A different type of craft...

Hi All.

I'm a new member of the icraft team - although I consider what I do something of a craft, it's a bit different from most of the members here... I'm responsible for making sure the site runs smoothly and adding all the new features that people have been requesting.

First the good news... we have a pipeline! There are changes and new features coming soon.
On the short-list for release in the near future are:

• Currency Conversion (to 50+ currencies)
• Amazon Wishlists
• Favorites - add stores and products to your own favorites lists
• Etsy Importer - import your listings (names, photos, descriptions and prices) directly from Etsy

Now the bad news... there is a long list of requested features, and we can't get to all of them immediately. There will be an ongoing process of adding new features to the site for both buyers and sellers. We'll be soliciting input here on the forum (thanks for all the feature suggestions made so far) and I'll be updating frequently with news and plans. The longer-term list includes:

• Image ordering on listings
• Additional statistics and SEO tools
• Import tools from other sites
• Better integrations with social media sites and tools
• Improvements to the way stores are organized and managed

and much more...

In addition to new functionality and features, we're working to improve icraftgifts.com's overall SEO and performance to make it a better place for buyers and sellers.

I'm always interested in hearing your ideas and opinions on features and changes we're considering - we'll be posting here on the forum, in the blogs and in our newsletters to keep you updated on what's coming. Please let us know what you think - here in the forum, or send me a message with your thoughts and ideas!

[Fairy Cardmaker]

Thanks for the update!  I've been dying to see the pipeline!  I think it's great except for one:  I would rank "improvements to the way stores are organized" above currency conversion and Etsy Importer.  It may be just me.

Overall though, the list looks great!
- Lisa

Thanks Lisa!

The order of the initial releases is more based on the speed with which they can be developed, tested and released than on their importance or ranking in the list of things we'd like to do...

We're working on all of these items, so hopefully you won't have to wait too long to see the ones you need most make it out to the site 

[Northern Girl Jewelry]

It's nice to see this list.  I'm really glad to see some sort of favorites being rolled out soon.  I think having the ability to keep a favorites list can help some people come back and purchase items they see here but aren't ready to buy the moment they see them.  There have been a few times that I wished I had one.

Also really happy to see the ordering of photos on the list and the organization of our stores. 

Thanks for keeping us informed.

It's not the full "Favorites" functionality that we really need, but we added Amazon Universal Wishlists functionality to the site today. This will at least allow buyers to keep track of (and get back to) products that they are interested in!

The full favorites feature should allow users to add both products and stores as favorites, and share those favorites with other people. Sellers should be able to see how many people (and possibly who - although we're not quite sure on that one yet) has favorited their store or their products. Are there any other features to Favorites you'd like to see?

[Northern Girl Jewelry]

It's not critical yet, but if icraft grows, eventually it would be nice if a user could manager his/her favorites lists.  By that I mean being able to create some order within the favorites or group them somehow.  When a user gets to the point of having lost of stores or items favorited, it sometimes gets hard to find individual items again.

[PillowThrowDecor]

Really looking forward to the importing of listings. Huge huge huge benefit for attracting sellers to icraft. It is so time consuming managing more than 1 store when you have many products.

Really looking forward to reading about and trying out the updates! Woo hoo!!!

Cheers
Christine