Etsy.com is a great place to find inexpensive and unique crafts, art, handmade products, and vintage items. The site can be overwhelming, but Etsy has many built in aids for shoppers to find what they're looking for.
Edit Steps
- Start by browsing categories. On the left-hand side of the Etsy homepage, there is a long list of categories that can help you narrow your browsing to make the results manageable. Once you click on a category, subcategory options will be displayed. The listings can be organized by most recent listing, highest price, or lowest price.
- Use search to look for specific items. From the homepage, you can search all handmade items, all vintage items, or all supplies. You can also search within a particular category once you click into it. You will see that category as an option in the drop-down menu next to the search bar. Try searching for an ingredient, a color, a scent, or a type of item.
- Sort the results if you're on a budget. Once you've narrowed down your results to the type of item you are looking for, you'll probably want to see the items in a particular price range. You can do that by sorting by lowest price. You'll probably want to go a few screens forward, though--often Etsy includes very cheap options that aren't what you're looking for, like a recipe when you want the baked good itself. You can also select a custom price range by conducting an advanced search (under "buy" at the top of the homepage).
- Browse the homepage. If you're logged into an Etsy account, in addition to the "Handpicked" items that everyone sees, you will also get a listing called "You Might Like" based on favorites and past purchases. Other homepage offerings include Featured Sellers and Recently Added Items, which you can browse for new ideas.
- Explore favorites. When you click the heart icon on any store or item, it gets added to your favorites. This is helpful not only as a bookmarking tool for later, but also to generate homepage suggestions, add suggested shops to your favorites page (click the red heart at the top of the homepage), and to allow you to search your favorite shops. Favorites can be a powerful tool to narrow your listings to your tastes.
- Click "buy" at the top of the homepage for additional options:
- Explore treasuries. Treasuries are small curated lists of items by theme, created by users. They are organized around a theme, often by color or mood rather than type of item, and can be searched by tag. You can see sixteen thumbnails in the treasury with the price listed below the image. Clicking the image brings you to that item's listing.
- Use pounce to find undiscovered shops. Pounce is especially helpful if you're tired of seeing the same results over and over again and are looking for something new, but it doesn't have the known-quality advantage of more popular shops.
- Use the color tool to find items of a particular color. The tool lets you pick a specific color and see items in that color, but keep in mind that it uses the background of images so that a black necklace on a pink background, for example, will show up under pink.
- Explore Apps. Etsy has third-party apps for buyers to do all sorts of things, from narrowing your searches to tracking sales to using Etsy on your iPad. One of the best things about Etsy, and one that isn't always obvious to a new user, is that the API allows for a huge amount of customization and categorizing.
Edit Tips
- Use an advanced search when you're looking for a particular price range or want to narrow to sellers who ship to your country.
- Add items to your favorites to make Etsy "smarter" about your preferences.
- Try "Experiments" in the Buy section, but remember that they may go away at any time. For example, the Taste Test feature currently uses a series of images to determine your tastes, and then publishes those results to your homepage.