I know for certain: Etsy can be overwhelming. With all the thousands (millions?!) of shops out there, it’s hard to know if you’re doing it right. If you have decided to take the plunge and set up shop or are already knee deep in the world of Etsy, I’m excited to share with you some of my favorite tips and tricks to improve your Etsy shop, regardless of what stage you’re at. If you aren’t doing the following, it will be a lot harder to make the sales you want and keep people coming back for more of your product.
You got this! Give yourself small goals every week to improve your shop. Maybe that’s adding keywords to 5 products every day, or for the month of March you are going to retake all your product pictures. Whatever the case, keep it up and remember…great things take time. Still not sure if Etsy is right for you? Read this post where I share my personal thoughts on the pros and cons of running an Etsy shop.
1 // Take good photos
Bright, non cluttered photos are key. Invest in product photos if you’re not the best photographer (I’m definitely not) or take an online workshop such as Cool Photo School.
2 // Fill out EVERYTHING
You want to make sure all your listings have descriptions, all your policies are clearly posted, and any listings with specific policies pertaining to them have those clearly reiterated in the listing.
3 // As issues come up, add them to your policies
You should be continually updating your shop, whether it’s to answer questions that people are asking repeatedly in the listings or just to specify issues that arise often in your policies so they won’t be repeated in the future.
4 // Make sure your timelines are clear
People are more willing to purchase something that ships fast (unless it’s custom, of course) so make sure your turnaround time is noted on each listing.
5 // Be clear about processing and turnaround time
The time it takes you to ship an item is different than the time in transit. So if your Etsy shop says you ship an item in 1-3 business days, but it takes 3-5 days for US mail to reach the recipient, you want to be clear in your policies and in the note to the buyer. Any note to the buyer that goes out after a sale should include the OVERALL turnaround time, including time in transit.
6 // Use key tags on all your listings
For example for one of our coaster listings, our tags might be “coaster” “gold” “bar cart” “cocktail” etc. You want your items to be easily found on Etsy, as well as in the search engines.
7 // Create distinct titles for optimal search engine optimization
Only put words that shoppers might search for in the title of your product. Here is a to a very helpful article on how etsy’s search feature actually works.
8 // Reply to convos as soon as possible
Etsy has become very saturated with sellers and you want to stand out. One of the things we do is repeatedly refresh Etsy to make sure we’re seeing any inquiries and questions so we can reply in a timely manner. If you have the Etsy app, you can also set this to give you a notification on your phone when clients convo you, order, or leave a review. (I currently have the app set to notify me when we get orders because it gives a satisfying “cha ching” each time we have a sale!)
9 // Respond graciously to bad reviews
Let’s be honest, no matter how hard you try, sometimes bad reviews happen. You can minimize the effects of a bad review by having a calm, kind and succinct reply to a review of 3 stars or less that tells your side of the story.
There are many other Etsy tips and tricks but these 9 have been the most important for my shop — it’s mostly the nitty gritty stuff about running your own shop but all necessary to implement for it to succeed. Leave a comment below if you have any other tips, tricks or questions about having an Etsy shop!
