Etsy 2015 Annual Report Download - page 10

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• We provide extensive educational resources to teach Etsy sellers how to build and grow their businesses on our platform, including blog
posts, video tutorials, the Etsy Seller Handbook (available on our website), access to our online forums and insights from our support teams. In addition
to our own educational resources, Etsy sellers connect through Etsy Teams to build personal relationships, collaborate and educate and support each
other.
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To help Etsy buyers discover and purchase items that they love, we provide a number of tools, including:
• We believe human connection is central to Etsy buyers’ engagement. Etsy buyers and Etsy sellers use the Conversations tool on our
platform to communicate, person to person, about their orders, to request custom goods or personalization of goods or simply to have a conversation
about the product or the process. In 2015, Etsy sellers and Etsy buyers sent 234 million messages on our platform. In addition to our Conversations tool,
we encourage engagement between Etsy buyers and Etsy sellers in a variety of ways. For example, in 2015, we introduced a mobile app feature that
enables Etsy buyers to share a photo when they post a five-star review of an item and to more easily share reviews on social media. We also launched
Etsy Local on our mobile apps so that Etsy buyers can more easily find Etsy sellers and their goods offline at nearby events such as craft fairs, flea
markets or local shops.
• Our platform is engineered to provide a personalized experience to each Etsy buyer, adjusting in real time based on her
interactions with our marketplace. An Etsy buyer may search for an item using our search tool bar and filter the results by color, price, location or other
characteristics. She may browse through items, creating an activity feed by “favoriting” items that catch her eye and by following shops and tastemakers.
In 2015, Etsy sellers and Etsy buyers tagged 1.1 billion favorites on our platform. We glean insights from Etsy buyers’ purchases and other interactions
on our marketplace through our machine-learning algorithms and through traditional information retrieval techniques, such as cookies. We use these
insights to personalize the activity feed an Etsy buyer sees when she comes to Etsy, with suggestions of shops or tastemakers to follow and items to buy
or favorite. We use the data we collect and the insights we gain to match Etsy sellers’ goods with Etsy buyers’ tastes and interests. In 2015, we updated
the search function in our marketplace to better showcase the breadth of the items available and to help Etsy buyers more easily browse, filter and buy
goods, even when they may not have something specific in mind. Our large and engaged community accessed more than 5 billion search page views in
2015, including searches using our mobile apps.
• We strive to keep Etsy buyers engaged wherever they are, by providing the functionality of our website in iOS and Android mobile apps,
specifically crafted for Etsy buyers. Our mobile apps for Etsy buyers include search and discovery, curation, personalization and social shopping features
similar to those that Etsy buyers enjoy on our desktop site. In order to provide an enjoyable shopping experience for Etsy buyers through our mobile
apps, we use deep linking to automatically transition Etsy buyers from a mobile web experience to the mobile app when they encounter a link to an Etsy
shop or item. In addition, we want to make it even easier for Etsy buyers to sign up, sign in and check out when using their mobile devices. In 2015, we
added social sign-up and sign-in through Facebook and Google and expanded mobile payment and digital wallet options for Apple Pay, Google Wallet
and others. Our mobile apps have been downloaded 31.8 million times as of December 31, 2015.
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Members of our community rely on us to be a trusted marketplace. Our policies are designed to encourage transparency and clearly outline the rights and
responsibilities of Etsy sellers, Etsy buyers, wholesale partners and manufacturing partners participating on our platform.
Most fundamentally, we require that goods listed in our marketplace be handmade, vintage or craft supplies. Handmade items begin with the imagination and
creativity of the Etsy seller. To conform to our vision of handmade, we ask that the Etsy seller follow these three principles:
•: The Etsy seller should have a meaningful design and creative role in the items she is selling.
•: The Etsy seller should know how her goods are made and by whom.
•: The Etsy seller should be open and honest about how her goods are made and by whom.
We strive to give the Etsy buyer comfort that she is purchasing unique goods from a shop that adheres to certain principles. Etsy buyers have a high degree of
insight into Etsy sellers’ business practices. Our policies ask Etsy sellers to be transparent
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