Need your help testing new site

[iCraft Admin]

We've been guilty of promising new design for weeks, if not months, now. 

We are close, but not quite. Still polishing some pages and trying to fix a few bugs on the new site. We also need to test how site works in different browsers, on mobile etc., for which we need your help.

We are looking for a few volunteers, who we'd give access to the new site and who could start using it and reporting to us their feedback - what works and what doesn't work, what's missing, any bugs they encounter etc. We want to make sure new features and the new design makes sense to sellers.

We've been doing a similar testing with buyers too and will continue testing after we switch to the new site too.

Please tell us who wants to participate in testing and we'll point your accounts to the new site.
You would then have to report back to us either here or through our contact form about everything you find not working etc.
This would speed up our testing process and get us closer to the new.

For now, we are going to enable the following accounts to have access to the new site:
Beajoux
PetiteTuques
PillowThrowDecor
Fairy Cardmaker
GalleriaLinda

Anyone else?

I'll post instruction on accessing new site shortly.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

Yay!  Beta!

[Beajoux]

Thank you, happy to help out!

Ainsley

[Ahkriti]

Can I be included yet to check the site?

[Northern Girl Jewelry]

I'm also willing to help test it.  I have some work to do in my shop in the upcoming week anyway, so will be using the site more.

[PillowThrowDecor]

Yay... I'm in.  Sounds so exciting!!!

Cheers
Christine

[iCraft Admin]

OK, AhKriti and Northern Girl Jewelry I'll add you to the list! 

We are setting up your accounts for accessing the new site and making sure all changes you make on the new site will be visible on the current site. We've been using the new site for a while now, but not as sellers would use it, so this will be a good test.

I am waiting to hear from our tech guys when everything is ready. However, when you login on iCraft next time, don't be surprised if you are redirected to the new site. I am just not sure how exactly this will be done from technical stand point. Or maybe we'll give you a separate URL. Don't know yet.

We are also setting up second analytics system to track the old and the new site, so we could compare user movements on both.     

[iCraft Admin]

Hello ladies,

OK, so we’ve setup your accounts for accessing the new site.
Click on this URL https://icraftgifts.com and log-in using your iCraft login info, same way you’d enter when logging into your “My Account” section. Let me know if you have problem login.

Here are a few things you need to know:

• The site is not 100% complete, but it’s functional for the most part.
• Please don't click on any Share buttons on the new site
• Also, don't distribute site screen shots to others outside this group
• You can use it to add and update your products, write blog posts, comment, post on the message board etc. All those changes on the new site, will be visible on the old site as well.
• You can flip back and forth between the new and the old site.
• If you’d like to test how your store avatar, store banner or blog avatar will look like on the new site, you’d have to keep in mind that those changes will not be pushed to the old site. After testing, you’d have to re-upload your old banner and avatars on the old site. It’s just hard for us to keep synchronizing the two sites.
• “My Account” area is a bit messy right now, as we didn’t fully redesign it. We are focusing on finishing main public facing pages. My account will be redesigned last.
• We are aware of some of the bugs and system problems that we need to fix, however, I don’t want to list what’s not working. So please comment on everything and report bugs when you encounter them. We’ll sort through the feedback to see which bugs we didn’t know about.
• When submitting bugs, please specify which Browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc.) and browser version you have. To find out your browser version, click on the Help link at the top and then on “About” link.
• You can post your feedback here including URLs to pages that you are referring to. Only those who have access to the new site will be able to see what you are talking about.
• If you see an error on the page, please take a screen shot and email it to us.
• We’d like to know what you think about your store and product pages, replacement results pages etc. and if there are things that you don’t like and why.

Ask, comment and suggest your ideas. All feedback is welcome.

Thanks for helping! 

[Ahkriti]

It looks fantastic! I had no problem looking for specific items! Sent you guys an email about errors on specific replacementes.

Am pretty excited as you guys are! Will you have a launch party soon?

[iCraft Admin]

Thanks AhKriti!  Happy to know your first impression was a positive one

We've implemented new replacement engine on the new site, so finding specific products should be easier now. We can tweak our replacement algorithm quite easy and apply different degree of weight to various parameters like tags, audience, product categories or the position of keywords in Title etc. Search results should be a lot more relevant now.

Launch party? Hmmm... we didn't even think of that yet... but good idea. We love to party! 
There is still a lot of work for us ahead. What you see on the new site right now is only some of the functionality that we've developed. There is a lot more. So I think we'll celebrate when we realize all our plans for iCraft.

Thanks for the email. We'll fix that error message.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

Exciting!  I don't have time to look right now and I'm at a nephew's birthday party tomorrow, but I will certainly nose around over the coming week and let you know what I find.

[Northern Girl Jewelry]

Love the new look of the front page - clean and modern.

I'm using IE8.

I'm just starting to look around a little and when I clicked on "silver jewelry" under popular replacementes on the left, it brought me to replacement results for "silver, earrings".  I was expecting to see all silver jewelry here, not just earrings.  Was it intended to just go to earrings?  Once I'm on that page, there is a full choice of jewelry from the pull down menu on the left, but it was surprising to see a fairly specific result come up from clicking on a generic replacement (silver jewelry).

Love the pull down menu on the left in our shops!  This will make it so much easier for buyers to find what they want in a shop.  Also, now understand the importance of all the attributes we can select from in our listing set up.

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Northern Girl Jewelry,

Actually, link says "silver earrings", not "silver jewelry".
Unless I am missing something...

[PetiteTuques]

Overall I like the new look!

I have a few things - when I click on a product in my shop, the url at the top doesn't have shop names.
For example,     Buy Handmade >    Crafts >    Knitting >    Knit Reflection Scarf Pdf Pattern

I'd rather have people stay in my shop as long as possible. Maybe that;s too "etsy" but I think it makes for less confusion for the buyer as well.

Question,- will we be able to have live links in our product descriptions? To direct people to similar items, or to our "home page"?

[iCraft Admin]

Hi PetiteTuques,

That's how breadcrumbs are implemented on the current site right now. We didn't change them.
There are many ways users can get to product pages, including from browsing our categories. Breadcrumbs help them to explore related categories. There are links to your store and your other products already displayed on the right.

No, we don't plan to enable links within product descriptions, but we plan to add function that will connect related products. Thanks!