Case study: Adding a print-on-demand feature to Etsy
As a shop-owner on Etsy, you can sells prints that you have already had made (whether you made them yourself or whether you took a file to a print shop and had them make the prints). Either way, there are overhead costs for the prints, not to mention the price of shipping and the time spent on inventory management and packaging. The concept that I explored in this project is the following: What if Etsy had a print-on-demand feature where artists could upload a file, activate product options they want to make available, set pricing, and then Etsy’s print shop would handle the rest?
💡 Why Etsy, why prints?
The life of an artist can be expensive and time-consuming. There are costs associated with purchasing materials with which to make original pieces, but there are also significant overhead costs associated with reproducing work as well. It is very common for 2D artists (people who paint, draw, take photographs, etc.) to have prints of their work made, either from online print shops or from brick-and-mortar shops. Either way, it is typical to purchase a bulk amount of prints and then to sell them individually whether through an online shop or at events such as art markets. A game-changing method in the print-making industry is print-on-demand, where the print (on whatever you want, whether paper or t-shirts) isn’t made until a customer purchases it. This limits overhead costs and allows the artist to focus on designing instead of printing, inventory management, and shipping. There are sites which already make prints-on-demand, but the quality can sometimes be lacking and it’s unclear how much profit the original artist makes.
Etsy has a relatively reasonable pricing model (see the excerpt from Etsy’s How It Works page below) and tends to highlight shop owners as important parts of the marketplace in addition to their products. The focus on branding and customization of the products offered carries across Etsy’s platform and it’s a go-to for people looking for bespoke and high quality (albeit sometimes more expensive) goods. With this in mind, if Etsy hypothetically had a print shop of its own from where to print and ship print-on-demand art prints, they would likely be of a higher quality than some of their competitors.
It costs $0.20 to publish a listing to the [Etsy] marketplace. A listing lasts for four months or until the item is sold. Once an item sells, there is a 5% transaction fee on the sale price (including the shipping price you set).
Below are the in-depth competitive analyses regarding direct and indirect competitors for both print-on-demand seller and buyer sites.
Seller Competitive Analysis
Buyer Competitive Analysis
From this secondary research, I concluded that the features listed below would be necessary for the minimum viable product (MVP) to be successful.
👯♀️ Double the personas, double the FUNctions
Designing this feature would mean that I would need to design elements for two sides of the Etsy interface: the seller and the buyer.
My goals with the interviews with both sellers and buyers were the following:
- Determine what sellers look for when selecting a print-on-demand platform to use
- What printing options are important to sellers/buyers?
- What design patterns make differentiating between seller/buyer on the landing pages successful (or not)
I started my primary research phase by interviewing three artists who have experience with making prints of their work, whether it be photography, paintings, or drawings. One person had expensive prints made of her large paintings which she has never sold, one has both made her own prints and printed from OfficeDepot, and one orders prints from an online print shop to then sell over Instagram. After the interviews, I made affinity maps and personas (see below) for each group of people.
Likes: High quality prints, low overhead costs, ease of use
Dislikes: Unknown reliability/trustworthiness of company, limited selection of products
Expectations for process: Upload file, ability to chose products, don’t need a tutorial to learn, select size, paper weight, framed, etc. then publish
After I interviewed artists, I spoke to three people who have experience purchasing or perusing art prints from Etsy, Society6, and/or Redbubble.
Likes: Learning about who they are buying from, reviews that verify quality
Dislikes: Can’t sort by type of product (physical vs. digital)
Expectations for process: Search, ability to filter, clearly know what type of product they are buying, relative size of prints, standard checkout procedure
Research summary: Both seller and buyer expected a simple and clear process with a few options available, and to get a good deal with high quality products wherever possible.
I then created two task and user flows to explore the paths both types of people would take while searching for and purchasing a print and while uploading a new print-on-demand product to the shop.
🤝 Business, seller, and user goals, UNITE!
The following were some overlaps in business (Etsy), seller (artist), and buyer (customer) goals I identified in primary and secondary research that guided design decisions later on:
- Branding important for both Etsy and sellers (personalized thank you note)
- Quality of work is important for all three
- Flexibility (lots of options to buy and selling preferences), but not too many that is would be wildly expensive for Etsy
- Money makes the world go round: Etsy gets a cut, seller gets a cut with low overhead and minimal work, and buyer gets a deal
- Eco-friendly shipping solutions, good for everyone
🎨 Consistent branding
The next part of this process was to get to work building the new feature! I started by dissecting Etsy’s existing UI systems and design patterns because an important part of designing a feature within an existing brand is to match the fonts, button styles, colors, and iconography as closely as possible. I took many screenshots from Etsy’s site, but whenever I designed original assets myself I was sure to use their brand-specific color, type, layout, and spacing choices. Below are a couple elements from the in-depth (read, dry ASF) style guide I made for this project.
✏️️ Designs
Link to prototype of final design: https://invis.io/CAYWJWU45YN#/432918002_NEW_Home_Page
Sellers: The upload editor
The most important design element of this new feature is the part of the Add a Listing form where the seller uploads a file and then chooses what options they’d like to make available to the customer.
Following the existing style of the Add a Listing form, I made a table that included various options for size, finish, framing, and pricing information. I chose toggles for activating or deactivating product types because the original form already uses that design element when selecting Variations of products.
When conducting usability testing, it became apparent that there wasn’t enough flexibility within each option. For example, in the first iteration of this process that I was testing, sellers could activate a size and then choose to activate any of the finishes, but within each finish offered they did not have the ability to choose framed or unframed (or both). Choosing framing was only applied to all the finishes in that size offered, or none of them.
Testing also uncovered that the pricing terms “base, markup, and total” didn’t give the sellers enough information about what each meant. For example, it was unclear whether the markup was the profits for the sellers or for Etsy.
In my first redesign of the product-selecting portion of the upload form, I included labels to the pricing terms to be very clear about what’s what. I also tied the framing options to the sizing so there are now “framed 5x7” and “unframed 5x7” to minimize the use of toggles and to streamline the process.
Finally, in the third iteration on this form, I added the automatically-rendered photos to the same horizontal section as the product that is being activated. This way, the seller can clearly see what changes their actions have made (both the activation of the particular size of print as well as the added photo). Previously, such photos would appear in the Photos section below the product selector, so it wasn’t apparent that new photos were automatically added with every activated product. Now they are added in the product selector table as well as the Photos section where the seller can add additional photos as well.
How sellers and buyers will be alerted that there is a new feature:
Upon launch of this new feature, sellers and buyers would be alerted in a number of ways. Sellers would receive an email about the new feature, just as they typically do when any other new feature is launched. For those who disregard emails of that nature or just miss the content for whatever reason, the new feature can be noticed within the Add a Listing form.
One major change to the form that I made was rearranging the order of the form’s content. Right now the form starts by asking for photos of the object for sale, and then further down on the form it asks for the title of the piece and even further down it asks for the type (whether physical or digital). I moved both of these sections to the very top of the form. This way the seller could indicate the type early on in the process and then the structure of the rest of the form changes accordingly. Next to the newly added Print-on-demand type option, I added an Etsy-orange pill that says “New” to alert the seller that there is a new feature within the form. If they select that radio option then the rest of the form changes. Then, if they click through the form they can get a better idea of what the feature does.
In order to let buyers know about the new feature, a prominent banner at the top of the home page shows a few examples of prints, gives a couple of blurbs about the flexibility of the orders (any size, any quantity, any time), and links to a page where you can see options available for purchase. On that page (which can be accessed via the link on the home page or by searching for a print and then selecting the “Print-on-demand” option in the filter menu), you the buyer can clearly distinguish that these products are different from other physical objects or digital downloads because of the gray label on the thumbnails.
Another way that potential buyers can be made aware of the new feature is by accessing a link from the product detail page to the Etsy handbook article about the new print-on-demand feature. You can see this in the gif below.
Buyers: purchasing a print
The print-purchasing process isn’t too different from the typical method. The major differences are in the filter menu, the search results page, and the estimated delivery timeline on the product details page. Other than those things, the buyer goes through the standard steps of selecting a size, a paper finish, and a quantity of prints they would like to order.
Other notable design decisions
Another important consideration was regarding the completion of a sale. What would happen after a print-on-demand order is made? The seller doesn’t need to do anything after the order is placed because Etsy takes care of the printing and shipping. From the usability testing I conducted, sellers said they would want to know that they made a sale and would want the ability to access the shipping information if they wanted, but that it would make most sense for the order to go straight from the Open Orders to Completed Orders. Also, since all sellers I spoke to use the Etsy app for order management I designed how the app would communicate these things. Below you can see the iPhone view of a lock screen notification of a sale as well as an app-view of the sale in the Completed Orders file. Below that I also included an email that would be sent to the seller as another type of notification that Etsy currently utilizes.
💻 Usability testing
I tested the buying process via use of a Maze test asking participants to complete a few tasks as well as try to describe what the new feature is in their own words.
Then I tested the Add a Listing form with three people who have experience selling art prints on Etsy having them focus again on determining what the print-on-demand feature does and
BUYERS (11 participants via Maze test)
- 91% of people were able to identify the new feature from the home page
- 55% of people were able to identify the new feature from the product detail page
- 89% of people found the link to the article on the product detail page
- 100% of people located and selected the filter
- 100% of people were able to buy a print
SELLERS (3 participants via interview/usability tests)
- 66% of people were able to identify the new feature from the new listing form
- 100% of people use the desktop site to upload new products
- 100% of people use the Etsy app for communication with customers and order fulfillment
- 66% of people found the pricing structure unclear
✨ Redesigns based on high priority issues
- Clarify shipping methods are eco-friendly
- Clarify what type of paper it is printed on
- Clarify meaning of prices and framing in table
- Notification for sales (email and app notification)…from open to closed automatically
- Personalized thank you note area on form
- Sizes to add/change (5x7”, 11x14”, 8x10”)
⏰ Bonus: If I had all the time in the world
If I had more time with this project, I would add to the buying and selling aspects of the Etsy Seller App. On the desktop site, I would have added more automatically-rendered photos and options for those photos such as offering different backgrounds so the artists could personalize the products and experience even more. After making these changes, I would then test them as well as test the re-designs I did have time for!
Since quality of the prints was important to sellers, buyers, and to Etsy it would make sense to send a test print to the sellers when they publish a new product so they can make sure the quality is up to their standards.
Further down the line, it might make sense for Etsy to start offering more types of Print-on-demand products, such as stickers or notebooks. More kitschy items such as shower curtains and coffee mugs may not be as on-brand for Etsy and their sellers, however.
In the usability testing, sellers suggested adding a custom print size option, but that did not make sense to implement in the final design because producing a custom size of paper wouldn’t be in the best interest of Etsy because it would likely to be too expensive.
Finally, some other features that I would have included would have been an onboarding solution for sellers to tell them what they have do do and what Etsy will take care of, and the order forms that the printers would receive.
👆 Link to prototype of final design:
*The author is in no way affiliated with Etsy.com, but if they are hiring she will gladly take on a Product Designer role ;)
