Etsy Continues to Expand Its ‘Make an Offer’ Feature

Etsy began testing “Make an Offer” in March and continues to expand the feature. This week, it announced the following improvements:

We wanted to give you an update about some of the exciting improvements we’ve recently made to Make an Offer. These improvements were all based on your incredible feedback and give the tool even more flexibility. Check them out below!

What’s new with Make an Offer

• Select individual listings: Now you can pick and choose which listings you’d like to receive offers on instead of having to choose from suggested listings.
• Turn it on and off as you see fit: You decide when is the best time to enable offers for your listings.
• Encourage shoppers to buy in bulk: Buyers can set a quantity when they make an offer, so you can easily provide personalized bulk discounts while moving inventory faster.
• Expanded availability: We started with a group of select US shops. Now, all sellers who have their shop currency set to USD now have access to Make an Offer in the Marketing tab within Shop Manager, under Sales & Discounts.

Etsy referred to an article in its Seller Handbook for more information about the Make an Offer feature. Etsy noted that not all buyers can see the “Make an Offer” button on all enabled listings because it is still testing the feature.

It also said sellers could not turn on the feature in the Etsy seller app – “For now, if you want to turn it on, you’ll need to log in to Shop Manager in a browser on your desktop or mobile device.”

For sellers wondering about the impact of offers on their Star Seller status, Etsy said offer messages don’t count toward their Star Seller response rate. It also noted that buyers’ offers are not buying, explaining:

“If you send the buyer an adjusted price, they have 48 hours to check out at the price, unless the item sells first” – meaning the offer doesn’t prevent someone else from purchasing the item.

Sellers can take a survey to tell Etsy what they think of the Make an Offer feature through the Alchemer.com website.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She’s a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of “Turn eBay Data Into Dollars” (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, “Blogging Heroes” (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 – present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 – present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.