Today I logged onto Etsy and as I always do, immediately glanced at my Shop Manager icon to see if I had any sales. Hooray!!!! There was an orange bubble there with 3! So exciting!!! And they were sales, not messages, because those are indicated by an orange dot by the 'Your Account' icon. Right, we all know this. Ok, so I click on my Shop Manager icon and........whaaat??? No sales. No indicators of new activity anywhere in my Shop Manager menu. Then I go to my Dashboard to check activity and there at the top is that ANNOYING suggestion blurb on how many issues I could improve to make my store more visible blah blah blah - oh, hey, interesting, there are 3. So this message is for the developers or whoever keeps having bright ideas on how Etsy's website should work for us sellers - DO NOT allow these shop management suggestions to show up as alerts. It really sucks to think you have sales and then find out you don't. Thank you! Thank you very much.
That happened to me the other day, but there were no new suggestions or messages. While working on my shop I watched the little flag go from 1 all the way up to 4. For no reason. Later it just disappeared.
Not only is it disappointing, but it's almost like Etsy is setting us up to fail by sending us fake notifications.
There are plenty of other ways and places for Etsy to tout their products and ideas.