You know what they say about the cobbler’s children and their shoes? Well, I am the cobbler, and my websites are my children, and it’s been a while since they’ve had new shoes. I can’t remember the last time I designed a theme for my site that wasn’t a work project.
Speaking of work, my team is talking about small businesses, interviewing owners and figuring out what makes them tick. This also involves keeping an eye on our competition, and as a long-time Etsy seller, I already have a foot in that space.
It turns out that Etsy offers a free trial of their website builder, Pattern, so I decided to try it out in the name of research, and in hopes I’d come out of it with a decent website, too.
The result:
What I liked
I’m impressed with how fast I was able to set up a site; with a few clicks, the whole thing was ready to go (not including the time I spent fussing over themes, colors, and fonts). I had the option to wait to publish it until it felt finished, but being me, I charged ahead and hooked up my domain name right away.
Now my existing audiences on both platforms can access the same products, and I don’t have to go through the process of re-creating 150+ listings with WooCommerce or Shopify. That’s a huge time-saver.
I’ve noticed a significant increase in traffic to my Etsy shop by way of the original domain name, which tells me combining the site and the shop was a good move. It’s too soon to tell if that uptick will result in sales, but anecdotally, I’ve had a solid sales week, too.
What I didn’t like
The primary drawback for me is the look of the site; it’s very vanilla. There are few themes to choose from, they don’t support transparent PNGs (welcome back to the 90’s?), and I’m itching for custom CSS to tweak a few things.
The blog feature is also basic; no scheduling, few choices, I can’t import or export content, so I’m effectively starting from scratch.
Pattern is obviously not designed with power users in mind, but I recognize I’m spoiled by WordPress’ ability to customize everything down to the last pixel, and I’m probably picky about my site’s appearance. 😉 But for $15 per month, I’d expect to be able to do more with the site.
Worth it?
So far, I’ve sold enough to make up my first couple months’ fees. That said, I could see myself moving to a more robust solution in the future; something that gives me more control over my site’s appearance. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for leveraging my existing connection with Etsy.
I’m also in the process of updating the shop with new goodies from Printful, a print-on-demand drop-shipping company that interfaces with Etsy to produce t-shirts, posters, mugs, and more. Now folks can buy the kind of stuff I sell through Redbubble or Teepublic directly from Etsy.
I hope it helps widen my shop’s reach a bit!