Trying out Coriandr

I'm closing down my Folksy shop as I'm finding I don't get much traffic there. Other people on the site report they are doing well, but despite promoting the shop I'm struggling, so it just goes to show not all sites suit everyone.

I decided I need another site based in the UK to sell through so today I signed up with Coriandr to register the Pirate Pixie Crew name and to try out their listing process. I have to say although the site is still in the early stages I like what I have seen so far. It has a fresh clean look to it and the site logo is utterly cute.

I found registering was fast and setting up the shop was fairly easy, although time consuming, so set aside a full morning to get all the basics done. Remember though, once you have made your 930 x 160 pixel banner and loaded it, filled out your profile and policies and listed you payment preferences, and filled out all the back room bits of the shop you don't really have to do that again. So with that done it was time to trying out listing an item. So far I have only listed the one hat, but again that was very simple, with a one page listing form. The only downside that I found was the photos I have been using on other sites had to be resized to get them below the 500 kB allotted size. Not a big job, but it would be nice if all the sites used the same sizes, for those of us that like to list in more than one place. Also they only allow you to load one of the five photo at a time rather than batch loading, which adds to the time it takes. Over all the experience was painless and fairly fast.

The shop has a nifty drag and drop feature so you can arrange the items as you want them to be viewed rather than them show up in the order they are listed. You also get custom categories, so you can divide up your shop goods to make them easier for buyers to look through. Oh and I guess I should mention costs too. Listing costs 20p (UK pence) per item with no expiry date. Yes you read right. You are not paying for a limited time. The 20p will cover the life of the listing until it is purchased. When items are purchased Coriandr will take a 5% commission on the sale.

So far I haven't worked out if there are any statistics for shop owners yet, but I have seen that it is on a list of things to do that was posted in the forums in November, so that's a good thing. Also 2 questions I asked a couple of hours ago have already been answered so it looks like someone is taking notice of what's going on in the forums.

Over all I'll give it a cautious thumbs up. I'll keep you updated as to how it's going.

Written by Lynne of PiratePixieCrew and Hyperloop Hoops