The Launch of Pattern by Etsy - DIY Goes WYSIWYG

WYSIWIG.

Those who are familiar with the terminology of the early days of website design know the term WYSIWYG. For those of you who haven't heard the phrase, it means what you see is what you get.

For better or worse, Etsy has officially gone WYSIWYG.

If you sell handmade items, vintage, or supplies on Etsy, you probably noted the April 2016 announcement about their new website builder tool called Pattern by Etsy. After surveying their users about their selling needs, Etsy added a WYSIWYG website solution to address seller desires.

Unfortunately, the solution leaves much to be desired.

Pattern by Etsy is great inasmuch as it takes only a few minutes to create a separate, sales-ready website for your Etsy inventory. The site builder has limited visual templates, but sometimes fewer options in layout and font save time tinkering. So you have a live site quickly that seamlessly links to your Etsy interface - inventory, views, and orders are tracked in the same dashboard as your in-Etsy sales. For help topics on Pattern by Etsy, see: https://www.etsy.com/help/article/39960388325

However, Pattern by Etsy charges $15 a month after a 30-day trial. So is it worth it?

No.

Here are a few reasons why Pattern doesn't quite meet my standards.

Return on Investment. Let's start with the most important question - does it make business sense? Etsy shops within its popular marketplace are free except for listing fees and transaction costs for goods sold. Pattern still charges the seller those same transaction fees for goods sold on top of the $15 monthly fee. You are still limited to Etsy rules on what products can be sold, such as no mass-manufactured items. Pattern is linked to a single Etsy shop, so you would need to have several Pattern shops, each costing $15 a month, for people with multiple Etsy stores.

Traffic and Customer Retention. Unlike your normal free Etsy marketplace shop, your $15 a month Pattern site will not generate traffic existentially. I understand that from having my own standalone sites, but Pattern doesn't seem to leverage Etsy's existing audience very well, or at least, not in this iteration.

One of the phenomena of novice Etsians is that they spend their first few weeks refreshing their stats every eight or nine seconds to see the views their new shop gets. It's invigorating! The normal Etsy marketplace brings more views than a standalone site will garner out of the gate because it attracts people interested in your craft or curation.

With Pattern, you are working to attract that traffic on your own, but without the tools that independent standalone sites (i.e. sites built on separate platforms like Shopify, WordPress, Moonfruit, etc.) use to help make your site viable. As a few examples, these sites allow for plug-in apps like newsletter subscriptions so that shops can build email lists and pop-up coupons to promote sales. Pattern doesn't seem to allow for coding, let alone ready-to-use integrated apps. In addition, Pattern lacks social media sharing apps beyond the ones already linked to your Etsy shop.

A big issue to be addressed is also how Google and other sites find your Pattern site vs. your Etsy site. Etsy currently pays for Google Product Listing Ads to help get your products in top spots next to similar items on Amazon and Ebay. On top of that, Etsy is such a popular site that your Etsy marketplace site will often rank high on search results with the right phrase. In general, repeated text is bad for search engine optimization (SEO), so the inability to edit item descriptions between your normal Etsy page and your Pattern page may not help you at all.

Look and Feel. Pattern by Etsy limits you to the same items in your linked Etsy marketplace store - no more and no fewer. That also means the same photos, the same number of photos, and the same product description. This doesn't really help getting found on search engine, and it really doesn't allow you to augment your web presence. It just looks slightly less "Etsy", although Etsy has enough name recognition that I think that is a bit of a detriment. Really, you're just getting a mirror site that allows you to change the fonts and colors of your existing Etsy storefront. That's not good enough for $15 a month.

By personalizing your site into a unique, rich, branded experience through one of these standalone platforms, you are able to maintain repeat customer traffic. On Pattern, you are paying to have one of a small handful of template-locked themes that don't garner a sense of anything more than a transactional customer experience.

User Experience. Everyone who wants to build a business that is sustainable cares most about their customer's experience. Pattern misses a lot of opportunities in this regard:

For starters, the customer service interface is limited to communication within product descriptions.
Also important, your Etsy reviews are not linked to Pattern, so your positive feedback is not shown.
Customers who are undecided don't have a way to mark favorites as they do through Etsy and must instead use third-party sites like Keep.com or WeHeartIt.
Shipping costs are not revealed until checkout. I suggest that those who decide to use Pattern by Etsy add items like shipping costs, sizing, turnaround, and contact information into their About page, Policies page, or individual product descriptions.
There is no search function. We've had the internet for nearly 25 years. This is a must in 2016.

But the worst is that customers are required to have an Etsy account just as if they were shopping on Etsy. However, on Pattern, since the Etsy branding is minuscule, a potential buyer won't realize that they are on an Etsy site until they are checking out and about to pay. It's the equivalent of having someone ready to buy a book and then requiring them to sign up for a new chain store loyalty card at the checkout desk when they thought they were at an independent bookstore. I am not aware of whether abandoned cart functionality is included to help retain reluctant buyers who are not Etsy members.

Shop Organization. Another big part of user experience for ecommerce is shop layout. Not only are things searchable (they aren't), but are they in the place where I would intuitively find them? Pattern does not allow you to rearrange items other than the same featured listings as on your Etsy storefront. Beyond that, items are organized into the same sections as your existing Etsy site, with no subsections, cross-section listings, or additional sections over the ten allotted.

Additional Content. Part of the reason for having a standalone website is to be able to highlight YOU and your brand, rather than Etsy and its marketplace. If you are an Etsy seller who participates in crafts fairs, antique markets, or tradeshows, you would want to be able to call attention to those events. How about blogs? Job postings? Maps to store locations? Links to other work? Multimedia? Wouldn't it be nice to have options like 360 product views and videos in product descriptions? How about more than five product photos? The inability to add content, including the ever-essential blog, is a non-starter. Blogging in particular is an effective way to improve SEO and drive traffic to your site, thus not incorporating it into Pattern handicaps your site from the get-go.

Then what's the point of Pattern?

Of course, Pattern by Etsy is intended to generate revenue for Etsy. Etsy is trying in earnest to give its sellers new tools, but this one falls short of what is expected of a modern website. Etsy itself has been an innovative site that is populated by the work of inspired people, so it doesn't make sense to spin off uninspired sites that lack the basic functionality customers expect.

Pattern by Etsy appears to be competing with Indiemade and some third-party Etsy API sites like Beeswax. However, these other sites have more advantages than Pattern. Beeswax charges less per month than Pattern. Indiemade offers comparable pricing, direct Etsy integration for inventory control, and more functionality like blogs and newsletter plug-ins.

Good news! There are other options!

For a quick and affordable option, I recommend buying a domain name from the best price domain host (Domain.com, GoDaddy.com, 1and1.com, etc.) and forward it to a Wix.com free site.

For something similar to Etsy but with a little more independence and functionality, Indiemade may be right for you. As mentioned above, Pattern appears to be patterned after Indiemade. Indiemade allows you to edit product descriptions and add blogs and events, which helps with SEO. The main limitation is that Indiemade has a limit on the number of products and is restricted to handmade items. I will say that I have trialed their service, and the people who run the site are great. However, I didn't like paying for such restrictions on my inventory.

For a more robust site, I like Weebly. They allow you to upload Etsy inventory through a CSV file, and, although time-consuming, allow you lots of functionality. Things like search, multi-section listings, multimedia integration, and apps all with SSL protected payment gateways that don't require your customers to sign up for anything before they buy. It's just a regular website. But don't expect to have it done overnight. The benefit of some of the previous solutions is speed.

As you can tell by the footer banner and sidebar on this site, I chose Wix to host my Ellesby site. Wix offers a free third-party Etsy plug-in through their "app market". The plug-in allows for in-frame Etsy shopping that limits customers to only my Etsy site with full in-store search functionality while still allowing my other content pages to be run through Wix. That means that I can blog, build a newsletter email list, include multimedia, and brand the site to my heart's content.

For other options with variations of speed, functionality, and cost, check out TicTail, StorEnvy, One.com, ECWID, Moonfruit, Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress. Are there others that you like? Let me know in the comments section, along with a link to your site!