Improvements

• 6/13-7/13/2022 – WORKING TOWARD GOALS
• 6/9-6/12/2022 – STRIDES FORWARD
• 5/27-6/8/2022 – POSITIVE NEWS
• 4/27-5/26/2022 – QUIET IMPROVEMENTS
• 4/17-4/26/2022 – IMPROVED APPEARANCE & METRICS
• 4/11-4/16/2022 – IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS
• 4/5-4/10/2022 – WORKING ON IT!
• 3/25-4/4/2022 – NOTABLES
• 3/19-24/2022 – IMPROVEMENT MARATHON
• 3/18/2022 – 120+ NEW CATEGORIES | ENHANCED SHOPPING & SEARCH
• 3/17/2022 – OUTREACH | CREATING VISIBILITY | GROWTH
• 3/16/2022 – FACEBOOK SHOPPING INTEGRATION
• 3/15/2022 – GOOGLE PRODUCT CATEGORIES
• 3/14/2022 – NEW PAGES & IMPROVED FORMS
• 3/13/2022 – TRANSLATIONS & SIDEBARS
• 3/12/2022 – VARIOUS IMPROVEMENTS
• 3/11/2022 – CREATE TUTORIALS
• 3/10/2022 – DEVELOPMENTS
• 3/9/2022 – ISSUES & FIXES
• 3/8/2022 – UPDATES

Makyn.me has been working hard behind-the-scenes to include features for the improvement of our platform & to create a positive experience for our users! 

We will continue to make improvements for the benefit of our Community & will keep the list of our Fixes, Improvements, & Updates by listing them here!

6/13-7/13/2022 – WORKING TOWARD GOALS

• In the process of developing a more structured social media marketing plan for organic outreach and community growth.
• Working out new sketch-noting process to attract interest, similar to “whiteboard animation.”
• Got some new equipment that will greatly assist in the process of creating and editing videos for the purpose of tutorials. Instead of videoing large video files, they will be shorter and still contain a voiceover for each walkthrough but will only feature how to perform one task if at all possible. Some items such as the Shop Wizard that presents as soon as a Shop registers may require one longer video that has elements “sped up” for the sake of time.
• We also use monikers or fictitious names for our “example” shop that we use for educational purposes only – we strongly encourage our users to register with their real names for legal and tax purposes.
• Attended a meeting with Pinterest regarding digital marketing and next steps to attain goals. To help us reach our goals:
  • Pin the listings or content of other Shops to your boards that you find inspiring.
  • Pin your listings & content to your boards.
  • Share your pins with other Pinterest users, consider friends & family.
  • Create NEW listings.
  • Create pin-worthy content posts that contain images. Fresh, “inspirational” content is best! Some great ideas are: posts about your process, works in progress (WIPs), upcoming product drops, coupons, and promotions!
  • The visual search engine, Pinterest, is helping users to discover new brands – so why not get your brand out there!
  • To remain verified we need an *unknown* number of pageviews, add to cart events and purchase events by July 21st! We desire to remain verified if AT ALL possible!
  • We have reached as many as 89,000 views in a month when we were creating content consistently as a Community – we can easily exceed that with a little teamwork and some fresh content! Please assist us with this effort!
• Created NEW business cards. We will be attending different events and passing these out to vendors with a flyer.

• Created and printed flyers to place at any local establishments and venues which Artists & Crafters frequent to increase brand awareness and try to gain traction locally. We are located in the Upstate South Carolina area and frequently visit North Carolina. If you are willing to help in this endeavor in a respectful manner, then we would be happy to send you some flyers! Please use the Help button located in the bottom-right corner to send us (Makyn.me) a Direct Message with your request and physical address. We will do our best to respond as soon as possible and provide the requested flyers using the US Mail.

• We want to highlight our Shops on TikTok in quick 1 minute videos. Show the Independent Shop, their branding, say a few positive words about the creative work that is being done. However, only some of our Shops have input their “About” information and have begun adding listings. If we began a series doing this, we hope it will encourage NEW users to join and participate more fully. We believe that in promoting our Independent Shops and potential buyers will see their work and desire to support the creatives behind it through purchasing in their Shop on Makyn.me. We intend to begin doing this soon. So we ask our Shops to help us by including as much information as possible in the Shop Settings > Store > Shop Description or under My Profile.
• Our longer form videos will remain short, visual tutorials located on our YouTube Channel. We will begin to update them as many of our previous videos are no longer accurate due to necessary changes that have taken place.
• We are working on expanding Search Engine Optimization to provide additional insights for how content is performing in terms of readability and other important factors that are key to getting our Independent Shops more visibility with popular search engines.
• We emailed 22 creative vendors, artists, and crafters that we either had the opportunity to meet or at least collected their information at an Art Walk located in Concord, NC and invited them to join our growing organization!

6/9-6/12/2022 – STRIDES FORWARD

• TIPS: We are pleased to re-introduce our Tipping functionality on the Cart, just prior to checkout! Our Cart now features the ability to provide a tip per product purchased to support our Independent Shops more fully!
• A new LOGOUT menu & icon have been added to the Top Menu.
• Manage My Shop now has a more accessible Profile Manager.
• Shop Settings features a new panel to Edit my Member Profile.
• Manage My Shop also displays a new menu item for Member Directory.
• Easy-links were created for the Main Navigation Menu under Manage My Shop to make menus more accessible – My Profile, Profile Manager, and Shop Profile.
• We use three main colors on the site. Brave Blue color in some areas changed to our Promo Purple for the purpose of contrast. We are still using our Tenacious Teal as our main color. Buttons and prices colors have changed accordingly.
• Improvements to mobile view of Shop Page. Elements now respect spacing much better!
• Emails were corrected where links were not clickable in our monthly courtesy email reminders. This issue was brought to out attention by a helpful Member of our Community! We sincerely appreciate all reports that help us to improve the platform for everyone! To correct this, we changed the language and instead provided ample directions for the locate to change your Shop Membership with Makyn.me.

5/27-6/8/2022 – POSITIVE NEWS

• DIVERSITY & INCLUSIVITY: HAPPY PRIDE MONTH! Our Independent Shops may now include their Preferred Pronouns as part of the registration process. For Shops who signed up before we instituted this, you may change your Preferred Pronouns by visiting Manage My Shop > Shop Settings > Profile > Additional Information tab. This information will be visible under your About tab in your Shop, just under your Shop’s About information.
• TAX NEWS: It is fairly costly to become compliant for tax purposes and apply for all necessary tax licenses in the areas we wish to do business to submit sales and use tax. Therefore, the platform may have to be restricted to sales in the United States until enough interest has been developed. If we are able to achieve the proper amount of interest in other countries, we could easily apply and begin selling there. We are considering the following locations first:
  • Australia – $500.00
  • Canada – $300.00 per territory
  • EU – $100.00 per member country, or about $3,000.00 total
• TIPPING: We are much closer to finishing repairs to our tipping functionality so that it will again be available for our Independent Shops. Tips will be added in the Cart and show in Checkout. Set amounts were changed to percentages. Ideally, when it is completed you can add a tip per item, so that we will be able to allow purchases from more than one vendor at a time in Checkout. This will also prevent any issues with tipping, and tips should be associated with the product and be provided to the Vendor when it is working properly. We are currently trying to resolve a fatal error that presents at Checkout. When this is finished, we will perform testing to ensure that everything is functioning properly, and make the necessary announcements to our community.
• MEMBER DIRECTORY: Customers & Independent Shops now show in our NEW Member Directory. Both types of users may change their User Avatar and Banner. Shops may add their BIO under Shop Description.
• VISIBILITY:
  • Pinterest tags are now “Acceptable,” under our tag health. We were able to determine using Pinterest Tag Helper and through Test Events that our tags are indeed firing properly and that product_id, value, order_id, and quantity are presenting appropriately – which is great news for our visibility on this platform! We need our Shops creating new listings and posting articles about their work if possible. These articles and new products get sent to your Shop’s followers, so it helps immensely in keeping your audience connected to your Shop and current events!
  • Google Tag Manager (GTM) was presenting issues with Pinterest tags. Pinterest tags were removed from GTM to resolve conflict. Everything is functioning properly at this time to our knowledge.
• FACEBOOK:
  • Issue with Facebook for Marketplace is now RESOLVED! On Chrome only, the Facebook tab would shrink, the information under the “Connection” tab would disappear, and the secondary tab for “Product Sync” and all available information under the tab was unavailable. This has since been corrected, the behavior no longer negatively impacts visitors browsing in Chrome.
  • We are looking for a few of our Shops to connect their Facebook Page to their Shop to see how it renders and to ensure that everything is working properly with their Connection via our Integration!
• ATTACK PREVENTION: We changed our Server’s location due to DDoS attacks at the recommendation of our Hosting Service. These types of attacks are not harmful but are bots that all visit the server at the same time causing our services to be unavailable to actual visitors. If this occurs, we can place the site under additional protective measures when we are under attack. Please let us know if for any reason our server becomes unavailable so that we can implement measures to resolve the issue.
  • Quite often, individuals with infected computers are completely unaware that their computer is being used to maliciously attack websites. You can do your part by regularly scanning your computer and devices for potential malware and viruses that can enable those with malicious intent to utilize your possessions in their attacks.
  • If you have ever used the same password on another website, you should change your Makyn.me password immediately. We highly recommend that users select a strong password for Makyn.me that is not used elsewhere. It is advisable to change passwords regularly to keep them secure. This helps us to prevent Brute Force Attacks. In this type of attack, would-be hackers try different passwords or input passwords that have been leaked in an attempt to access accounts that belong to others.
  • Other protective measures in place include limitations on login attempts, a great firewall, regular malware scans, and prevention of login attempts with incorrect user IDs. These measures are intended to protect our users and their information.
  • If you ever become locked out in error, say from attempting the wrong password or inputting the wrong username, simply contact us and we should be able to help resolve the issue fairly quickly.
  • We DO NOT store any payment information whatsoever on Makyn.me. This is all maintained by our Payment Providers.

4/27-5/26/2022 – QUIET IMPROVEMENTS

• No serious issues!
• Sales & Use License finally approved, had to file 4 PT-100’s because we started our business in 2018.
• Default tax code added for all products – representative of “Artwork.”
• Wrote an Article about Diversity and Inclusion.
• Researched Contracts in an effort to create a downloadable contract for digital artists to convey to Customers.
• Improved FAQ’s page.
• Improved Contact Us page.
• Worked on Schema improvements for Search Console.
• Made progress and strides toward integrating the tipping functionality.
• Added attributes to listings that are required for Enhanced Shopping & Visibility [condition], [gender], [google_product_category], et al.
• Opened tickets with Google Tag Manager and Pinterest to address some issues with tags. Still open meetings on the books (5/27/2022).
• Spent excessive amounts of time trying to test tags and implement Consent Management Systems (CMS) within Google Tag Manager, still not 100% sure we are doing it right. If you receive cookies but have declined them (there may be some that are considered 1st party or essential) which may present. If this is an issue, please let me know. We have reached out to Termly.io, which is the company that provides SAAS for our cookie scans and is responsible for populating our site’s policies such as the Privacy Policy and others. If anyone has advice or can be of assistance with this, get in touch.
• Added new tags that fire to provide us with improved metrics. Work still needs to be performed to solve some issues.
• Issues with dataLayer for enhanced metrics – information appears in the dataLayer, but variables are returning “undefined.”
• Able to restore Analytics metrics, for some reason information stopped sending – it wasn’t seeing real-time traffic and debugView was not functioning properly either. After some tinkering with the tags, triggers, variables, and settings – it appears to have resolved and information is again being passed for important data, albeit with the issue present in the previous bullet point.
• Seeking assistance from a qualified technician to address some outstanding issues, which are not part of our skillset to save time & effort.
• Opened a support ticket with Avalara about getting into touch with our Accounts Manager. The number is disconnected and the email I have they don’t respond to. Therefore, we are unable to move forward with getting qualified to do business outside of the US until advances are made. Today, we will reach out to the individual who got us set up with Avalara and see if they can be of assistance in making this connection or getting the ball rolling in the right direction.

4/17-4/26/2022 – IMPROVED APPEARANCE & METRICS

• We have a NEW Promotion for our UNLIMITED Shop Services! Offering UNLIMITED Shop Plans, FREE for 30 days! MORE DETAILS
• We are fully set-up to accept sales & use tax, thanks to our partner – Avalara. We can now appropriately calculate taxes across the United States.
• Focused on tag health improvement. Set up triggers on various important pages that are visited with important pages are visited. The intent of integrating events set up properly through Google Tag Manger for Pinterest & Facebook/Instagram to allow proper metrics & reporting to gauge areas that are successful or need work. This will also enable us to track certain metrics such as when products are added to the cart, checkouts, signups, and more! Some examples are the Wishlist, Cart, Checkout, Thank You, and Thank You for Your Patronage pages.
• Multiple pages have gotten a “face-lift” as we have begun working to improve the look of these cornerstone pages. Some of the locations where the appearance has undergone makeovers are the About, Thank You, Thank You for Your Patronage pages.
• The FAQ page was under serious maintenance for a couple days while UI/UX improvements were being implemented. The result is page that has functional elements that allow the user to easily navigate through use of anchor tags down to the area with the information needed. Details are couched inside of the accordions under each heading to make it easy to understand the TOPIC of the questions. After the first few headings that explain basic questions like Who & What our Organization stands for & who we are – our FAQ categories revert back to alphabetical order. Everything appears to be in great working order. We have even added back the code to allow jumping back to the top of the page as there are a good number of great questions available on the FAQ’s page!
• Our Product RSS Feeds for Google Shopping, Pinterest, & Facebook/Instagram DO NOT recognize more inclusive attributes terms to describe gender such as “non-binary,” “gender fluid,” or “gender neutral.” As a required term, we have necessarily edited all products that contained these terms & changed it to a recognized term: “unisex.” We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
• Worked on RSS Feed to create some improvements in metrics.

4/11-4/16/2022 – IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS

• Etsy Shops are RIGHTFULLY UPSET about how new changes & changes over the years have drastically impacted their bottom line, especially those who use Etsy as their primary source of income. In response to Etsy’s fee hike, influx of mass produced items, “Star-Seller” program, & other changes to their platform Etsy Shops are STRIKING! To achieve this, a good number of Etsy Shop Owners are effectively closing their shops, removing their products, hiking their own prices, or putting their shops in Vacation Mode!
• MANY Etsy Shops have decided to participate in the week-long STRIKE starting April 11, 2022 & lasting until April 18, 2022. Etsy Shops are rising together in an attempt to organize in a Discord server. They have banded together in #solidarity asking that others #dontcrossthepicketline as they state their demands to the corporate giant, Etsy. While there is strength in numbers, if history is anything to go by, Etsy will likely not change it’s successful business practices. We fully support the ETSY SHOPS who are participating in the #EtsyStrike movement & welcome them to join our Community & Marketplace as well as OPEN SHOP with Makyn.me. We believe that Makyn.me is situated to assist many who are trying to find a new home for their Shop can OPEN SHOP with us and experience no loss in store-front. We will do our best make it easy to transfer & you can easily migrate your listings to Makyn.me with our Importer.
• WE CURRENTLY HAVE NEW PROMOTIONS! We are offering 3 months of FREE service to help those participating in the #EtsyStrike! Our LIMITED TIME OFFER is available from April 11 – 18, 2022. Offer applies to Shops who sign up – the 1st 100 from the #EtsyStrike Discord group & the 1st 200 offered through other Social Media Outlets – the LIMITED-TIME
• We reached out to the leadership of the #EtsyStrike Discord group & are currently awaiting a response as we offer a viable alternative to Etsy. We are unsure if the leadership there speaks for everyone & have tried to communicate in the group to share that Etsy is not the only Marketplace & Community available that can help Etsy Shops who are quickly jumping ship.
• We have contracted with Avalara to obtain quality automated tax services, we onboard with this reputable Company on Monday, April 18, 2022 at 8:00am EST. The hope is that shortly thereafter, we will be completely set up to assist our Shops more fully with tax related concerns. We are aware that we will eventually meet NEXUS in the US & are making the necessary preparations to comply with all laws relating to sales & use tax our Shops.
• We have been working on language files & translations to improve the quality of the wording viewed by our Guests. This is also an effort to provide additional clarity & definition for our Users. From time to time, upon updating language files may change and must to be fixed to reflect a more accurate sense of what the purpose of the wording is. When this happens, some text will revert back to default language/wording until addressed by us. If you see something that you think could or should be worded different or find any typos let us know and we will get right on it!
• Created a NEW Artist Resources Page! It has free tools that may be useful to our Independent Shops & will continue to be added to as time moves forward! If you have a suggestion that you think our Users would enjoy, please let us know! We are considering other ways that we can provide access to services that may benefit our Users!
• Adult & Mature Listings will not be shown in the MAIN MARKETPLACE located under the Shop menu. We have made this change for a number of reasons. First & foremost to protect minors who may view our Marketplace pages. Second, to respect the wishes of Guests who would prefer not to see Adult or Mature Content in public spaces. To resolve these important issues, we have created a separate area that properly presents an age verification the Guest to check validate that they are old enough to view this potentially sensitive material. The “Age Gate” will prevent the content from being shown unless the Guest wishes to see it & meets our age requirement. In order to create another area to suit this type content & listings, we have created separate pages for both Adult & Mature Content & Adult & Mature Listings. These important product categories will now be available under the NEW Creative Marketplace menu.
• To help Customers locate Handcrafted, Digital Art, & Creative Services as well as other important categories for distinctly different products we are moving Digital Art & Creative Services to their own pages. These will become available shortly, within the next week.
• Improved wording “Creative Marketplace” on MAIN MENU to more accurately describe the nature of our the Makyn.me Marketplace & further distinguish the Collective nature of the work presented there from the work presented in YOUR Shop.

4/5-4/10/2022 – WORKING ON IT!

• Set up meeting on 4/11/22 from 12:00-12:30PM EST to discuss fully automating taxes, collection & remittance on behalf of Independent Shops to be compliant with new Marketplace Facilitator laws. This will also reduce burden on our Artists.
• Added roughly 350 NEW Product Categories, mostly in Toys & Games & Home & Garden. Our product categories are getting closer to being ready! It’s a lot of data entry and mapping. We are working as hard as we can to get this accomplished in record time.
• Configured Attributes so that adding additional information is not as cumbersome & time consuming for Vendors.
• Testing revealed a bug with tips. No other vendors were negatively impacted as a result. Tipping portion of checkout will be unavailable until we are able to correct the issue. We will reactivate tipping functionality as soon as we are able to ensure that tips properly show on orders and give a clearer understanding that these fees go to Independent Shops, not Admin.
• Invested in better search engine functionality. The goal is to extend capability of vendors in the near future to view Search Engine Optimization recommendations. This will give Independent Shops even more control over their own search engine visibility as well as effectively allow better ranking for article & product type posts.
• Working on a crucial fix to ensure that mature-type posts & products when posted are not immediately going out in email to Shop Followers.
• Still working on Art Works tab. Would like to create a Digital Media tab also.
• No updates about Cookie bug on Safari, yet. Hope to hear back about this early this next week.
• Received feedback about dark backgrounds and suggestion for a background remover. Currently working to add a URL on Add New Listing/Product page that will direct Vendors to PhotoRoom website that will help them remove backgrounds for a cleaner look for their products.
• Removed currency support due to bug.
• Removed confusing extra Stripe Credit payment buttons in checkout.
• Corrected issue that effected our Shop pages briefly, causing some strange behavior with the Shop headers.
• Created new Adult/Mature Post Category with age validation.
• Fixed several issues with Stripe Payment Gateway.
• Duplicated products must have information changed, specifically SKU must be deleted completely so that a new SKU can be auto-populated.

3/25-4/4/2022 – NOTABLES

• Added multiple guided tutorials to our Makyn Tutorials page. Videos are hosted on YouTube. As much as I would love to, I cannot physically sit down with everyone to provide a personal setup experience. Therefore, I have tried to simulate this instead! I believe that this format of learning will be helpful to our users to discover how to perform various activities on the site. Playlists are available with all videos. Suggestions for upcoming videos are welcomed & encouraged! Let me know what type of content that will help you the most!
• Created 40 NEW product categories & mapped them properly to product categories for enhanced shopping. Will continue to add new Categories to suit all manner of products. Most categories do not have products in them. So to reiterate, it provides our Independent Shops with a lot of frontier territory that is asking for products. Adding products to a category with only a few products can help your product to be seen. However, it should be noted that one should always categorize their products as accurately and specifically as possible with all parent categories checked!
• Fixed a Payment Gateway issue relating to an API that was causing users to be unable to set up recurring Shop Subscriptions with Stripe. Several errors were occurring as a result. The issue has since been resolved & all Shop Subscription services have resumed.
• Users are now able to change currency easily using a handy drop-down located in the sidebar.
• NEW Shipping Zone to service Australia/Oceania area of the World.
• Corrected a 302 error for Shops that connect to our Stripe Integration. Shops must input their Makyn.me Shop address for their “Business” not other websites. However, adding xyz.com as “Business” instead of https://makyn.me/shop/[my-shop-name-here] produces an error. The reason is because our Integration cannot “see” your Shop URL on our Marketplace. Instead of adding their other website URL here, which is not the proper location for it, Shops may include OTHER Websites under Profile > Social tab by simply copy+pasting the URL directly from the browser and clicking “SAVE.”

3/19-24/2022 – IMPROVEMENT MARATHON

• New Cookie report available. Updated Cookie Policy. Cookie Preferences are available in footer. Preventing essential cookies may effect your user experience while visiting the site. We are still working fixing on bug that makes cookie banner reappear with each refresh. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause for Apple users who browse with Safari. It does not appear to behave this way on Chrome and Firefox Browsers.
• Added 100 new product categories for a total of 260 categories. We will continue to add product categories and map them for the 4 shopping networks that we provide feeds for to benefit our Shops.
• New type of categorization makes it easier to locate more categories. If you do not see a category for your type of product, you may create it and revisit the product after we have mapped it. Or simply contact us & we will be happy to create any categories you need as well as map them properly. Just reach out & let us know what categories would be beneficial for your type of product.
• Reverted back to category dropdown to allow Shops to add a Brand & Categories. A bug was preventing brand & categories from being created by Shops in the “search view.” Until we can resolve this issue, we will remain with current view. Upcoming tutorials will reflect this category dropdown style to enable learning how to add product categories and a Shop Brand in our GUIDED VIDEOS.
• When creating Products, Independent Shops are now able to include additional fields for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION relating to article & product type posts. This created a FOCUS KEYWORD and META DESCRIPTION. Allows Shops to take full control of their SEO leading to improved visibility in search rankings with keyword research & use of terms to target ideal customer.
• XML & CSV files for feeds have been verified and each feed is available for digestion for ENHANCED SHOPPING.
• Added a MATURE CATEGORY for sensitive or adult materials and included an AGE VERIFICATION screen prior to viewing. Viewers of attribute archives Adult/Mature may also see an additional cookie to enable this feature. If you do not allow, you may not be able to view. Please see Prohibited and Restricted Items. All content which contains mature or sensitive material should be properly categorized and have correct attributes to remain presented herein. We present this screen to ensure that we are not exposing minors to any inappropriate materials and appreciate your understanding!
• Our Independent Shops are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED to mark category for products that fall within the mature categories and to ensure that they are properly checking and inputting attributes for [age_group] as term “adult” and “yes” to attribute for [adult/mature]. This will help us keep our safe & ensure that we are presenting professional listing in a Community that takes measures to protect our youth.
• NEW Pinterest boards were created that features products from the Makyn.me Marketplace & Community. It is updated daily when when Pinterest digests our feed at midnight EST. Products created prior to this time will appear on one of our two boards! We receive over 4k visitors each month to our Pinterest boards & hope that this will continue to grow as well as provide additional visibility on other platforms for our Shops by simply listing products with us at no extra cost to the Independent Shops in our Community!
• Improved our LINKS page.
• Find Independent Shops by alphabetical BRAND page available under the Shop Directory Menu.
• Corrected links at bottom of HOME page.
• Increased size of all tooltips and information hovers to improve visual aids and assistive devices within the Shop Dashboard.
• Created new [size] Attribute terms for traditional 2A0 through A10 paper sizes to help Artists easily identify sizes. Example: A4.
• Added Attribute [color] – Color Swatches along with relevant hex codes as a visual aid to help depict the intended color.
• Attributes are now REQUIRED. Editing a product that does not have the required attributes input will now require attribute terms to be entered before it will allow the product to be resubmitted.
• Verified that emails are sent to Followers when Articles are posted or new Listings are created.
• Changed language on FREE SHOP that read “UP TO 10 POSTS/MONTH” to “UP TO 10 POSTS” to more accurately reflect our setup.
• Corrected console error regarding duplication of SEO schema for FAQPage on FAQs page.
• Stopped notification to Shop when Admin makes changes to backend effecting products to provide ENHANCED SHOPPING OPPORTUNITIES for our Shops. It indicated that the product was “approved.” We expect our Shops to carry themselves professionally, listing & posting as such.However, there is no approval process. Products are immediately live upon publishing. If there is an issue with a listing, we may place the listing in “draft” mode or delete it if it violates our Terms & Conditions.

3/18/2022 – 120+ NEW CATEGORIES | ENHANCED SHOPPING & SEARCH

• Today, Makyn.me added 120+ different product categories! Makyn.me is a NEW frontier for our Independent Shops to start listing their products & services!
• We are currently in the process of adding product categories that we believe will be used by our Independent Shops & Customers alike. Placing products in general, top-level categories as well as niche categories are very specific will be beneficial to both parties in that products will receive additional visibility and make it easy for customers to locate the specific products that they are seeking. This will also put on display a wide range of handcrafted work, fine art, digital art, creative services, and more all featuring innovative work that Artists & Creatives are capable of producing.
• Because Makyn.me offers its Shops FREE ENHANCED SHOPPING & SEARCH FEATURES, we are expanding our “required attributes” to provide this valuable service to our Independent Shops. This means that Independent Shops must add additional features of products under the “Attributes” tab in the Manage My Shop Dashboard. Depending on the attributes required, Independent Shops are required to provide this information to consumers for their products to receive access to the Enhanced Shopping & Search feature we offer. This also helps to provide as much accurate information as possible to encourage consumers to make educated purchasing decisions as well as encourages trust in the Independent Shops, the product, and our Marketplace.
• Independent Shops can now utilize a more User-Friendly search function and drop down to select multiple categories that their products will be viewable at.
• We are aware of a bug which causes the Cookie Banner to appear every time a User changes pages. The Banner must remain in place while the Engineers are looking at the issue and perform testing to resolve it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our Users and appreciate your patience!

3/17/2022 – OUTREACH | CREATING VISIBILITY | GROWTH

• Our growing Community had several more Independent Shops join! Our outreach strategy and openness about answering questions seems to be gaining traction. We are excited about all of our NEW Shops & stoked to see what our Creatives are Makyn!
• Makyn.me added a new visual, arts based video with voiceover to TikTok to attract new Shops. Pairing information about the features & benefits Makyn.me has to offer with interesting visuals. We are using a variety of different hashtags in our campaigns to appear in various popular feeds.
• Added a discreet light-green SCROLL-TO-TOP feature on the bottom-righthand side of all pages to provide increased ease-of-use for all Users.
• Added an RSS feed for Subscribers of our Blog! You may easily subscribe from the sidebar, if you like receiving our updates!
• Corrected an issue where Social Media Icons were briefly not showing.

3/16/2022 – FACEBOOK SHOPPING INTEGRATION

• Will be testing a Facebook Integration to determine whether it will work only for Admin or whether it is possible for Independent Shops to add their own “Shop” integration to their Facebook Page as a tab. It currently functions properly for Makyn.me Admin and all of our products are available on Makyn.me’s Facebook Page under the Shop Tab.
• Permalink structure was updated to reflect chances made to correct the 404 error involving links. When a product was clicked directly from Facebook users were sent to a 404 page. Products currently in marketplace were synced to Facebook. Product page no longer goes to a 404 page and properly links to the Product Page.
• Issue was resolved with our cookie scanning program. However, it was noted that the cookie banner does not “remember” the response entered and the popup continues to present itself.
• Archives were added for all product attributes.
• Reached 100 Followers on TikTok! Help us grow by liking & sharing! If you open shop with us & have a TikTok account, make a video promoting that you are OPENING A NEW SHOP on Makyn.me!

3/15/2022 – GOOGLE PRODUCT CATEGORIES

• Compatibility with current categories added to map our Product Categories with that of Google Shopping’s Product Categories. This helps with appearing in searched on Google Shopping.
• Opened a Google Tag Manager, Google Ad & Remarketing Account.
• Added Important Attributes: [google_product_category], [size], [gender], [color], [materials], [mature] to comply with Google Shopping requirements.

3/14/2022 – NEW PAGES & IMPROVED FORMS

• Created a NEW PAGE called Makyn Tutorials under the MAIN MENU under ABOUT in preparation to add our guided video walk-throughs to help our Users learn to quickly navigate & perform various functions on the Makyn.me platform!
• Uploaded our 1st Tutorial Video to YouTube today! We also added it to a Playlist of helpful Tutorials to make it easy to watch all of the videos in the order they were filmed! Our first posted Tutorial is a guided video where we explain our Shop Options in detail & compare our Shop Plans. This 4 minute video walks our audience through how to sign up! Stay tuned for our upcoming Video Tutorials located on Makyn Tutorials Page.
• Improved Form Submission. Removed curly bracket wrapped tags which were not rendering properly on output. Verified that forms are being received by submitter & by the Platform. This way we ensure that we receive any & all contact information to the site & that the information is STORED.

3/13/2022 – TRANSLATIONS & SIDEBARS

• Noted language translation files & added the corrections to fix grammatical errors. In some cases these changes helped provide clarity & transparency to phrases that needed improvement to help guide or instruct Users.
• Diligently working on filming & editing screen-recorded footage of walking through the step to perform different activities. In these videos we make it easy to locate & navigate to important areas of interest whilest you are our guest on the Makyn.me Marketplace & Community!
• Worked on outreach, networked & communicated with a number of Creatives to see about potential marketing opportunities.

3/12/2022 – VARIOUS IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved CSS for Shop Header on Desktop site.
• Removed grey border.
• Added Email Subscription options to keep Users connected to our Platform & current events. Subscribers to this email signup will receive timely email updates regarding Makyn.me. If you wish to receive updates for shops, you will need to sign in & follow your favorite Creators!
• Created TikTok Videos less than 22 seconds each to promote our SHOP OPTIONS! One was created for the FREE SHOP & another that featured the UNLIMITED MONTHLY PLAN

3/11/2022 – CREATE TUTORIALS

• To facilitate learning, we have begun creating visual tutorials in video format. We will voice over the videos & upload them to the YouTube platform to make them publicly available. We will also post them to Makyn.me located under ABOUT under Makyn Tutorials . Videos or links to videos will be included in our knowledgebase to allow Shops to quickly access visual information designed to assist help with how to do various functions while using the platform. The intent is to provide a framework that helps users familiarize themselves with how to perform various activities while visiting the Makyn.me platform to improve the experience for Independent Shops & Customers alike. This will take some time to create
• Created a Page for Articles by our Creatives under the POSTS Menu which will show all Articles by our Independent Shops.
• Created a Page for Makyn Posts under the POSTS Menu which contains an archive of our Posts & a full collection of our Articles!

3/10/2022 – DEVELOPMENTS

• It is important to us as a platform that our Independent Shops receive as much visibility for their Brand as possible while participating in our Community & Marketplace environment! This includes when sharing links to other platforms. Listings in our Marketplace will now more accurately represent the Independently Owned Shops by including the Shop’s Name in the URL permalink structure! Instead of https://makyn.me/shop/ it will now show https://makyn.me/shop/[shop-name]/. In plain language, this means that Shop’s name will show immediately after /Shop/ as with this link: https://makyn.me/Shop/mandakyns/mums-the-word-face-mask-100-cotton/ instead of the 404 page of the previous setup https://makyn.me/Shop/mums-the-word-face-mask-100-cotton/ which is missing the Shop’s name immediately after /Shop/.
• Each Shop now has an Art Works TAB located under the header. While it currently shows all products & services offered by a Shop, we are working on developing a solution that features only the category of Fine Art. Eventually, we would very much like extend the functionality to help customers more easily identify product types once in your Shop. When we have found a solution, it will allow us to include other tabs such as PODS, Digital Art, & Custom Services in the future.

3/9/2022 – ISSUES & FIXES

• Corrected software conflict that was causing users to be unable to upload featured & gallery images to our media library and uploader. The issue was resolved quickly & all ability to upload images using our media library has been fully restored. If you ever encounter an inability to add images, please let us know using the REPORT an ISSUE feature. While we are especially focused on an excellent user experience, we recognize that we are a NEW platform and expect that some issues may arise. We will do our absolute best to quickly identify & efficiently resolve any issues that happen to arise!
• We have had a ticket in with Termly since 3/4/22 & are working with our hosting service to determine why certain software they provide is not working properly. Termly is responsible for scanning for cookies and presenting our Cookie policy so that our users can choose what cookies they desire to allow during their visit to our site. We are currently working with their engineers to determine the source problem & address it. We hope that the issue will be resolved in the near future. When the fix has been applied, users will notice a banner that informs them about our cookies, their rights, & allows them to set their cookie preferences. Please see our Privacy Policy for more details.

3/8/2022 – UPDATES

• Integrated to FACEBOOK. Created a catalog of all products & services available to present to visitors on Facebook. This will encourage anyone who views your work on Facebook to visit your Independent Shop on Makyn.me to make purchases. It will be automatically updated to include products & services as they are posted, on the condition that there are no issues with the listing and all fields are completed.
• Integration of Makyn.me with PINTEREST to create rich pins was successful! This will provide another venue that the Products & Services offered by our Independent Shops will be visible on another platform! Pin your work to a board & start sharing! The catalog will be updated once per day.
• We are in the process of enabling GOOGLE SHOPPING & ADS, so that when we have grown sufficiently we can begin advertising on behalf of our Independent Shops.
• Added a NEW BRAND FIELD on all products & services offered. If you don’t see your Brand, you may add it while creating products. Then on new listings simply select your Brand from the list when you are in the process of creating it!
• IMPROVED SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY for a sleeker look & classier experience. The search bar now can autocomplete, makes suggestions, & allow searching by tags. The great part about the NEW search bar is that it allows users to visualize the products & services they are looking for, which will help visibility of Independent Shop listings.
• We UPDATED OUR SITE-WIDE POLICIES including our Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Return Policy, Disclaimer, & Refund Policy.
• Frequently POSTING ABOUT MAKYN.ME on various Social Media platforms to outreach to Creatives, raise awareness, & improve visibility! This has been increasing traffic & Membership!
• Created the MAKYN VIDEOS PAGE to share our video content from across the web!
• Made improvements to the HOME PAGE to reflect more listings from our Independent Shops & changes that are representative of our desire to grow & engage NEW Creatives in our Community!
• Updated the FAQ’s PAGE and added ❤️ (red-heart) icons beside questions posed by the greater Community about the Makyn.me Marketplace!
• CORRECTED AN ISSUE WITH FORM SUBMISSIONS that made communicating with the sender and reviewing the contents of the forms impossible. We sincerely apologize for this oversight. If you asked a question or tried to communicate using any forms that required a submission, please resubmit. Our Forms are now performing as expected and we will be able to promptly respond to any submissions in the future.