I had the pleasure of interviewing Jake and Will about one of the most popular third party apps on the Etsy platform: Etsy Theme Shop. This third party app currently helps over 40,000 etsy sellers create beautiful websites by offering a number of themes and customizable options. In addition to beautiful themes, the site has built-in Facebook and Giveaway promotions feature to help you garner more “Likes” and attract more eyes to your page and products.

Jake and Will have unique skills that made for a great partnership for building the app. Jake has a background in software development. He’s worked on a few startups, but before Etsy Theme Shop he developed an app that helped event owners promote their events on Facebook. Some of that code was ported over to Etsy Theme Shop to help shop owners promote their items on Facebook.  Will, has a background in sales and marketing. Will’s sales background is broad. From door-to-door sales to marketing for a gym, helping with a few startups and everything in between. Will feels like he hit the Jackpot with Etsy Theme Shop, because his marketing skills are being applied not only to Etsy Theme Shop, but all of his customers benefit from it as well. With just a flip of the switch they can turn on some great marketing features within the app’s pro features.

The idea for the app came about by realizing there was an opportunity to help small business owners set up websites. Jake and Will realized that a lot of sellers on Etsy are very artistic and are highly creative, but often lack other technical skills including setting up social media, developing a website, and registering for domains. Jake then developed a platform that is very easy and intuitive for a non technical shop owner to have the power to create their own website from the information already included on their Etsy shop.

The interface for the app is powered by WordPress and Etsy’s API which gives the user an intuitive platform for editing their site. The site is responsive so it looks great on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device.

One of the ways etsythemeshop helps Etsy sellers is through their giveaway portal. Using this feature, Etsy sellers are able to feature their item on the giveaway site where anyone is able to “share” their product on Facebook for a chance to win a $25 gift card from a raffle. This increases the exposure of seller’s products from potential customers that do not normally shop on the site.

Etsy seller’s have loved the app and have shared some great feedback:

I’ve been using the Etsy theme shop for just a short time and have already gotten a couple of orders through it. I didn’t get a single order through the regular Etsy FB shop that I had for over a year.

–Lori Lee

If you wish to download the app, go to http://welcome.etsythemeshop.com/