read well.
It's Etsy's job to train their support staff, regardless of where they are. That's not on the people that have to answer the phones and emails if they haven't been provided the proper info to reply to questions and concerns.
Etsy outsourced their customer support years ago, presumably due to costs, so the only "US customer support" people are probably the email only groups, like legal/financial.
And since there are shops going weeks without getting their data verified, they're certainly not much better.
@WhiteBirchFarmhouse What do you think the test is doing to your shop? I was able to go to your shop and put an item in my cart and carry through to checkout without issue or warning from Etsy. All the payment options were there, etc. No issues.
If you have 700 views and visit and people are not choosing to buy your items, I am not seeing how that is due to testing, when I could check out from your shop fine if I wanted to and if you believe there is currently a test on your shop. If all your views are not coming from your direct sources, then you're also showing up in search too.
I guess I'm just missing the link between where support is located, Etsy testing and buyers choosing to buy something...?
I just got off the phone with an Etsy support member and she indend confirmed that my shop had allot of "bots" that were taking over my views and visits, she then told me she would refresh my shop and hopefully with 24hours that would clear it up. She completely understood my concern, she said my shop looked fine otherwise, my banner and listings and my sales prove that. My main concern was with the overwhelming vists and views, its not always a good thing when you get a huge number at 6am in the morning, (600+) and no sales, or favorites, its odd and she agreed with me. That was my concern and Im hoping they fix it. She said their were other shops that have contacted Ety support for the same reason.
And Prairie Primitives, you may not have thought so, but it came off rude, maybe if you had said I can help you, that would have made a difference, but I took it as you coming off rude.
If you were a fly on the wall then you would have heard what this gentlemen said to me, he actually said, because they are from another country, they don't get the training the US Etsy support reps get and they cant help with all the questions and I asked him why that was and he said, it was because they don't have the resources, we can just do so much.
Oh, you're dealing with bot traffic. That's different, that's not testing. Bot traffic is usually malicious, like spam bots or commercial bots that search websites and shops for data, but not always - like search engine crawlers - but Etsy should be filtering out bot traffic automatically so that it doesn't affect your conversion rate.
There have been quite a few forum posts on bot traffic and Etsy not being great at getting them filtered out so it sinks conversion rates to super low and affects you in search because it appears people are viewing your stuff and not liking it, so you get a downgrade. You can try searching for the topics in the forums and see how others have dealt with it.
I did not know at first what it was, I said I thought it might be testing, that has happened before, until I called and she told me what it was. Whatever it is, it stinks, right now of all times!!!
I completely agree. Not good at any time, but especially not now.
There was one shop in the forums said her conversion rate was down to something like .2 or .4 due to bot traffic. That will definitely hurt a shop and the reality is that it's completely not the fault of the seller, but their visibility would be reduced greatly if it's not taken care of (by Etsy).
