Hi all, this thread is for posting FEEDBACK FROM SELLERS on Michaels MakerPlace.
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General critiques, but specific enough that they are actionable (in other words, not a one-person issue but something affecting many Makers and/or shoppers)
Good, bad, strengths, weaknesses, pros/cons, and/or suggestions for improvement.
What OTHER actions you have taken or will take. Report feedback? Email? Social media tag or post? Let us know!
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NOTE: Posts on or before September 12, 2023, might appear out of order.
Update to this: I got my invite and started setting it up. Pretty impressed so far, I really like their TOU and the things listed (no resellers, MUST be handmade, etc.) make me think their goal is to be what Etsy used to be (and is not now). My biggest hurdle on Etsy now are the stupid download people - looks like this site won’t have that, which is a plus for me.
The policies state they’re going to follow marketplace facilitator rules and collect taxes, so they’re not just looking to be a front like some of the other Etsy imitators.
I have no interest in classes, but can see that bringing customers to the site.
And lastly, Michael’s is one of the only craft/hobby places that have actually survived, so maybe they know what they’re doing?
It might be a flop, but I’m willing to put in a minimum of effort to see what happens.
The support is clunky too. The only way to contact support is fill out a contact us form and wait for them to email you. There is no past support ticket area or anything. I don’t know if they have something on their backend or not that would organize support tickets? I don’t like that they don’t seem to have any sort of ticketing system or somewhere I can see my closed support cases.
Where can we give Michaels some feedback on the site set up?
I haven’t really looked at other categories, but their categories list for jewelry is really bad. No organization at all, all mixed up, and then some of the categories (such as for earrings) makes no sense at all.
There is a “Dangle earrings” category has 415 items listed, and there is also a “Hoop Earrings” and a “Stud Earrings” categories both have certain amount of listings, those 3 are fine. But there is also a category of “All Earrings” with only 7 items and a category of “Earrings” has 167 items.
I’d think “All earrings” category would have included all the different kinds of earring, so why only has 7 item. And why has a category of “Earrings” but only show 167 items and not all the other earrings.
If some buyer click on either “All Earrings” or “Earrings” to search for earrings, they’d only be seeing a small portion of what is listed.
Things I’d change:
would like to rearrange pictures
ability to edit time frame. I couldn’t figure out what that meant, so I chose 10 days. When my item went live, it said that the item was available for 10 days. OK, now I know what that means, but I can’t change it
Definitely would love to be able to arrange different type of items into some kind of sections, or at least group them together. Instead of just mixed all together by the date you listed.
I wonder after we have some sales whether the items will be arranged more by the popularity of the sales?
Another thing I don’t like is the weird sub-category list with each main categories, such as for Jewelry, the list is so mixed, there is so order at all. Some of the categories makes no sense at all, ex: “Dangle Earrings” category has 731 items, but “All Earrings” category only has "20 items, shouldn’t “All Earrings” including all the dangle earrings?
I haven’t spend the time to figure out if there is some way to contact support and give them some suggestions for improvements.
I know I want ability rearrange items or put items into categories. Mobile view of my shop looks pretty janky. The shop works well if you only sell maybe 5 or 10 items. I believe on desktop it only shows 12 items and then you select see more. If I could at least sticky my more popular listings or something.
I made my banner at the suggested dimensions it offered and it was all cut off and cropped funny so I had to redo that. The new banner also isn’t optimized for mobile friendly either. It looks ok. I’m not going to mess with anything further. I’m just listing a few items every day.
I put a 10 day processing time on my items. I hate that it’s on a listing and not some sort of profile. Amazon is the same way (though I have found many times my production time disappears leaving me to scramble getting an item made and shipped within my 2 day handling time).
My current turn around time can be as little as next or even same day during the school year. During the summer with all the kids home I extend it out longer. I might get an item made the same day the order comes in, but might be several days before I leave the house to ship it.
Figure it’s always better to under promise and over deliver. Worst case scenario if I ever get swarmed on makerplace or amazon I can at least set my Etsy for a longer process time and temp ignore orders there to prioritize other marketplaces.
Variants. I listed OOAK earrings with the option of 3 different earring backs. The listing published as having a quantity of 3, with 1 of each of the variants. NO — I can switch the earring backs, but it’s still OOAK.
Quick Q as I’m running out the door: There’s no way to bulk-edit production times and/or visibility, correct? It’s one at a time? Just thinking about future vacations…I really need to get back to setting up, but we’re going away on a short trip in a couple weeks so it’s on my mind.
I’m not planning any trips, but it’d be good to know if there is a “Vacation” button to “close the door” for a few days when we need it.
I looked through the “Seller Support” page, and didn’t see anything relate to this issue. So it would seems the only way would be to “Deactivate” the listing one by one, and then “Reactivate” (or whatever the word they’d use) one by one again.
RE vacation mode - not yet. Although maybe there’s no ding if you don’t ship on time? Hmm. But this will affect how I set things up. I do not want to have to edit everything one-by-one.
"At this time we do not have a Time Away feature, this is a request that has been added to our enhancements and it is a feature we are hoping to release soon but we do not yet have a launch date for this feature. In the meantime for time away we are recommending deactivating product listings and making sure there are no classes scheduled.
Unfortunately this is unable to be done in bulk, but this is also another enhancement that has been added to our feature requests, I will add your information to this as well and hopefully this will be an option in the future!"
It’s interesting watching this thread. Makerplace doesn’t sound like it’s ready yet. I will probably beat myself in the future when it’s fully running and totally successful, but I just don’t have the time to spend on all the glitches right now.
Re product category: it’s glitchy. Sometimes I have to refresh the page several times, wait 5 minutes, and then refresh again.
I’m able to make changes after it’s published, but never the category 1st 2nd or 3rd tier. Sometimes that, too, takes several refreshes. But once it works, my edits stick.
So far I have 19 listings. I’d have more done if it wouldn’t glitch, because then I go off and do something else.
the email I got from Michael’s support after I wrote with suggestions:
Hi Meredith,
Thank you for contacting us and your feedback! I’ve passed on your suggestions to our support team. MakerPlace by Michaels is a new experience and is still in our Beta phase, so we appreciate all feedback!
One feature definitely in the works is the ability to rearrange pictures! After you publish a listing, the tags don’t disappear, they’re just not visible on the customer facing side. Yes, you will be able to renew an item. I apologize for the confusion. Furthermore, when a customer views your shop, on the left-hand side they’ll see the different categories of your listings (e.g., Bags & Purses, Jewelry, Home & Living, etc) and tags. At the top of the site if you click on Shop Categories a dropdown menu appears and the first option is accessories. I’m surprised by your search results! When I search “earrings” I get 1500 results, and “dangle earrings” comes up with 919 results. As we continue to grow I’m sure it will be continuously updating.
We are still adding improvements and are confident that feedback like yours will make us that much better!
If I may be of further assistance, please let me know. I’m here to help!
When creating a new or copying a listing I am able to select new categories. When I am trying to edit a listing I can’t change categories.
Don’t like the “At this time” in the response for digital items…makes me think if they can make money doing it they will figure out a way to allow it…and then it’s just a slippery slope from there.
Still no sales yet, but I haven’t also had any time to devote to anything this past week…but the kids all start back to school tomorrow and then I can finally get back to being productive!
Well, besides looking into digital products, Michaels really need to have some kind of way of “gate keeping” what kind of things are been listed.
I was just looking around in the “Kitchen & Dinning” category to see what’s what, and was surprised to see couple listing selling homemade jams. Didn’t food items need to be regulated some how?
