Etsy, the website you can go to sell or buy homemade designs, has been late coming to the mobile party, having only released its iPhone app last year. This move followed in the footsteps of their own sellers, who had already started making their pages accessible on the mobile web. Now Etsy is taking it one step further and has brought its app to the iPad.
The Etsy iPhone app has reached 3.5 million downloads and, with this strong following, the site had 1 in 3 visitors shopping on Etsy from mobile devices over the Thanksgiving weekend, which is an increase from the average 1 in 4 visitors.
The iPad app is loaded with a host of new features. In addition to the already bigger focus and better pictures, Etsy for iPad now includes content from Etsy’s blog, which highlights different sellers and other trends on the site. It now also features Etsy’s collection of how-to videos and design documentaries, the purpose of which is “a much richer, lifestyle shopping experience.”
So why has Etsy waited so long to really hit the mobile market? Etsy wouldn’t say, but Nocile Vanderbilt, head of Etsy UK, said Etsy has seen 100,000 items “favorited and shopped for” from mobile devices, which means it’s possibly used as much for browsing as for buying. Vanderbilt continued:
“Favouriting is a big part of the Etsy experience. It allows consumers to use Etsy easily across devices, favouriting something on mobile for purchase later on their computers, but equally favouriting on their computers for easy purchase later on a mobile device.”
So creating a better Etsy experience on the tablet could be one way of improving the number of favorites that result in purchases from the site’s 20 million members. So far the company has processed $700 million in payments for items and is on track to sell 100 million items by the end of this year.
Etsy is a free download from the App Store.
