Let's face it, EVERY Etsy shop has it's slow period. Even the most successful shops have days where orders aren't coming in like they usually do. You can see this slow period in either a glass half full or glass half empty sort of way. The negative thought - My shop is terrible, no one wants to buy anything, why do I even bother having this shop (Trust me, I've been in this mindset many times!). Or, you can be positive - What a wonderful opportunity to catch up on all the little jobs I usually don't have time to do! Usually, there's a little bit of the negative first, which involves me having a sulk, a moan to the boyfriend and then wrapping myself up in my duvet and forgetting the world! But you can't stay in this state forever. Use this opportunity to work on the little things that eventually add up to big things! This is the motivation stage where you realise you may have been a bit dramatic and it wasn't worth throwing in the towel yet. Here are 40 things you can do while orders are slow that will actually benefit your shop in a big way! TIDY UP YOUR SHOP 1. Rearrange your listings order to match products 2. Rewrite your 'About' section 3. Update your Etsy Shop banner 4. Take and edit new photo's for your listings 5. Organise your listings into optimised sections 6. Review your policies 7. Answer some FAQ's 8. Rewrite your 'Thank You' message to buyers 9. Update your announcement 10. Update your behind the scenes pictures PLAN NEW PRODUCTS AND HOLIDAYS 11. Brain dump some new ideas for future products 12. Use a mind map to plan out product ranges 13. Write a lit of upcoming holidays that can be applied to your shop 14. Make new inventory 15. Plan a digital product range 16. Try something new that can be added to your shop 17. Research your niche on Pinterest 18. Look for areas of improvement in your products 19. Make a product launch plan 20. Assign dates to future product launches in a calendar UPDATE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA AND EMAIL LIST 21. Plan social media content 22. Make social media graphics on Canva 23. Schedule your posts with Later 24. Create some vertical pins for Pinterest 25. Watch YouTube videos on increasing engagement on your social media 26. Join some new Etsy seller Facebook groups 27. Organise your highlights on Instagram 28. Come up with a new opt in freebie 29. Make beautiful e-mail templates with Mailchimp 30. Find some new relevant hashtags CATCH UP ON ADMIN 31. Update or make a small business planner 32. Review your shop's performance 33. Update your accounts 34. Organise your invoices and receipts 35. Clean out your inbox 36. Update or make a to do list 37. Computerise some tasks 38. Plan some business goals 39. Catch up with your e-mails 40. Organise your upcoming projects Have you done any of the above while your shop has been slow? Let me know in the comments!
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If you were anything like me, when you first started Etsy you kind of ignored your conversion rate. It was always there in stats but it didn't really mean anything to you. It's just some percentage - but it is so much more than that. Your conversion rate (alongside your visits) can tell you so much about your shop performance and you don't even know it! Well don't stress - I'm going to go into detail about what your conversion rate is telling you and how you can use this to improve your shop! First, how do we figure out our conversion rate? So, as you can see in the above image, the conversion rate is how often a visit results in a sale. The higher your conversion rate, the better your shop is performing! Word of mouth is that you should be aiming for a minimum of 1% (1 in every 100 visits results in a sale) - but 5% is optimum. But obviously, the higher you get it the better! So really, to stay in Etsy's good books we want to aim for 2-3% average to make sure we don't go below that 1%. It may take some time to increase your overall conversion rate - and that's perfectly fine! I'll give you an example from The Digital Booktique (my second shop) that opened in February 2020. (So, even though my overall conversion rate isn't quite at the 2-3% I'd like on average, it is going up! As long as you can see the changes for the next few months you are doing well! April was a particularly good month for me - but even an aim for 2% for May will be fantastic! My overall goal is to have an average of 5% by this time next year, but your goal may be to reach that 1%, or even to reach a higher conversion rate! I'm going to let you in on a secret that helped boost my conversion rate from 0.84% to 3.26% in a matter of months.
I'll go through each box step by step for you (with examples from my own shop), and hopefully that will give you more insight into how you can boost sales and your overall conversion rate. To start this exercise, you will need to work out your conversion rates for each individual listing (or just the ones you want to investigate). You will need to be able to see the number of visits each listing has had and the conversion rate. For this, I created a conversion rates duo printable to help work out individual conversion rates and track them over a year. You can take a look here. MY LISTING HAS LOW VISITS AND A LOW CONVERSION RATE So this is the exact opposite of what you wanted right? Don't fear - you can turn this around! The first thing to do is to find out the products visibility by using Eranks free rank checker to see where your listing lands on your tags. If you are not in the first 10 pages for your tags then you need to improve your visibility - This should mainly be through SEO but sales from social media or outside sources will reflect positively for you in ranking. If you are in the first few pages, you need to look at the other points. First, how does your thumbnail look? This is the first picture customers see. Does it look good, clear and showcases the product well? How does it look compared to your competitors? You then need to look at the pricing. Is the pricing too high (Can someone get a similar quality product for much less) or too low (So low people think it's a bad standard)? If you don't think any of the above are the issue - then unfortunately it's time to look at the product. Could it be improved in any way? Are customers looking for that product? Is it out of season or an old trend? Just because something was popular a month ago doesn't mean it's popular now. A good way to keep up with current trends is to sign up to Etsy's emails - they will tell you the current and upcoming trends to help you create a product that customers are looking for!
MY LISTING HAS A HIGH CONVERSION RATE BUT LOW VISITS So first, congratulations! This is a pretty good outcome - People are buying but your products aren't being seen. You need to improve your visibility. On Etsy, there are two ways to improve your visibility. The first is to work on your SEO. You should really focus on this. Let's face it, as much as social media is fantastic it is A LOT of work. If you can generate sales passively through Etsy search that will be WAY better. So look through the Etsy Seller's handbook, look in Etsy group forums and Facebook groups, look at the free resources you can get online. Get learning about SEO and drive that traffic to your shop! The second way to improve your visibility is to work on your social media presence - Promote, promote, promote! Get traffic into your shop through promoting your products on social media posts. Show your customers your product, it being used and how it is different to others. Bring that traffic into your shop through your social media channels! However, DO NOT take part in 'follow for follow' or 'favourite for favourite' - this can actually reduce your conversion rates and have a negative impact on your shop.
MY LISTING HAS A LOW CONVERSION RATE BUT HIGH VISITS So people are clicking on your product, but aren't quite clicking the 'buy' button. There is clearly some interest in your product because people are clicking on it. This probably means your pricing and thumbnail is good - but something else in the listing is putting people off. Really, there's very few options of what could be wrong with your listing. Firstly, what are the rest of the picture's like? You could have a beautiful first picture but if the rest of the pictures look bad your listing won't work in your favour. Have you shown all the angles of your product? Have you showed something next to it for a size comparison? Have you shown it in use? While having 10 pictures DOES NOT directly relate to better conversion rates, SEO etc., buyers do prefer to see many pictures about a product. On the other side, don't just add a load of random or low quality pictures in just to fill up the 10 spaces. Its better to have 2-3 amazing quality pictures than 10 low quality pictures. It's also important to make sure your pictures line up with what's being offered. Secondly, what is your description like? Does it sell your product or is it very basic? Is it too lengthy or too short? Does it actually explain what your product is and why someone should buy from you? The description is your selling pitch - your chance to shine above the others! Make sure to spell and grammar check your listings. Even get someone to read your listing descriptions without telling them what the product is - and see if they could get the idea of what it is, how it's used and the details of the product just from the description.
MY LISTING HAS A HIGH CONVERSION RATE AND HIGH VISITS Nothing more needs to be said. You have the ideal listing! You may want to try to increase your traffic to this listing through SEO and social media - but overall this product is what you want the rest of your products to be like. If you have a listing like this, you may want to focus more on your other products so you get a wider range of sales across different listings. Or you may just want one super successful listing - it is up to you but having a few back ups can be incredibly useful (You never know when new competition can come or a new trend which takes away that perfect listing).
So that's it for conversion rates! I bet you didn't know your conversion rates could tell you so much before! Hopefully you've got a new look on your shop and you can use this to improve!
To compliment this blog post, I have created a small eBook that has all this information in a condensed way - and a worksheet for you to help you improve your listings. To get it, click here and you can also sign up to receive updates on new blog posts. |
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