Etsy launched enhancements designed to make sellers’ lives easier when it comes to estimating and displaying shipping costs. For example, when creating a listing, sellers can now access shipping profiles, calculated shipping, and shipping upgrades while in the creation process, which Etsy said would make for a smoother end-to-end shipping experience.
Some sellers said the new features actually make the process more difficult instead of easier. A seller by the name of Patricia wrote, “Etsy please consider showing the actual costs with the shipping profile after we have made our selection. (as it was before this change). This is a valuable and necessary cross check that the right profile has been selected. This change also adds additional scrolling but I can learn to live with that but I need to see the actual cost.”
For readers unfamiliar with shipping profiles, they are explained on this page and allow sellers to create separate profiles for the different types of items. “Whenever you make a change to a profile, all of your listings connected to that profile will be updated as well.”
A seller named Meg who doesn’t use calculated shipping said, “It is so strange to see my 21 shipping profiles all listed in every listing that I edit, and yet I cannot see the details for the profile I have linked the listing to.”
Meg also noted, “It’s also irritating to see an orange circle and tip to use Etsy shipping labels in the middle of each listing. I always use Etsy shipping labels.” Referring to the changes, she said, “IMO this is a huge step backward.”
An Etsy moderator addressed some of the concerns. She explained, “If you want to see if a particular profile has upgrades listed, you can click on the “Edit” next to the profile section on the listing page.”
And the Etsy moderator noted, “We haven’t changed the way shipping costs are set or used, we’ve just changed the way they are shown. If you don’t use calculated shipping, you can continue to not use it and it won’t impact your existing settings.”
Some sellers on this thread continued to experience problems on Sunday.
One of the benefits of the enhancements rolled out last week is more control over shipping costs – Etsy explained: “For sellers using calculated shipping, it’s now possible to set separate handling fees for domestic and international orders, should you choose to do so. Should you prefer, you may also continue to keep the handling fees combined as they were before. In addition, we’ve also provided more accurate fractional support for smaller items to help reduce buyer shipping costs.”
Etsy will continue to tweak shipping features, and said, “We plan to continue work on shipping management improvements this year and look forward to launching more features that will help you with determining and implementing shipping costs in your shop.”
You can read about the recent changes to Etsy’s shipping features on the Etsy Seller Handbook.
