Etsy, Multi-Shop Checkout, and PayPal Icons: What Does it all Mean?
Etsy started 2017 off with a bang with the introduction of Etsy Multi-Shop Checkout, and a silent but significant change to PayPal icons. To nobody’s surprise these both generated thousands of words in Etsy’s Seller forums. Is this just a case of people not liking change, or is Etsy up to something that sellers should be concerned about? Let’s try get to the end of this maze and find out.
Etsy Removes Credit Card icons from the PayPal Logo
The first change happened without any announcement from Etsy, formal or otherwise. On January 9th some Etsy sellers noticed that the Credit Card icons indicating which cards they accepted through PayPay had disappeared. Instead, only the PayPal logo remained with a new note: “This shop accepts only PayPal.”
At first this was assumed to be a bug, and was reported as such. But when Etsy staff did weigh in, they said that it was an intentional change, affecting only sellers using Stand-Alone PayPal and not using Direct Checkout.
The response to this from Etsy Sellers was, shall we say, not positive. Sellers were afraid that this change would make their customers think that they no longer accepted credit cards, and only PayPal — as the new badge said.
They were also put off that this change only affected hold-outs from Etsy’s Direct Checkout system, and feared that this was just the beginning of more coercive efforts to get all sellers to move to Direct Checkout. Given Direct Checkout’s problems in 2016, many sellers are reluctant to give up their only alternative way of accepting payment.
But this was just the first change that Etsy sprung on their sellers in the first half of January.
Etsy Multi-Shop Checkout is Announced
On January 17th, this time with an official announcement, Etsy unveiled their new unified shopping cart system, Etsy Multi-Shop Checkout. Multi-Shop Checkout puts all items an Etsy seller adds to their cart in one single place, even if those items are from different shops. When the customer checks out, they just need to do it once instead of once for every shop they are buying from (though they can only use one payment method and shipping address per transaction).
From a customer perspective, this does sound like an improvement, and might encourage buyers to purchase from multiple shops. Many Etsy Sellers have greeted this change with enthusiasm, since it reduces sales-sapping “friction” from the buying process.
But others are less sure. There are wrinkles to be filled out, such as making sure that customers understand that each shop they’re buying from might have different return policies or shipment times. And — you guessed it — Multi-Shop Checkout is only available to sellers using Direct Checkout to process payments.
What does All This Mean for Etsy Sellers?
Looking at the big picture, I see four takeaways from these two changes:
#1: Etsy Wants All Sellers to Use Direct Checkout and Standard Shop Policies
They haven’t come out and said it, or given anyone a deadline yet, but they’re telegraphing their future plans pretty clearly. The new features they’ve put out recently require Direct Checkout.
I don’t believe that removing the credit card icons from PayPal Logo was done maliciously, but the fact that Etsy seems to think that stand-alone PayPal user experience is “confusing” isn’t a good sign.
Same goes for Shop Policies: they want you to use them if you use Pattern, and the design of Multi-Shop Checkout clearly assumes that all shops have the same policies (otherwise it would make the different policies more obvious to the customer).
#2: Etsy Puts Buyer Convenience Above Sellers’ Ability to Build a Brand
Etsy’s User Experience design choices continue to blur, or erase, the distinction between individual shops. Whenever products are displayed the Shop Name is the least prominent part of the listing. When browsing or searching there’s no option to sort items by Shop. To get to a Shop’s home page you need to search for them by name or type in the URL — both of which assume the buyer already knows about the shop.
Their recent moves tell me that Etsy is really only concerned with one brand: their own. They see the experience of shopping and buying from individual shops as “confusing”. Pattern might be seen as evidence against this, but if you look at its features and how it works, it’s clear that it is a minimal product intended primarily to keep Etsy users from jumping ship to WooCommerce, Squarespace, or Shopify.
#3: Etsy Sees No Need to Stop Changing things Without Warning or Notice
The revised PayPal logo was done without warning and the only way it will be un-done is if it causes a site-wide drop in sales that affects Etsy itself. Multi-Shop Checkout might have gotten an official announcement and be “optional” for now, but in reality it’s going to be just as mandatory as Direct Checkout and standard Shop Policies.
Etsy won’t force you to use any of these (yet), but new features will begin to require them and there’s no telling when Etsy will decide single-shop checkout or unique shop policies are “confusing” and make them go away.
#4: Now, More than Ever, Every Etsy Seller Needs Their Own Website
My prediction is that Etsy is going to make it harder and harder for individual shops to stand out from one another, and harder for individual shops to run things the way they want.
The way to protect your handmade businesses from this trend is having your own site, ideally with an online store that’s not dependent on Etsy.
When you have your own site, there’s only one person in control of your site: you. You decide what your site looks like, what your shop policies are, how your price your products, how you communicate with your customers, what your payment and shipping options are — everything. And you are the sole owner of the listings and product info on our site.
Building your own site is easier, and less expensive, than you think. I’ve put together a free guide that shows you what tools you need to do it yourself, and where to get them:
Free Download: The 3 Free (And 2 Cheap) Tools You Need To Build Your Own eCommerce Store
Take the next step with your Etsy shop and start building a store that you own and control with my guide to the three free (and two cheap) tools you need to migrate your Etsy store to WordPress + WooCommerce and start building a business that belongs to you and you alone. It covers finding the right host, migrating your listings, picking a beautiful theme, and the plugins that will give your site superpowers.
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