One of the ways that Etsy determines whether a shop is doing well or not is by conversion rates. The better your conversion rate, the more likely your listing are to be placed higher in the search results, because Etsy wants best sellers to be placed first; they make money every time something sells, so it's a good idea to make sure good sellers are seen.
Conversion is determined by how many sales you in 100 views of your shop. Every time someone clicks on your shop page or an individual listing, that becomes one of your views. Whether they buy it after clicking or not determines how it plays into your conversion.
Etsy considers a good conversion rate to be 3%, or three orders out of every 100 times your shop is visited. An average conversion rate is 1%. The best way to decide where your conversion rate falls is to go to your shop dashboard, and under the stats section, choose to view stats for the last 30 days, and divide that number by the number of orders you have received. That is your conversion rate!
If you are having no views or sales at all, you probably want to work on your SEO or your photos. People either aren't finding you because your keywords aren't working, or they aren't interested in your thumbnail when they see it.
If you are having a lot of views but no sales, you might want to check your pricing, your descriptions (people might not be buying because they aren't sure of the details of what you are selling), or make sure that you are advertising to the right group of people, and they are clicking through, but not really in your target market, so they just lurk, rather than really consider buying your items.
Sharing your items through social media and Etsy teams is good, and something you really should consider! Etsy encourages it, and it can bring people who wouldn't otherwise see your items but are truly interested in them to Etsy.
You want to be careful, though, that you aren't simply sharing to get seen. There are some people (I was guilty of this, too, until I looked into it!) who share their items with other sellers just so that they can trade likes on their items. The reasoning for this is that the more hearts your item has, the better your "engagement" rate is. But if people are JUST visiting it items to like items to get a like, this is actually worse for your conversion rates than it is good for your engagement rates. "Generic" views, views from people truly interested in your product, are all you need :)!
Hi Bri,
ReplyDeleteYour posts have been very helpful. I'm not sure how to share my items withi people interested in buying them. It doesn't seem like crocheted items are a big seller. Do you have any tips on how to get more people to buy things?
Love
Ashley
Hey Ashley!
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy to hear that! Please do make sure you ask any questions you may have, because I know that I'm more giving ideas on where to start and what to consider rather than nitty gritty of how to physically do that. Did you see last night's post? I shared some places you can advertise on through that post :)! And don't get discouraged... I think most beginning Etsy sellers think their stuff must not be big sellers. There are times I feel that, too, and I've had some very encouraging reviews, so I know SOMEBODY is interested!
Some of it is just up to the people buying. You can do everything right, and still not get as much notice as shops less up to date, because the buyer just sees something about the other shop they like. We can't make people buy our stuff, we can only encourage it by making our Etsy shop as pleasing as we can. It does help to keep your shop active. Even if you have really good keywords, you might be pushed further down in search if you haven't messed with your shop too much recently. Most people encourage updates, refreshing your shop announcement, or a listing, adding a new item, etc. to keep your shop "active". I've noticed that just editing a listing, even if I don't renew it, causes me to have more views, as well. And that is free! I really do think that doing something on the tech side of your shop every day helps. There are other ways to advertise through Etsy, too,, without using any social media, and I'll put up a blog post on that today :)!
So... no, I can't help you get a bigger percentage of people to buy, per se... but hopefully if you just keep intentionally working on your shop, you'll get *in front of* more buyers, which will feel like the same thing ;)! It's hard and discouraging sometimes, I know. It took me almost three months to make my first non-family sale. And I still have very few sales, comparatively! But I think they really are getting to be more frequent, though Etsy is always subject to ebb and flow; my Etsy FB group has had a LOT of people's shops almost dead for week now. Everybody thinks it is because people are saving up for the holidays :).
Love in Christ,
Bri :)