Etsy growth is doubling per year since 2019. It’s a fantastic place to sell items if you are a creative and like to sell home made items. Sales on Etsy are are in the billions per year! There is a lot of opportunity for new creators to get involved and take advantage of all that traffic. A new seller does not need a large fraction of the whole pie in order to start seeing returns on the time that they put in. Follow these practices to drive more visitors to your store.
Clear trust policies shipping, refunds. Guarantees.
Seller reputation is very important on Etsy. The Etsy community will reward sellers who post clear guarantees and policies on their store and stick by what they say. Communication with customers is essential to building your reputation online. If you are new be prepared to have dialogue with buyers and be willing to stick to the policies that you advertise. Your customers will expect it of you.
Personal about section – Brand Story
People buy from sellers who have a clear value connection to them. This is especially true in the creative space. Creative people tend to create from the heart. So go wild with this. Post stories about why you make the art that you do. Put a story in your bio that tells customers why your craft is an extension of your personality. Hint. With brand stories. It is best to tell actual stories. I have a music brand. I tell stories in there about the songs that inspired me. I tell about when the first time was I heard the song. I talk about how the song made me feel. I talk in specifics about what aspect of the song really spoke to me and made me like it. The more descriptive and specific you can be the better. Creativity is about detail. Show some detail in your brand story.
Professional Design
It’s important to realize that Etsy has become a pro level destination for sellers. You are in a rarified atmosphere. You will have to conduct yourself in a way that shows professionalism. You don’t have to sell out or be overly commercial, but you should put time and attention into more than just the products. You will do well if you put attention into the presentation as well.
Look at best sellers in your niche and see what they use in the area of:
- Font choice
- Color choice
- Backgrounds
- Banners
Your store should feel like a tore and not necessarily your unkempt living room.
Don’t shoot pictures of your products with stoves and bathroom mirrors in the background.
Create a photo backdrop for your pictures. If you have never worked in a high end retail store, consider going down to one and looking around at how they present products.
Don’t be Overly Unique
Use Best Sellers
There are items in every niche on Etsy which are high volume sellers. You do not need to create a whole different type of item to stand out. Instead you may want to consider making an item like those that best sell but putting your personal spin on that type of item.
When Searching through Etsy, make sure to sort by highest rated and best selling when you can. These search results can tell you a lot about what works well in your niche and what does not.
Research Title Keywords
When searching through Etsy look at the words that best selling stores use in the titles of their products. Do not plagiarize other sellers, but try to use similar keywords or put a personal spin on the keywords that are already working in that niche.
Use Etsy Search Suggest
As you type ideas into the search bar, Etsy will autofill choices for you as you type. Investigate these options that Etsy is offering for you. You may find inspiration or an idea that you had not thought of before. This could become a product line for you that will sell a lot of items.
Take Good Pictures
Your regular phone is good enough to take pictures for Etsy but there are some practices to be aware of. You want high contrast images. You want to frame the product well in the shot. You also want to consider what type of background would sell the item.
Sometimes you may have to go in and edit a photo after youtube it to bring out the colors and contrast. This can be done with readily available apps on your smart phone.
If you do not understand this process very well, there are professional freelancers on Fiverr.com who can do your etsy photo enhancements for you for very affordable rates. Sometimes they work for as little as 5 bucks per photo.
Answer Questions in Product Description
Use the product description to specifically layout questions the sellers may have about the product.
These tend to be size, shape, weight. But it is important to interact with customers as much as possible to find out what it is they want to know about the product. If you look at a similar product description from another seller you can sometimes find indicators of what needs to be in your description.
Renew Often
Renewing a listing will keep it fresh in the Etsy Search algorithm. If the item is not selling much or performing well. Keep tweaking the title and description every time you re post. There is no rule on how often to re post an item. Once a week could be good for an item that is selling well. If you see sales drop off for an item consider reposting it.
Try Different Title Keywords
Consider posting a line of similar products with different titles to see which product gets the most action. If one is a clear performer over all the others consider exploring that keyword combination.
Create an Email Marketing Funnel
If you understand your buyers really well, It can be very advantageous for you to create content that speaks to the topics and language that they find interesting. This can be tutorials or instructional content that helps the people who also end up buying your products. If you have a well built store, you can afford to spend time developing this content and building a list of people who like your brand.
This way, every time you create a new product line you can email your list and get a bunch of new traffic instantly to that new product.
Have Promotions
Following Google Trends around your keywords can tell you if there are certain times of year when those search terms go up.
Holidays are examples of times when you can take advantage of predictable spikes in traffic. You can create product lines for specific holidays. You can also do this around sporting events or other events that are popular in certain areas.
Search your keywords on tiktok or instagram. See if you can find an influencer who would feature your item.
Give customers forewarning of sales. Plan on lowering your prices for certain holidays. Using email or social media give people advanced notice of the sale.
Offer personalized products for customers. Give them the opportunity to input their content into printable items.