Hello all! Matthew here to give an overview of the updates we've made to the site so far this year. It's a primary focus of mine to make sure that Handcrafted is the best that it can possibly be, and that means constantly working to make the site more usable and useful. This is a never-ending process, but that's also part of the fun! There's always something that can be done to improve the experience for all of you. To that end, here's an overview of the updates that I've made to the site so far this year.

Accessories Section

When we connected with The Sewing Violinist to see whether they'd be interested in selling their hand-dyed, hand-sewn violin bags on Handcrafted, they asked whether we'd be able to add an accessories area to the site, since their bags wouldn't quite be a good fit for the luthier supplies or instruments & bows categories. That was a fantastic idea, so I added an accessories page. Know anybody who makes products that might fit in this category? Have em open up shop over here! We'd love to have em.

Updated homepage

Adding this new product category was the perfect opportunity to also make some updates to our homepage to better feature the range of products that are now being sold on Handcrafted. As more products continue to be added, expect to see more specific categories of products being featured. That means that if you add a few products to a category that isn't filled out yet, you'll probably be featured on our homepage by default. Nice!

Customer notes at checkout

I don't have a screenshot of this one, but sellers now have the option to choose whether to allow a customer to include notes/comments at checkout for any given item. This box shows up on the final checkout page alongside the rest of the product details, pricing, etc.

Luthier supplies category filters

Now that we have a fair number of luthier supplies listed for sale, navigating that page has started to get a bit unwieldy. We've added some buttons that allow you to filter the items by category to make it easier to find exactly what you're looking for. And there are some fun animations, too, which is a plus!

Instrument and bow attributes icons

There is a lot of information about bows and instruments that was not being conveyed from the main listings page. We've added icons to help communicate whether the item:

Is handcrafted by the seller
Was restored by the seller
Is available for home trial
Has a video

Product page improvements

We've added a bit more information to the product pages themselves, including:

A link to the home trial information when the item is available for trial
A note if the item was handcrafted by the seller
The cost when financing the purchase through Affirm
Whether the item has free shipping

We've also improved how product images show up on mobile. Previously, we would only show the first picture on mobile even if there were multiple images available. We now show a carousel instead, so that you can swipe through all available images.

That's it!

Whew, I think that's the bulk of the stuff that you can actually see! Of course there's always more going on the hood and more to come, and I'll try to keep y'all updated every step of the way. It's nice having a blog where we can now share this stuff.

As always, if you or anybody you know has instruments, tools, supplies, or accessories that you'd like to sell, we would love to have you. You can find out more on our seller info page. Cheers!