Design This - Custom Etsy Shop Cover Image

You may recall that I shared some changes that Etsy made to shop layouts during April in a previous blog post. Prior to the change I was approached by a fellow Texas Friends teammate asking if I would be interested in helping her design a shop cover for her shop, JackrabbitFlats, in advance of the changes going live. I was happy to oblige.

At the time there was a thread on the Etsy forums where shop owners shared their new shop covers that I had her look at. We discussed what we liked about some of them that caught our eyes, whether to incorporate her old shop banner as part of the new cover photo and more. JackrabbitFlats' shop owner sent several product photos over for me to work with. I made a rough mock up incorporating her old shop banner with representative items and sent it over as a starting point for discussion. (See above.)

Eventually she decided that she wanted a cover image that was only a collage of representative items from her shop. (Shop names are prominently displayed just below the cover images in the new layout.) I played around with various layouts and finally arrived at one that I really liked. While I had been given more items than were in that iteration, I felt adding more of them made the image too cluttered. I sent the second rough mock up to my customer and not only did she agree with my assessment but she also loved it. Now that I knew what the final layout would look like, I edited each photo for color and brightness before sending the proof for approval. (See below.) After getting approval and subsequently payment, my custom creation was uploaded and ready to grace the shop JackrabbitFlats when the new layout became live during April 2016.

Etsy Shops Get a Makeover

This past week Etsy completed its rollout of its new shop design. The new design relies more on scrolling than links to related pages to surface pertinent information about a shop.

As a shop owner I had the option of using my old banner, making a larger cover photo or going without a visual at the top of my shop landing page. I chose to go with the new cover photo option. My cover photo for my EDCCollective shop is likely temporary. I used the photo that I created my old banner from and cropped it for the new cover photo aspect ratio. (See old banner above.) At some point when I have the time I expect I will set up a photo shoot using my current inventory to make a new one. Until then I am happy with the new cover photo (seen below). What do you think? For my EclecticSkeptic shop I made a collage of representative items from that shop for my new cover photo.

Other changes include larger product images at three across instead of four on our shop home page. Some of the information was brought out of the side bar on the left and added higher up on the page. We also got five more shop sections that we can add to the sidebar, hooray! This will help customers focus in on specific items they are looking for when they are not just browsing an entire shop. I have already added a few more sections to my EclecticSkeptic shop.

There is definitely a learning curve for shop owners as they manage the new layout and some things are not as easy to do in one's shop as in the old view. Etsy has promised they are working on enhancements based on feedback. Overall, I am getting used to it and am hopeful that Etsy's testing that showed the redesign was good for shoppers proves to be accurate. I have not shopped the new view yet. If you have, I'd love to hear what you find to be good or needs improvement from a shopper's point of view.