Etsy is among the many ecommerce sites and retailers rolling out personalization features – in fact, the online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods will provide more customized content for visitors, calling it a top priority in 2014. Next up: it’s working on its homepage, with plans to provide more customization when a visitor is signed in to the site.
It wasn’t that long ago that shoppers would see the exact same thing as everyone else when visiting a website. But marketers are increasingly using personalization to give visitors what they think shoppers want based on past behavior.
According to Etsy’s Bowen Slate-Greene, “A more personally-meaningful homepage will call on a variety of sources. For example: listings you’ve favorited, shops and Pages you follow, or recommended content from curators in the Etsy community.”
The benefit for sellers? Slate-Greene said customized content would mean more exposure for more sellers than ever before – “allowing buyers to find the right items for them on Etsy’s most central page.”
Etsy will start by running a “series of small experiments” that bring dynamic experiences to the homepage.
One seller took to the forums to weigh in on what she was seeing in the Etsy homepage testing, writing, “I for one am very much in favor of the sampling of changes I’ve seen so far.”
Others discussed what they were seeing in this thread. “I guess I’m one of the test participants,” said one Etsy user. “There is no “front page” for me. Mine is a combination of my activity feed and some of the features of the front page. Browse, Blog, Featured Artist, and Categories are on the right side of the page.”
You can find the announcement about the homepage testing on the Etsy website.
