Here you will find answers to some of the most common questions we receive. If you can't find what you're looking for, then please feel free to get in touch with us. We're always happy to hear from you!||||||---||||||#### Sections||||||- [General](#markdown-general)|||- [Imports](#markdown-imports)|||- [SEO](#markdown-seo)|||- [Orders](#markdown-orders)|||- [Revenue](#markdown-revenue)|||- [Likes and Views](#markdown-likes---views)|||- [Restrictions](#markdown-restrictions)|||- [Contact](#markdown-contact)||||||---||||||#### General||||||##### My data is not being imported, locations are not being set, or I can't refresh a listing?||||||First, check to see if there is a red warning icon next to the Crest logo. If there is, it means either Etsy, the geolocation service, or both are reporting issues, which might be preventing Crest from performing its duties. If no icon is present, and you've followed all instructions correctly, but the problem persists, then please get in touch so we can help.||||||##### What is geolocating / a geolocation?||||||Geolocation is a fancy term for a process where a postal address is separated into its constituent parts e.g. country, city etc. Other things happen as well, such as the conversion of abbreviations e.g. 'OH' to 'Ohio'. Crest performs geolocation on shop orders to easily enable grouping and searching by area.||||||##### Can I use Crest if my shop is in vacation mode?||||||Yes, however any listings which have the status of 'vacation' will be shown as 'active'.||||||##### What happens to my account if I don't purchase a subscription?||||||If you create an account and don't purchase a subscription, then it will automatically be deleted after 90 days. If you wish to use Crest after this period, you will need to create a new account. You can use the same information such as your email address when re-creating your account.||||||##### How much does a subscription to Crest cost?||||||For the latest pricing information, please scroll to the bottom of the [home page](/).||||||##### Why does the first figure on a graph appear higher than its corresponding card?||||||This is a design choice that was made based on what we believed was most valuable to sellers. As an example, let's say the period is the 'last 30 days'. The card displays a value derived from all records with a date up to 30 days ago (down to the minute) e.g. June 20th 14:05:00 -> July 20th 14:05:00. This is, therefore, the most accurate representation of 'the last 30 days', and therefore is what we believe you should see when looking at the period as a whole.||||||When it comes to the graph, the 'last 30 days' starts at the beginning of the day e.g. June 20th 00:00:00 -> July 20th 14:05:00. This is done because the graph doesn't display time, it only displays dates e.g. 'June 20th'. Now imagine that you had orders that took place before 14:05 on June 20th. If we adopted the same approach as the card, then they wouldn't appear in the graph. Instead, they are included to give you a better idea of what took place across the whole day.||||||Put simply, the card uses a rigid 'last 30 days', while the graph uses the 'last 30 days, up to the beginning of the start date'.||||||---||||||#### Imports||||||##### How often does Crest import data from my Etsy shop?||||||Crest imports data every hour, though not always on the hour. Depending on our servers, it will fluctuate.||||||##### What listing types does Crest import?||||||Crest will import listings that are 'active', 'featured' or 'expired'. Listings that use other statuses such as 'draft' will not be imported. The one exception to this rule is a listing that is associated with an order. Under this scenario, Crest will import the listing.||||||##### Why do my orders have 'None' listed as their location?||||||The import process consists of two stages...||||||First, Crest pulls the data from Etsy itself. Then, orders which have not been previously imported are assigned 'None' as their temporary location.||||||Crest also maintains a parallel process to "geolocate" the order's address. Ordinarily, this happens reasonably quickly (within 15 minutes), however if Crest is currently experiencing a heavy workload, or if you are importing a shop for the first time, it might take a bit longer for the process to update the orders.||||||If, after several hours, you're still experiencing a large volume of orders without location information, then please contact us so we can look into it for you.||||||##### Why do my orders have 'Unknown' listed as their location?||||||While the import process is very reliable when geolocating addresses, sometimes it won't succeed in finding a match. In these situations, Crest will update your order's geolocation address to 'Unknown'. In general, you should rarely, if ever, see this status for one of your orders. However, if you are experiencing a high volume of orders with this status, you may want to get in touch with us.||||||##### What happens if my data is not imported e.g. because the service is down?||||||Almost everything you can do on Crest is based around dates rather than times. As such, it isn't absolutely critical for your data to be imported every hour (other than for you to see your latest activity).||||||We perform the import every hour primarily to accommodate periods of downtime or issues with Etsy / the geolocation service. In general, as long as your data is imported at least once a day, your statistics shouldn't be profoundly affected. That said, in almost all cases your data will be imported every hour without issue.||||||---||||||#### SEO||||||##### What is SEO?||||||SEO stands for search engine optimisation. While this may sound technical, all it really refers to is the process of improving web pages (or in our case, listings) to make them more likely to be used when a visitor / buyer performs a search using a set of keywords.||||||##### How do search engines work / rely on SEO?||||||In order to enable searching, an engine such as Google, employs what is called a "crawler". This is an automated program, usually referred to as a "bot", that scours the internet looking for web pages.||||||When it comes across a web page, it performs an analysis of the page content. It looks for keywords and other relevant content that it can use to categorise the page. In addition, it will also use its own proprietary ranking system to score the content and determine how "valuable" it is.||||||The bot then files the analysis and the link in a database. This process is repeated on a regular basis so that the database is as up-to-date as possible.||||||When a visitor goes to the search engine website and performs a search using a set keywords or a sentence, the engine reviews its database and tries to match the query to records with a relevant analysis.||||||Once it has a bunch of records, it will then use the score the bot assigned to each page to order the results. The idea, is that you should hopefully find what you're looking for on the first page.||||||##### How does Etsy search differ to traditional search engines?||||||Unlike external search engines, Etsy has direct access to the database that contains all of the content that appears on its site. As a result, it doesn't have to do any crawling. In addition, it can also use data that does not appear on the webpage to further improve results.||||||It might therefore seem that improving Etsy listings will be different to what you might do if you were targeting an external search engine. While there is an element of truth to this, when it really comes down to it, what Etsy sellers are actually able to do isn't all that different.||||||##### How does SEO factor into this?||||||At its core, SEO is about altering the content of listings to make the "bot" categorise and rank them more highly. This is done to make listings more "appealing" for particular search queries in the hopes that they will be chosen.||||||If this sounds like a less than scientific process, that's because it is. There is no "do this and you're done" solution for SEO. It's a constant process of refining content through trial & error.||||||Further to this, efforts to "over improve" can sometimes have a negative effect on what was previously a successful listing. While this dichotomy is naturally confusing, there is a relatively straightforward solution...||||||##### What strategy should I use for my SEO?||||||While a good SEO strategy can be quite sophisticated, there is a simple concept that is always a good place to start from:||||||Don't obsess over "scores" and "ratings" in an effort to get every listing to 100%. Instead, only focus on the listings that aren't actually doing well (e.g. low number of views, likes and sales). If a listing has a moderate SEO rating, but is still seeing decent activity (views, likes and sales), then leave it alone.||||||##### Why is SEO so complicated?||||||The short answer, is that the search engines (Etsy included) have a sort of love / hate relationship with content optimization. They want to return the best results for a search query, but they don't want you to know too much about how this is done, for fear that you might have bad intentions.||||||For example, if an unscrupulous person knew exactly how a search engine algorithm worked, they could alter their content to ensure that adult entertainment appeared on page 1 of a search for a children's cartoon.||||||While the circumstances are slightly different for Etsy, the principle is the same. If you knew exactly how the algorithm worked then, in theory, you could game the system and ensure that your listings always appeared on page 1 for certain queries, regardless of whether your listings were relevant... in other words, SPAM.||||||As a result, search engines will always be somewhat opaque when it comes to their inner workings, and therefore, by extension, SEO will never be a simple process, but rather an unending task of refining through trial and error.||||||---||||||#### Orders||||||##### What's the difference between an order and a transaction?||||||A transaction is an order item. For example, if someone were to add an apple, an orange and a lemon to their basket and then purchase them, you as the seller would have 1 order consisting of 3 transactions.||||||---||||||#### Revenue||||||##### Why can I only see gross figures?||||||The net figures derived from your orders are quite complex as they can include Etsy fees, VAT processing, listing renewals, off-site advertising, and more. Unfortunately, the mechanisms provided by Etsy to calculate these items would require substantially more time to import a shop's data.||||||Further, depending on the size of your shop, it might actually cause Crest to exceed the request limit, which would prevent us from importing any data. As such, Crest plays it safe and only displays gross figures.||||||##### Why do Etsy's statistics appear different?||||||Etsy sometimes marks orders as having taken place on a particular day, even when the order itself took place on the previous day. For example, imagine the time was 3pm. You received an order which took place 18 hours ago, which means that it actually took place yesterday.||||||However, under certain circumstances, Etsy still groups this order in with orders that took place today. Since the reasoning behind this isn't entirely clear, Crest instead opts to display your data in the time period that it genuinely occurred within. While this does lead to a discrepancy, we feel this is the correct approach.||||||---||||||#### Likes & Views||||||##### Why does my shop or listing have a very large number of likes or views?||||||Etsy does not make historical data for views and likes available to Crest. Instead, it provides a running total. This is far from ideal, however Crest attempts to address this by storing the current figures when listings and shops are first imported, and then using them and subsequent figures to track true daily activity.||||||Unfortunately, there is no way to track activity prior to a shop or listing's first import. While this does skew cards and graphs, over time it becomes less relevant. It should also be noted that listings created **after** the shop was connected do not suffer with this problem since Crest is tracking the listing from its creation.||||||---||||||#### Restrictions||||||##### Are there any limits when using Crest?||||||There are a few, yes...||||||A maximum of 3 shops is permitted for any given account.||||||In order to accommodate Etsy's platform limits, Crest will import a maximum of 5,000 listings and 20,000 orders, per shop. The import works from newest to oldest, so Crest will always include your latest data.||||||You can still use Crest with bigger shops, however your older listings & orders will not be imported.||||||Keep in mind, the statistics that Crest displays are based on the data it has imported. Therefore, if you have a significantly larger order count that 20,000, certain figures such as 'total revenue' and 'last 365 days' might not reflect accurately.||||||#### Contact||||||##### How do I get in touch if the support chat is offline / is not working?||||||You can always leave a message and we will reply to it when we are available (you will receive an email).||||||Alternatively, you can [send us an email](mailto:support@getcrest.app).
