Michaels MakerPlace FEEDBACK

Selling on other Platforms MakerPlace by Michaels
21

When one person has a problem, maybe it’s their computer, maybe it’s their browser, maybe it’s their cookies — but when multiple people have the exact same problem, it’s the coding. Period.

Support telling us to clear our cache, try another browser, etc. — those are fidget spinners, and fidget spinners are incapable of fixing bad code.

Support giving us a new fidget spinner is their way of deflecting the blame AS IF giving it a few more spins will summon the genie or Tinker Bell or get us back to Kansas.

1 Like
22

Don’t forget about same person (me) get different results from different computers.

I don’t know enough of computers to try to find the cause or the solution, and sound like Michaels doesn’t really know know what is causing the problem or how to solve it either.

Since I have one computer that was working, and before it stops working I listed a few more items today. But it’s almost 2 weeks now and haven’t had a single sales, so who knows if it’s worth the effort to continue list things.

23

At the same time I have not experienced a problem like this from Amazon, Ecrater, Ebay, Etsy, Poshmark, or Goimagine. Coders should anticipate compatability with at the least Windows 10 and 11, Mac -Ventura, Android, and Iphone IOS 16

24

How are you guys doing this? The site is so hard to navigate. The links don’t work most of the time, and when they do, they send me back to the login page. I can’t stay logged in at all. It is so frustrating. I want to see my store page address and can’t find it. I want to list a product (yep, back to the login page).

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25

Okay, I just figured out that the links work better if I use Chrome. I say “better,” because at least some of them work. I can’t get it to list a product yet because that page just flashes like it’s going crazy.

26

All we use is Chrome on all our machines. The only issue we had is that category one everyone was having.

We still only have three items listed, as a test. More due to the fact we are busy in the back to school season.

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27

Can’t understand why you are having all those issues? Don’t really have any really helpful suggestion (clear cache/cookie?), but just want to say your situation is not really normal.

Same as @Image, the only issue I had was that “category” not populating (only on one of my PCs) for the last few days, so couldn’t save edit or list things on that PC, but Michaels have fixed that problem now.

I don’t care for how some of the things are set up or looks on the public side, but otherwise, I have found it pretty easy to list things, no problem with any of the links from the side bar, everything have been pretty smooth for me.

I did notice any change/update to the listings is taking much long, like half a day or overnight, to show up to the public side.

1 Like
28

I’m just fast loosing interest in this because it is so buggy. Every time I set aside some time something comes up and I just get frustrated and invest my time elsewhere.

Today for example, I had an item I had made that turned out to be an extra item. No big deal, I’ll just list it on Michaels with a turn around time of 1 day since it was extra. Well later on it ended up selling on Etsy…no big deal I’ll just take the one I have set aside and ship it out and adjust the processing time on Michaels to 10 days.

Except the listing is bugged out now with category issues. I can ‘change’ the processing time, but it wont let me save the listing because a “Secondary Category” is required, and yet the category cant be changed or edited…so I can’t save the listing.

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29

Interesting, :thinking: If Michaels were smart, they would “salt” the marketplace, making sure each of us get a few orders.

Done in other trades all the time.

4 Likes
30

If there was an update on the 22nd, it didn’t fix anything. Though the post I saw in the facebook group said the update would be on the 22nd, but check dashboard on the 23rd so who knows.

Tried listing an item today and still went to pending.

Will try again to list an item tomorrow and see.

If tomorrow it is all still a mess I will email support yet again (I think they are tired of hearing me, now I just get these “Clear your cache” emails :roll_eyes: It’s not a “Clear your cache” issue if I can accurately predict which items will go to pending and which ones will go live.

Something still isn’t right with stats. I haven’t been bothered to track it. I am consistently getting 20-30 shop views a day, but if I click all time it went from 207, to 210, to 218 so which is it? Am I only getting 7 shop visits a day or am I getting 20-30 shop visits a day? Do I put in effort to track it and document it into a spreadsheet? Seems like all the other feedback I provide on issues…crickets.

Here is the thing about beta testing, yes it is a mess, but I don’t mind doing it if I can submit all my incidents or issues…and have them all in an organized place so I can see if things are being handled. There is a lot of lack of support when it comes to this. So much of support so far that I’ve seen both in here, and facebook, and my own experience…seems to be “Blame the seller”…and it’s just…not a good.

I’m putting my time into this, and I have more time I could put into it…but there seems to be this huge disconnect between seller support and sellers…and that’s a huge turn off.

31

The only change I can see was on “Performance Overview” page, the dropdown list to select the day range of data doesn’t have “Yesterday” anymore.

IMO, that was not an improvement. It was useful to be able to see in a daily bases how many visit/view we got (sadly not many for me when I not promoting on my own and counting on Michaels to draw attention to MakerPlace).

Didn’t try to list anything today, so don’t know if that “Pending” issue has improved, but I never had any of my listing “Pending” before either.

32

Did notice one change for the better, on the public side, where you search by categories, the list are much organized.

I only looked at “Jewelry”, all the different kinds of jewelry are listed in alphabetic order now, instead of that crazy long mixed list with no order at all, so it is much easier to look up things now.

2 Likes
33

So this update looks pretty good, but still some issues.

Browsing wise it looks like they fixed all the category problems. Items now appear in all three categories (Primary, Secondary & Tertiary). All of my old items that were active now appear in all 3 categories.

My octopus listing where I was trying to update the processing time, but it wouldn’t let me saying I needed to choose a category, but the box was grayed out. Well it’s fixed today, I was able to update the processing time and the category boxes are able to be selected.

My Thanksgiving listing that I posted on 8/10 that was pending, changed over to expired. I was able to click ‘Relist’ on it and it went just fine as active.

I listed two new items today in the category that when listed in previously went to Pending, but this time they all went to active :partying_face:

So now things I don’t like:

I still have a handful of pending items that I can’t do anything with. I do not know if these will change to Expired in time like the one above? You can’t edit or delete an item that is pending.

Stats: They removed “Yesterday” as an option for stats. Was that even working correctly? I have no idea! I was kind of using it to gauge which items to list next (kind of what is in demand?). Like I said above, my daily stats were saying between 20-30 views a day, but my All time stats were barely budging every day.

Communication still seems lacking. I had a lot of replies to my support tickets that popped up today asking me if everything was working now. That’s great I guess that they are replying to tickets, but it feels like they just saved them all up for “Lets deal with this after we push the update”.

Also, would be nice if they sent out some sort of Seller email saying something like “Hey everyone we are listing to concerns here is an update”, but I haven’t received anything yet.

So since it looks like listing is working accurately I’m going to set aside time today and go full steam ahead and get as much as my stuff listed. I have a feeling that we wont be told when they go live :joy:

1 Like
34

I was using “Yesterday” as a tool to see how many people are clicking on my store/listing each day. I tried not to click my own items, so the stats will only show other people’s click. The numbers were pretty low.

Knowing that doesn’t really help me in anyway to get sales, but for now have more info doesn’t hurt either.

I did commented with “Feedback” about this issue, and here is the reply I got:

"Thank you for contacting us! I apologize that the data for Yesterday on the Performance Overview page is no longer there. I’ve passed on the enhancement request to our support team to have this added back in the future. MakerPlace by Michaels is a new experience and is still in our Beta phase. We are still adding improvements and are confident that feedback like yours will make us that much better! "

Well, maybe they’ll add it back if enough sellers ask for it?

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35

I make all my image back grounds white, obviously the main image for Amazon. I don’t like the look of the grey background on Michael’s. The thumbnail page is white but detail page is grey :face_vomiting:

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36

Maybe you can sent them a Feedback about change the grey to white on the detail page?

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37

Did

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41

Update: They asked if I had any suggestions/input.

I suggested:

  1. Ability to rearrange listings in shop - he said it’s on the way
  2. Shop categories - he said it’s on the way

I also asked that they PLEASE not allow digital downloads since the vast majority on Etsy are either AI or museum scraped art - and real artists just can’t compete. Sadly, he said they’re going to allow it and are trying to find “guardrails” to prevent the fraudulent stuff. But…as we all know, once they open that door it’s lights out.

I’ll have to decide whether it’s even worth adding more stuff now. I just can’t/won’t compete with $3 downloads.

I suggested they might make it a rule that the artwork has to be wholly created by the artist - that it cannot be someone else’s artwork that they’ve modified.

7 Likes
42

Yeah but where do you draw the line of the Artist creating it using tools…it’s such a slippery slope. You know damn good and well they wont police it and who gets to be the expert if AI was involved or not. I can’t imagine any guardrail set up that would work. I really hope they have someone to provide input.

But also considering it’s been 6+ months and we don’t have basics such as shop organization…maybe they just will never get around to actually fixing the website to allow digital content.

I’ve heard rumors now that after Joann’s bankruptcy that Michaels might be next, and browsing their employee subreddit on reddit…there are not a lot of happy employees.

I wouldn’t put all my eggs into this basket. It was a priority for me for awhile…and I am getting sales…but not enough sales…and I’m not sure I’m seeing enough updates to make me feel like they know what they are doing.

2 Likes