Etsy is generally my preferred method to shop online, and I usually stop there first for whatever I need before heading elsewhere. Even though I am not selling right now, and not super keen on a lot of the changes that have happened to the user experience in the last six months, I still like to peruse the site almost daily. Now, when you log into Etsy, you’ll see a curated home page based on the people you follow (formerly known as circles) and your favorited items (formerly hearts… good times!). If you’d like to shop outside your circle (ahem, following), you have to use the good ol’ search, either recency or relevancy. As someone who has never quite nailed down relevancy, I can’t see exclusively shopping this way. Why? Because a ton of shops that may or may not be exactly what I’m looking for basically do not stand a chance in the search if they have not tailored their tags and keywords accordingly. Whether or not a product ends up being relevant to me, I still want to know my options. Usually this ends with searching through fifty pages of listings just to find an item. Because I never quite got it down, and I do believe I had a pretty great product, I wouldn’t want to miss anyone else in the same sitch. Not only that, but sometimes I’m simply in a shopping mood, or the mood to do a blog roundup for example, so I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for.
