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.

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.

Making the most of your membership

Take a look at the - Making the most of your membership - document. When you login, you will see it on your home page, alternatively you can see a copy on the about page.

It is currently nine long but over time may increase in size to cover more aspects of the site, if needed. It covers things like, navigating around the site, the colour schemes and symbols used, adding content like your main page, events, blog posts and shop items. With some helpful tips and advice.

We hope you will find it useful.

Self publishers links to Amazon

Self publishing is a relatively new phenomenon, that allows authors to side step the traditional publishing houses. This results in the author keeping more of the purchase price (if they make sales) but they have to do most of the work themselves.

If you have self published already, you will know that marketing your books can be difficult and time consuming. So, we have added some additional functionality to the site to help.

As a member, you can add your books to your shop window. Then, if you add the events you are attending, the Click and Collect will work. Marketing your books at an event is a great way to generate sales, talk to interested people and perhaps sign a few copies. You can ask people that buy to write reviews etc.

We know how much work goes into writing and then self-publishing a book. So now, in addition to your Click and Collect, we can add a link on your item page that goes directly to your book on Amazon.

Event pricing and availability

Whilst adding a craft fair, course or exhibition to the site, an organiser can include the number places available, a guide price, as well as the current availability.

When you login and view an event page, there is now an alert in the top right hand corner, green means there are still places or tables available, orange means that the organiser has ticked the box to state the event is full. You can still contact organisers about full events, to try and get on there waiting list. In the same alert, we include the total number of tables or places and the price when supplied.

In addition, organisers can now choose to offer a 5% discount to UKCraftFairs members. If the discount has been added by the organiser, you will see it in the same alert box.

The pricing set by the organiser is just a guide, so you will know the sort of price you can expect to pay.

You would need to contact the organiser directly for availability information that is specific to you, for a specific category of makers like jewellery or cards for example, which notoriously fill very quickly.