Storenvy adds Collections feature, similar to Etsy treasuries

Yesterday Storenvy made some pretty epic updates - they added search bar and pagination to stores, and the ability to add Collections.

Collections are similar to Etsy's Treasury feature or to creating Pinterest boards. While in the Marketplace you can hover over products and there is now a "Collect" button on them.

Once you click that button a box pops up and asks you which Collection you would like to add the product to, and you have the option to add a comment.



Of course the first one I made was a Monster Awesomeness board but you can see all of the collections I have made here.

People can view your collections via your profile page, and you can set boards so that only you can contribute, people you follow can contribute or anyone on Storenvy can contribute to them. My Monster Awesomeness board I made public and you can see here that it displays the users who have contributed to the board when it is a public board.

How do you know if you can collaborate on a board? Check out Storenvy Team member Claire's Handmade board - in the upper right hand corner it has a collaborate button. Click that button and it is then added to your list of boards to chose from when Collecting products.

How do you change who can post? Simply go to your Collections page and click settings. You can then edit your Collection name, description, who can post and you can also delete the board from this page as well.

While this doesn't directly increase search rankings on Storenvy, it does increase visibility for sellers, meaning more eyes on your products! So, get outta here and go make some collections!

What do you think of this new feature?

Storenvy is turning pages!

I am thrilled with the latest feature added to Storenvy.com - the ability to add pages to your store front. I just added an About page to my shop that you can check out to get an idea what the new pages you can add to your shop will look like!

You can embed your blog, Instagram feed, create a photo gallery, sizing chart, and so much more! Just log into Storenvy.com and head to your admin panel, then click "Design". Then click "HTML pages".

Next, you will want to click on "+Add a custom page".

This will open a blank page that you can title, and fill with text and images to create stunning About Pages, sizing charts, photo galleries, and more - or with a little coding knowledge you can dive into the HTML and embed your blog & other feeds. Below, I have broken down some of the features available & how to use them for anyone who may need help! :)

To add images:

Click the graphic in the tool bar that looks like a small photo. It will open a pop up box to insert the photo URL. You cannot upload photos directly to be hosted on your custom pages, so they will need to be posted elsewhere, Facebook, your blog, Flickr, etc. Simply right click the image where it is hosted and click "Copy Image Location". Then paste that text into the image URL box and click insert. Viola! You've added a photo!

To add video: 

The video icon is directly to the right of the photo icon. Click it, and you can embed videos. Again, you can't directly upload them to this page, but you can easily upload them to Youtube then embed the code from there into your custom page.

To add sizing charts, color charts, etc:

The button to the right of the video button is a "table" button. You can use it to create charts, which you can use for color or sizing charts. Click the box and chose how many rows and columns you need, then just type in your information! Super easy!

To make links clicky: 

Make your about pages and more look snazzy by embedding the links rather than copying the URL into the post (IE, my shop vs http://luanded.com). To do this, type your text as you want it to appear, then highlight the part you want to link - for example, if you donate a portion of your sales to a Susan G. Komen, you would highlight the charity name, then click the icon that looks like a chain link. Type in the URL there and click insert, and ta-da! You have inserted a link! :)

I hope this mini walk through was helpful! :)

What do you think of the new Storenvy pages? What will you be using them for?

Rate my store!

Today, Storenvy.com implemented a rating system and I'm pretty stoked about it! I recently added a third party widget to my site to collect reviews, called Yotpo. This is something else entirely, hosted directly by Storenvy, to rate my shop in their marketplace. And if you have just a jiffy I would love your support! It takes less than a minute (depending on how fast your browser loads, haha!). Here's how you leave a rating:

Go to Storenvy.com and log in. In the right hand corner, hover over your profile picture and chose "orders".

Once you are on your orders page, simply click Rate This Store.

Once there, you can rate a shop on it's on-time shipping, product quality and customer service, and also write a review.

Then press submit! Super quick and easy. I look forward to seeing what you peeps have to say about my Storenvy shop. ;)

At this time, ratings are not viewable by the public. However, shops that consistently receive excellent feedback will earn a badge that will be displayed in the Storenvy marketplace, giving them at a glance recognition for offering superb products and excellent customer service. I think that's pretty spiffy! For more information, visit Storenvy's blog for all the deets!

Using Storenvy now makes your stuff look even better!

Remember my post from my Storenvy is Awesome series about how Storenvy makes your stuff look good? Well, they just rolled out a new default theme called Cooper. Anyone who opens a store on Storenvy.com after July 22nd will automatically have the new theme. If you have an existing store on Storenvy.com, you can do to admin > design to upgrade to the new theme!

Be sure to download a copy of your current theme's HTML so if you for whatever reason do not like the new Cooper theme, you can reinstall your old theme, though all previous customizations (colors, fonts, logo and background and all widgets) will be gone.

Here is a picture of what my store looked like before I upgraded:

And here is a picture of it currently! :)

Perks of the new Cooper theme:

Collections
You can set up collection view so that when people visit your store, they can see thumbnails of your categories, like this:

The aspect ratio for these images is 315x210. You can use product photos or create cover images. You find this under Admin > Products > Manage Collections.

Also under Admin > Products > Manage Collections, you can chose a collection and type in a description for it, so when people view that collection, they see what you have to say about it! Example:

Mobile friendly! 
The new Cooper theme looks stunning on mobile, where the theme before was not mobile friendly. At all.

Easy to customize!
 This theme is much easier to customize than the previous one. You can easily change your font, colors, collection display order and more from the Store Editor Toolbar that appears across the top of your store. You can turn this on (or off!) by going to Admin > Design and to the left you will see an on/off box for it. When turned on, this is what you will see in your store:

When viewing the COLORS tab

When viewing the LAYOUT tab

You upload your banner and background under Admin > Design > Banner & Background Image.

Over all, I really love this new theme. It's so much modern and each store with it installed still looks crazy unique. A few examples:

Sew Beastly

Landon's Toy Box

Storenvy's new Cooper theme makes it so easy to tweak your shop exactly how you like it! :) I love how much easier it is to navigate now!

Oh! And your shop bio & media links appear here, at the bottom of your store. Super professional and sleek, I think! :)

So what do you think? Will you be taking the new Cooper theme for a test drive? If you aren't yet a Storenvy seller, are you intrigued by the crazy awesomeness amount of personalization you can do to your store to really build your brand - for FREE? If you have any questions about the new theme, feel free to leave a comment! :)

For those of you upgrading to the Cooper theme, here is an article from the Storenvy team about customizing it! 

Using Storenvy makes your stuff look good.

Storenvy is different than other platforms in that you can totally customize every aspect of your shop - for free.

You can keep it simple and just upload a header image and add a background image. You can adjust the font colors and styles to match your branding. You can adjust the color of the background behind your images, the border around your store, and more! Here are some examples:

The only thing custom in my shop is my header and font colors!

Shop with header and border adjusted - Verte Photography

Shop with header and background - The Mollie Shop

Amazing how just changing the header and background in your shop can make such a huge difference and help you and your products stand out, huh? (If you need a custom shop header made, Megean of The Individuality designs all of my Lu & Ed branding materials and she does shop header design for just $10!)

And - you can make even more advanced changes to your Storenvy shop! If you have a knowledge of CSS & HTML you can easily change the entire design of your shop as much or little as you want. You can add music, slide shows, interactive menus and more! Check out these examples below:

Custom design - The Individuality

Custom design - Raining Sugar

Custom design - Sew Beastly

And if you aren't HTML savvy, you could always buy a Storenvy theme and add your branding in to customize it! Here is two shops with the same theme that still look remarkable different: 

Shop with Storenvy Theme - Pin Pin Finds

Shop with Storenvy Theme - A Single Dream

There are several sites that sell them, but the one several friends of mine have used is Storenvy Themes by Bill Bailey. He does amazing work and is incredibly affordable!

There is no other site out there that is so incredibly customizable or this easy to customize, for free. You can really utilize the customization to make your shop and products stand out and build brand recognition!

So, let me say if you are looking to take your business to the next level by building a signature brand with a shop that is tailored to represent your products (did I mention for free?) Storenvy is the site to do it at! Coupled with the ability to domain host (so you can drive traffic to yourshop.com!) Storenvy really allows you to focus on YOU and creating a place to showcase your products with the amazing  online shopping atmosphere they are meant to be displayed in!

Sellers: How important is standing out from the rest of the people in your market to you?

Storenvy lets your reward your customers in more ways!

Everyone loves a good sale! Shoppers love them because they get to save money and get awesome things, and sellers love them because they drive traffic and create fresh interest in their products.

Storenvy.com makes running sales to reward customers SO simple for shop owners! With every store, you can offer a percent off with a code to reward your customers!

 If shop owner's upgrade to Storenvy's Super Discount package, which is a super affordable $2.99 a month, they can activate even more ways to reward their customers! 

With Super Discounts activated, you can:

• Use four discount options (percentage off, dollar off, free shipping and buy X get X free)
• Specify a discount code OR let the promotion apply automatically to all qualifying orders.
• Set when promotions expire either after X amount of uses or on a certain date
• Set a minimum order amount required.
• Apply discounts to your entire store, specific collections or specific products
• Track how many discounts are used and the total amount of dollars saved on discounts
• Quickly pause or activate discounts

It is awesome that you can set them up to apply to qualifying orders (All purchases over $15!) or certain collections in your shop, so all your customers have to do is check out! Or you can reward buyers by creating special discount codes just for them and add the coupons to orders or your newsletter! Another way Storenvy Super Discounts is fab is they let you feature a sale, so a banner appears across the bottom of your store with all the info for the sale, making it easy to customers to take advantage of great deals!

Wait, what is this?

It appears that there is a featured promotion in my shop! Why, it just so happens that since today is my official three year Envyversary, I am giving the first three orders of the day free shipping! Woohoo!

I am super pumped that today marks three amazing years of selling on Storenvy.com. It has been an amazing journey and I owe so much of my success thus far to Storenvy.com! I hope this series of posts this week and my Envyversary giveaway brings a slew of new buyers and sellers to Storenvy so they can bask in it's awesomeness right along with me!

Storenvy gets personal

You know what's groovy about Storenvy.com? How much they value their users, both buyers and sellers.

In my experience, they have always been very quick to respond to inquiries through e-mail or when I Tweet them, usually within a few hours, and they always resolve issues in wicked quick manner, despite having a small (but seriously incredible!) team. I always see them engaging with shop owners on Twitter and that's so refreshing, since most times when I tweet a large brand or company I never hear back from them! And I love that when I send an email to support, I get an email from a person, not an automated message from a robot. And that they really listen to user feedback, and over the past three years, I have seen a ton of user suggestions be implemented into the site. For instance, this past year I saw a ton of people asking to have the number of sales in their shop show to the public to build buyer trust. This was recently added and can be seen on the store profile page right under the shop name!

I even circled it for you! :)

Beyond that though, they really want each and every store owner to succeed and are constantly providing their users with tools & resources to help them operate their indie business and get their name out there, like the time Storenvy teamed up with Moo.com to get free promotional materials for shops, or that time they got their users a great deal on stickers from Stickermule.com. They also do product and shop features on their blog regularly and via social media almost every day, too!

They are also helping San Francisco based Storenvy shops grow by providing them with a retail venue via their Pop-Up Shop! Man, I wish I could visit!  If you are in the area swing by for me and take pictures! This month they are even hosting DIY creative classes at the Pop-Up Shop! April 15th through the 30th, MakersKit will be teaching DIY classes at the Pop-Up Shop, from creating your first terrarium to making soap or pouring your first candle. More info.

Their most recent way to help Storenvy.com shop owners evolve is through the Story behind the Store series. Shop owners can submit the story of their Storenvy.com shops to stories@storenvy.com which Storenvy will publish to their blog to show the world how incredible Storenvy shop owners are. This week Jamie Koala shared her story with the world and all I can say is it was incredible. Such an inspirational and moving story! Read it here.

The way that the Storenvy admin team is involved with it's users makes my heart so happy. I love to see a large enterprise like an e-commerce platform really be interested in it's users and helping them take their business to the next level. If you are looking for a place to set up shop that you can feel good about, Storenvy.com is where it's at. The admin team rocks and the community is fantastic!

Storenvy's Marketplace ROCKS!

Storenvy has a rockin' marketplace full of amazing creative businesses. I love, love, love shopping on Storenvy.com because their marketplace just has such an incredible selection. I do almost all of my birthday, Christmas, and personal shopping on there!

One of my favorite things about it is that products are ranked in real time popularity so as a seller, your item always has the potential to be at the top of a search, unlike other sites, and as a buyer, you don't always see the same stuff by the same shops when you search for products because the results are always changing!*read more about real time popularity at the bottom of the post!

There are several ways to search the Storenvy marketplace, and they all yield amazing results. One, you can just browse your homepage - it is loaded with products from shops you watch and people you follow and has continuous scroll, so the awesomeness just keeps coming, and coming, and coming! (I seriously probably spend one hour or more a day just scrolling.. and scrolling.. and scrolling! So much awesomeness all the time!)

Or you can browse using the category bar at the top! Each category has a drop down menu with subcategories to help you find just what you are looking for!

As you can see here, when you choose a category you can further narrow down results with subcategories and the price slider in the lower left hand corner!

You can also use the search bar at the top to specifically search for items. Like Mon-stors! And no, Storenvy, I did not mean Mon-stirs.

You can also browse the best selling shops in particular markets by scrolling to the very bottom of Storenvy.com and clicking "Best Selling Stores"!

(See the little dice in the right hand corner? Click them to load a random Storenvy product! Fun for hours!)

When you are browsing through Best Selling Stores, you can narrow results by choosing a particular category. Handcrafted, Eco-Friendly and Designer and Vinyl Toys is where you can find Lu & Ed!

And that is why I love the Storenvy marketplace! So many products, so many easy ways to search, browse, find (and buy) awesome indie and handmade products!

What is your favorite way to browse Storenvy.com?


*(How does real time popularity work? It is based on three factors - newness, Envies, and how many have sold. As products get older, their popularity will wane a bit, but lots of sales and Envies can keep it afloat. How Envies help products rise in popularity: Whenever someone Envies or buys a product from a Storenvy shop, that product now appears on their profile under "Envies" and in turn, anyone who follows that person will see that product on their home page, which can lead to a product going viral and becoming popular!

Example: Mary likes a pair of earrings, so she Envies the product so she can easily find them to purchase at a later date. Mary's friend Tonya logs into Storenvy and sees the earrings on her home page, and thinks they are neat, so she Envies them. Tonya's friend Bathsheba likes the earrings, so she buys them, and all of her friends see her recent purchase - and so on, and so on, and with each recent Envy, fresh products rise in popularity and appear higher in the marketplace and in search results! And Storenvy recognizes users for their great discoveries on Storenvy, too - if you have a radical line up of products you have Envy'd on your profile, you just may end up being a suggested user, you trend setter, you!)

It's not Storenvy vs Etsy

There seems to be some line drawn where handmade people think you have to either sell on Storenvy OR Etsy.

Total myth.

You can sell on both. They work well together. And it's easy. Storenvy never set out to compete with Etsy. They just wanted to create a place where indie artists and creative entrepreneurs could open a free online store and enjoy the benefits of being part of a marketplace full of other creatives!

Here is some blunt perspective on this non-existent Etsy vs Storenvy war and how they can actually work hand in hand:

Say you are already selling on Etsy and you want to expand to reach a new market and build your own branding identity by having a fully customized shop, but you're all like "Ugh, I have eleventy billion items listed on Etsy, it's just not worth it to me to spend time setting up on another site" you can start jumping for joy right now because Tonka Park has built an Etsy to Storenvy importer that quickly and easily copies over listings, product photos, descriptions, tags and prices. Pretty awesome, right?

And if you are worried about selling an item on Storenvy that you have listed on Etsy and then that same item selling on Etsy and you're all like "Oh noooooooo, what do I do if I double sell?!" stop worrying and set up an account with Stitch Labs to easily, seamlessly manage inventory on both platforms. When you sell an item from Storenvy, the identical item will be automatically removed from your Etsy shop. Boom. It's that simple. Check out their Storenvy and Etsy integration to learn more.

Then there's the people who think Storenvy doesn't have a place for handmade shops - not true, they have an entire marketplace set up just for handmade shops which makes up a huge chunk of their total number of shops. And I have heard "But I see resellers" - well, yeah. I see resellers on Etsy too, but if you're already selling there, I don't quite understand that concern regarding Storenvy's handmade market, you know? I think as artists all we can do is create beautiful, quality wares - because realistic, true artists are not competing with resellers. But that's a whole different topic altogether. 

And of course there's the concern you can't print shipping labels straight from Storenvy like you can from Etsy. Not directly from Storenvy, but they integrated with Shipstation so their users can print shipping labels for Storenvy orders quickly and easily!

So what have we learned?

It's easy to have both Etsy and Storenvy shops. There's not battle between the two sites. Etsy provides you with a great audience and buyer visibility whereas Storenvy provides you with the ability to create a brand for yourself by allowing total shop customization and the ability to domain host (so you can be yourshop . com). Storenvy is also backed by a powerful search engine within it's marketplace that ranks products in real time popularity so you also reap the benefit of your products reaching a new audience in a much less saturated market, allowing your products to really stand out and evolve.

There's one thing I want to say though - I've helped a lot of people set up a second shop on Storenvy.com and usually, three months later they say it's not working for them. Why? You have to promote it as much as you promote your Etsy shop. You can't just open shop, import products and leave it - you have to market it, talk about, drive your clients to or else how can you expect it to be a success?

What do you think? Will you be taking Storenvy for a test drive?