Etsy Interested Shopper Offer

The challenge

Introducing another offer was not automatically the right answer.

Context

I had already worked inside Etsy’s promotions ecosystem, and I questioned whether another promotion type would create more value than continuing to improve the ones sellers already had.

Evidence about how few buyer visits could trigger existing targeted offers changed how I saw the problem. Those offers depended on explicit actions. Most shopping happens before a favorite or an abandoned cart. The gap was a stage of buyer consideration the current system could not reach.

The problem

How do we introduce and validate a new offer quickly without adding unnecessary complexity to an already mature promotions system?

1. 01

   Reaching intent earlier

   Existing targeted offers depended on explicit buyer actions, which meant sellers could only reach shoppers after relatively strong signals of intent. Browse behavior created an opportunity to engage interested shoppers earlier in their consideration journey.

Earlier signals also carry more ambiguity. These buyers may be interested, but they do not necessarily have the same purchase intent as someone who has favorited an item or left something in their cart.

1. 02

   Adding to a system already at its limits

   The existing targeted-offer setup gave us a path to launch quickly, but it was already carrying significant design debt. Adding another offer risked making an increasingly complex experience harder for sellers to understand and manage.

   At the same time, Etsy’s Design Systems organization was evolving the foundations for a broader modernization of seller experiences. We needed to keep delivering and learning within today’s experience without over-investing in patterns we knew would eventually change.

2. 03

   Explaining a product designed to evolve

   The targeting approach was expected to evolve after launch, which created a content challenge: sellers needed enough information to understand why the offer was useful without tying the experience to implementation details that could quickly become outdated.

   I worked closely with my Content Design partner to communicate the buyer opportunity rather than over-explain the underlying targeting mechanics.

Key decisions

1. 01

   Use the existing setup to learn faster

   Would sellers see enough value in this new offer to adopt it?

   I explored several ways to introduce the new offer, including approaches that would have required more significant changes to the existing targeted-offer experience.

   For the MVP, I chose to integrate it into the existing setup. It was the lowest-cost path and, more importantly, the fastest way to answer the question we needed to answer first.

   This was a deliberate trade-off. The existing experience already carried significant design debt, and adding another offer pushed it closer to the limits of what the current structure could support. But redesigning the system before validating the new concept would have increased the investment before we knew whether sellers wanted it.

   The MVP prioritized learning while avoiding decisions that would prevent the experience from evolving later.

   

2. 02

   Communicate the value, not the targeting mechanics

   Sellers needed to understand what made the new offer useful, but the targeting logic was intentionally expected to evolve.

   Rather than anchor the experience to rules that could change, I partnered closely with Content Design to describe the opportunity in terms sellers could understand: reaching interested shoppers earlier.

   This gave the product room to evolve without requiring the seller experience to be rewritten every time the underlying logic changed.

Outcome

The MVP established a new way for sellers to reach buyers earlier in their shopping journey and gave us real product behavior to learn from.

The experience

The MVP introduced the new targeted offer within the existing seller setup and extended the experience to initial buyer-facing touchpoints.

Across the marketplace

The seller setup was only one side of the experience. Once created, the offer could reach eligible buyers through email and selected onsite surfaces.

Supporting adoption

Shipping the experience was only part of the launch. I partnered with Product Marketing to plan how we would introduce the new offer to sellers and communicate its value, supporting adoption beyond the product experience itself.

Product performance

• 5.1%

  Seller adoption rate

• 0.29%

  Redemption rate

• 3.36%

  Conversion rate

Since launch, sellers have adopted the new offer and buyers are redeeming and converting through the experience, giving the team real product behavior to inform future iterations.

Looking back

1. 01

   Good product judgment sometimes means changing your mind.

   I initially questioned whether adding another promotion type was the right investment. The existing offers still had room to improve. Evidence about how little buyer traffic could trigger them changed my perspective: the opportunity wasn’t simply another promotion—it was reaching a part of the shopping journey the existing system couldn’t address.

2. 02

   Short-term trade-offs need a long-term strategy.

   For the MVP, working within the existing experience was the right trade-off: it helped us learn faster without over-investing before validating the opportunity. But I also knew the broader promotions experience was reaching its limits. Making that trade-off responsibly meant keeping the longer-term direction in view—and continuing to advocate for a more modern, scalable foundation.

   That longer-term direction is explored further in Etsy Promotions Vision 2026 →

3. 03

   Designing for change sometimes means saying less.

   Because the targeting approach was expected to evolve, being overly specific could have made the experience more fragile. Working closely with Content Design helped us communicate enough for sellers to understand the value without exposing unnecessary implementation detail.