Dead shops on front page

[MadMavenCreations]

 
so, being an artisan myself, I tried to do some shopping on iCraft for the holidays.  EVERY store I tried to buy from was inactive/a dead store.  One seller did contact me and referred me to his shop on Etsy.  I did end up getting a product via that site although it was a pain in the ass.  

The bummer is that one of the dead shops showed up on the main page today.  Does this site not have a method of weeding out the dead shops???

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Shannon,

We didn't update homepage, including the banner, in a while now. As I mentioned here https://icraftgifts.com/forum/1453/really-really-a-dead-product-on-the-home-page-banner/ we are just a few days away from the release of the new design, so it doesn't make sense for us right now to invest any more time in the current site. Even though if something looks like a simple fix, it's not. It would require a few weeks of developer's time to fix all known problems on the current site.

"Dead shops" is a real problem that we'll have to tackle after the redesign. Partially, its our fault, as we were busy with  the development and couldn't pay much attention to the seller's activities on the site.
If you have any ideas on how to revive those "Dead shops", we are all ears  

We have a lot of ideas on engaging buyers and sellers, some new and exciting features are coming out soon too and we plan to do a lot more promotional activities, once we release the new design. I think things will pick up soon and hopefully 2012 will be a year of growth and a lot of improvements on iCraft.

That's sad that current members refer customers to their Etsy shops. That happened to me too, when I wanted to purchase something on the site a few weeks ago. Imagine my surprise

[SarahMars]

I personally hate being bounced to another site. 
You'll be asked to register there too, and if I am shopping here, I probably already have an account. Agree, not nice when people redirect you somewhere else.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

The right thing for the seller to have done is delist it from Etsy and relist it here for you.  Why would a seller ask a buyer to do work?  You've got a buyer!  That's the hard part!  Bring the product TO THEM!  "Go where the buyers are" and all that.

Just my 2 cents.

[MadMavenCreations]

Dealing with dead shops is a relatively simple fix, IMO.  It can't be too difficult to automatically deactivate shops/listings if the owner hasn't logged in in a certain period of time (3-6 months).  If the shop is truly active, an email to their account address would be sufficient to let them know their item(s) have been deactivated due to inactivity and they must log in to reactivate.

For what it's worth, of the 3 items I tried to buy, the ONLY transaction I got resolution from was the store that had moved to Etsy.

I'm an independent seller and moved to iCraft from Etsy after being a hugely disappointed team leader there.  Their site is so huge only the sellers w/ an already large following seem to get exposure.  The home page at iCraft showing MY work occasionally was a HUGE draw for me as getting lost in the masses isn't good for business.  On the flip side, neither are dead shops on the front page.