The UK craft fairs community

Why craft fairs

The UK is without doubt one of the most creative and diverse places on Earth. The talent of makers and artists needs a vent, a channel that allows both new and experienced people the chance to market and sell their work. They also need to network with their peers to exchange ideas and experiences. The craft fair can be that channel. It challenges people, it inspires and motivates people to do better and more. Supporting your local craft fairs as a visitor and purchaser, helps to grow the community and encourage further creative, social and community wealth.

Craft Blog Posts

This week, we have been improving the craft blog section.

We feel that the blogs are a great way for you to communicate your story to the world. So we have added a few tips on the craft blog search page to help you write even more engaging content. It is well worth a look.

In addition, the craft blog search page has had a Spring clean (in Summer) to make it a little cleaner.

What can you expect next?
- Comment notifications

TIPS for ranking in Google - It can take a couple of weeks for Google to index your blog page after you add a new post. If you want to speed that process up, add a link to the post on any social media. Especially, if it is event date related. The most likely thing to get to the top of the search result for is your title - keep it relevant, unique and short about four words long.

Craftally discover the latest version

We are pleased to announce the release of the latest version of Craftally.

In addition to an updated pricing calculator for makers it also has a new to-do list. Ideal for a quick reminder of the important tasks you need to complete.

The to-do list is a productivity tool. It is aimed at people who want to get things done. You can add up to seven tasks at a time. Add tasks that you aim to complete that day. You can also include up to three goals. One that is for yourself, for example - walk and cycle more. A second for others, such as - encourage my sister to complete that course. A third for work, for example - attend an event to get peoples feedback.

Will you be downloading the latest version? Is there a tool that you would like to see added to the app, that you feel would be of benefit to makers (either whilst at a table selling, at home making or whilst marketing). If so, please add a comment on the app store and we will review it and potentially develop it for you.

Search for Craftally on the app store.

Craftally

The makers friend

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new app for iPhone and iPad. Just search Craftally on the app store.

Craftally builds on our knowledge of arts and crafts in the UK to deliver what we hope is a intuitive application. We hope you will support it. It has been designed with makers in mind, to help you to calculate a retail price for your handmade items. Taking into account any selling fees from an online or card service, VAT if you are registered, your competitors pricing and more.

Improved interactions functionality

This week we have taken a close look at the interactions section of the site. Our aim was to further improve functionality and increase the sections use.

Here are a few things that have changed:

1. When logging in, if you have any interactions you have not answered or marked as read, you will be taken directly to the interactions section.
2. When you are on the interactions page and you have unread messages, you will see a list of people that have written to you in date order, top left.
3. We have collapsed the list of people you have previously contacted into an A-Z of contacts and coloured it light blue so it is easy to see and small on a mobile. Just click on the triangle to expand the list and scroll down if your list is long.
4. If you do not need to reply to a message then mark it as read. We change the cross previously there to the word read, which is much clearer. Unread messages are in red, once you reply or mark as read they change to light blue.
5. If you send a message from a site, event page or item page the owner get a notification by email that they have an unread interaction.

For people to be able to write to you, you must have added a listing with a picture, the event you are running or the item you have for sale.

We hope you like the improvements. We would welcome your feedback via the contact us form.

Craft Weekly Newsletter

The weekly newsletter includes a lot and tries to keep members informed of new content and up and coming events. Without it you are a little in the dark. It is important to note that the newsletter is not automatically linked to your membership, you need to sign up to it once logged in.

We have been making a few improvements to the design of the newsletter. The physical and load sizes of images have been improved for reading on mobile phones, where bandwidth may be an issue. The location of images in relation to the text has been adjusted to make listings easier to read.