*** UPDATE: The random number generator picked
Tina Holden as the winner! Congratulations! Thank you to everyone. Your comments are so wonderful! ***
Sometimes everything sort of falls in line. The world has dictated that this week be "crafty business" week around here ...
Recently I received a wonderful email from someone at
Artfire.com. As you might imagine, being the famous craft blogger (teehee) that I am, I get lots of marketing emails. Most of them are terrible. But the Artfire email was great.
I was impressed that the guy from Artfire.com was familiar with my blog, mentioned concrete and appropriate reasons why I and my readers might be interested in Artfire.com, and, most importantly, he asked for my honest opinion of their site, saying, "We do love any kind of feedback so if you have any to give please don’t hold back."
I'll forgive a lot of faults if you're willing to listen to what I think *and* take me seriously. Artfire.com has developed many site features in response to user feedback. Working in the web development field, this is a refreshing change. In fact, let's hear it directly from a co-founder of Artfire.com :
Hello futuregirl readers, my name is Tony Ford and I am one of the co-founders of Artfire.com John and I started building ArtFire as a venue that treats sellers like business partners and uses their feedback to guide the direction of site development. We always seek feedback and ideas from both our community and first time visitors. In fact, many of our most innovative features like Fusion Studios, our Rapid Cart, non-account checkout and our new coupon code program were generated from our Artisans suggestions.
We are very excited to work with futuregirl to get some great feedback on our site, your opinions are incredibly important to us. If you have any other feedback you would like to give us beyond your blue sky scenario we invite you to visit us at
www.artfire.com and tell us what you think, either in a comment here on futuregirl or by stopping by our Chatter Box forums. I want to thank all of you who participate in this contest in advance and wish all of you the best of luck.
All too often a website, any kind of website, is developed to fulfill some non-technical big-wig's idea of what a website should be which usually involves animated logos, splash pages, ridiculous amounts of text explaining what the world wide web is *or* is a web nerd's wet dream involving EVERY widget, unsupported technology, and geegaw wrapped in an inscrutable user interface. Ha! It takes balls to really listen to your users and incorporate their feedback into your site.
Artfire.com seems to be dedicated to creating a site that's built to accommodate the people who use it, and that's why I decided to host this giveaway. Well, that, and they have generously offered to give one of my readers a $50 shopping spree on their site! :) Here are the details:
Artfire.com Shopping SpreeThe amount is for a total purchase which includes shipping the total amount of the shopping cart will need to be $50 or less. The prize can only be claimed during one shopping session and cannot be used multiple times so get as close to $50 as possible. The winner will need to contact us directly for instructions on how to claim their prize. This contest is void where prohibited by local laws. Thanks you and Good Luck!
How To EnterTo be entered, leave a comment on this post between now and Friday, August 14th (until I turn off the comments) answering the following question:
In a perfect world, as a seller or buyer (or both) of handmade goods what is one function, feature or element a handmade marketplace could introduce to positively change the way you shop handmade.
Tell 'em what you really think! And, if you've used Artfire.com as a seller or a buyer, let us know what your experience has been.