Friday, August 1, 2014

The Botched Zibbet Relaunch

UPDATE!  The botched relaunch of the Zibbet e-commerce site is sadly a perfect example of the careless management of a site that takes money from customers and then fails to deliver.  It is indefensible.  They launched a PR blitz to a site that loaded so slowly it often timed out.  Shop features were missing that were paid for, and customers were told to pay again to enable them.  Search didn't recognize plurals.  Full legal names were exposed.  As were emails, just ripe for the picking of spammers, photos and banners a mess.  Error messages and surprise downtimes.  Just to name a PORTION of the bugs.

To make matters worse, some of the intentional changes seem designed to confuse, at best, or mislead.  Days before the relaunch, there were under 8,000 shops (many abandoned or "name holders").  At relaunch, prospective sellers are urged to join 43,000 plus "creatives".  Now, elsewhere on the internet, the owners had claimed there were 10,000 shops, so their math has always been questionable.  But 43,000?  Requests for how they came up with this number were ignored.  Zibbet did respond via a tweet.  Here it is: 43,944 sellers have joined Zibbet over the years. Amazing! Look out for that number to keep growing faster & faster!" What's amazing is that they actually publish this number. There were less than 8,000 sellers last week, meaning that over 35,000 sellers have come and gone! 8,000 sellers, many empty, many place holders, many with banners directing to their Etsy shop. PS, Zibbet, glad you are enjoying my blog.

The shops no longer show how many items they sold, making it impossible for a prospective investor in the site to make an educated decision about whether it works for sellers or not.  And they can't access the off-site forums unless they sign up and are approved, and they won't see a balanced discussion if they do.  The owners have muted "negative" shopkeepers, and coached a handful of users in a private forum, to bully any "negative" posters (trolls, as the owner Andrew Gray characterized them), and manipulate by posting la-las and games to bury meaty business posts.

And that handful of users, instead of demanding excellence in a site they invest time and money in, conspire to keep it performing poorly.  By trying to beat down, silence, threaten and bully those who do demand the site perform.  By questioning their sanity, their business sense, their ethics.  And accepting anything dished out.

Because apparently pretending a site is excellent is preferable to demanding that it rise to the opportunity it had and perform excellently.  Tweeting and pinning and buying each others' items in a pathetic attempt to bring in traffic that they should demand the owners bring in just by providing a credible, working site.  Why?

Instead of asking themselves why there is such outrage over the site's management, they defend it.  (Does it really help a site for owners to publicly lie and trash sellers they banned from their forums?) Instead of demanding the owners step up and perform basic public relations fence mending, they try amateurish bullying behavior to try and cowl furious customers who want their money back.  Even this disastrous relaunch keeps them on message.

Why?  Some have suggested it is a C3 church thing, some have suggested there is a financial incentive, some have suggested it's the charismatic owners taking advantage of lonely people.

I don't have any evidence of any of it.  I did learn recently that the one who sent me emails threatening not only to sue me but to have me arrested (and I suppose, extradited to Florida for tweeting) bragged that she was in daily telephone conversations with one of the owners.

But I have no proof of that, not being in on those conversations.

What I do know is this:  Zibbet has failed to become a credible alternative and the relaunch just confirms that they either aren't up to the task or never had any intention to.  And so it fails at the most glorious opportunity they will ever have.

But more and more are suggesting that it doesn't matter to the owners how subpar the site is as long as there's another "mark" to buy a membership, since that's how they make THEIR money. 

All of us would have benefited from real competition to Etsy, and it will never happen.  Because instead of demanding excellence from its owners, that very vocal and active group made excuses for them, like a doting mom and a spoiled child.  (Oh, officer, my baby would NEVER go over the speed limit!) And the sad thing is, everyone who sells handmade, vintage and supplies is let down.  Because of an inexplicable conspiracy to try to convince people that less is more.  That a few successful sellers is proof that the site works.  That subpar is really acceptable.  The botched relaunch is merely a nail on the coffin.  Either by plan or sheer ignorance, the owners have failed us all.  And we have that group of support-at-any-cost folks to thank for that.

Because instead of joining those demanding excellence from a site that had the opportunity to be just that, they chose to make excuses for it.  And that I will never understand.

8 comments:

  1. Amen to all. Etsy needs competition, but sadly, Z is not it.

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  2. Nope. This relaunch is even worse than I could have ever imagined, and with this, I have closed my shops on Zibbet. Not even a shred of hope left.

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  4. Well done. I was so optimistic about Zibbet becoming a Etsy alternative when I moved over last October. I've been very disappointed. There is/was great potential, but I don't see it panning out. I wish the folks trying to make a go of it on Zibbet the best of luck, but it just isn't for me. I have to think of my business which is supposed to benefit my family. I have to be where the greener pastures are and, sadly, Zibbet just isn't it.

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  5. Isn't it a pity? There's some who would rather stay in the owners' good graces than demand they do an adequate job running it. We all would have benefitted if they had stepped up. They are still in their forums trashing anyone who expected excellence and communicated that.

    On another note, Zibbet is now backtracking that the 43,000 number is open shops. Which is very odd since they had less than 8,000 a week ago. And after this debacle of a relaunch, for sure they didn't get 35K sign ups!

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  6. Zibbet now tweets that the 43,000 plus are active sellers. I have challenged them to provide documentation to substantiate that claim.

    It is infuriating that they use a misleading number to try and rope in new paying sellers.

    Yet on their forums, the gals are still at it, trashing and twisting, and again, letting the management off the hook, hurting every single seller on Zibbet in the process. When a company can't even relaunch a credible site with 4 years of "work" to do it, and spends its money FUNDING poker games, and people say that's fine....you just have to wonder....

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  7. Robin, it's sad indeed but I've learned not to waste one more ounce of energy as far as Z is concerned. They're clearly not worth it and for those folks who've made up their minds that it's a good spot for them to sell, well, I wish them luck. It's their choice. That is one botched up site for sure.

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  8. Still in 2019? What about AC Moore. I feel like I'm going backwards with everything tech these days. Such a shame. Anyone on Baraqoo?? Lol I dunno why I bother but I do. Maybe I should write a country song about the days of online sellin.

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