A new series spotlighting some of our favorite ways to use Searchme. This one’s by Erin Pipkin, one of our Search Analysts. As a member of the Search Quality team, Erin helps plan and build categories. She used Searchme’s visual search and category suggest while shopping at a favorite site.

I’m a big fan of online craft emporium Etsy. The site houses over 150,000 artists and craftspeople and their small online shops, and offers about 1.5 million items for sale. Just as importantly, the company’s innovative engineers and developers have concocted a series of clever ways to connect users and sellers.

There are many ways to browse Etsy’s wares. Their default mode is to display sample works from a mixed set of artists in a grid of thumbnail images. If an object interests me, I can click on the thumbnail to visit the maker’s shop and view the item up close. From there, I can see the seller’s other items and view his or her favorite sellers.

I’ve spent many happy hours rambling over the site this way, but sometimes I’m not able to find the things I want very quickly. I find that the front pages of artists’ Etsy shops are more informative than the initial thumbnails. Most have unique mastheads and display multiple items for sale. Recently, I wondered: What would it be like to browse Etsy by viewing the sellers’ front pages? I thought Searchme might be able to help.

I’d been thinking I’d like a new necklace, so I began by typing in the simple query “Etsy”. The top result was what I expected: www.etsy.com. The results spanning out to the right, however, showed pages from individual sellers. The array of Etsy products shown was still a bit broad, so I clicked on Searchme’s “jewelry” category, and soon I was scrolling through a stream of artists’ pages, glancing at each briefly and clicking to open the ones that looked the most interesting. With little effort, I found a new set of favorite independent jewelers.

For me, this Etsy experiment raises so many questions about how visual search and category suggest can help broaden and enrich online shoppers’ experiences. This is something my team is actively working on at Searchme – we hope you have a chance to check it out for yourself!