July 2017 Admin Update for Sellers

On July 20 an update was held for a few Etsy sellers in positions of team leadership. Admin answered some questions. This is a condensed version.
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Etsy remains committed to Etsy teams. More team captains and leaders will be invited to join the Fellowship program [which is located on Facebook] this year.

Q. What effect do hearting games have on Etsy's search algorithms?
A. (The information provided by admin duplicates what was said during the public Q&A post on Etsy.) If a buyer clicks, favorites, or purchases an item found in search results, that has a positive effect on that items search ranking.

• If a product is clicked on or favorited outside of search results (for example, from social media), that has no impact on search ranking - neither a negative or positive effect.
• If an item receives a favorite, regardless of there it came from, that product will show up in the Recommended Items area on the front page - so there is a benefit there. But no benefit on the search algorithm.
• Better tags and titles can improve search ranking.
• Driving traffic to your shop via social media is still the best way to get exposure.

Q. Do conversion rates affect search ranking?

Lower conversion rates are better

A. Yes, conversion rates do affect search ranking.

Q. Is a fee increase in the works for sellers?
A. No.

Q. Regarding the 10 photos per listing, if not all 10 photos are used, will this reduce search ranking?
A. No. The number of photos used has no impact on search placement.

Q. Why have sales have plummeted for sellers this year?
A. Etsy admin understand that fluctuations in sales are scary. Unfortunately, there are many causes. There is no general trend; it is SHOP specific.

Concerned shops that have decreasing sales may contact Etsy. A team of Etsy admin can do a 15 minute shop critique to increase sales. The link is in the Help pages. Shop owners should click on the contact button in that Help section to request a critique.

Q: (Re-questioned): you are saying that there is no Etsy trend that is affecting sales… It goes back to the individual shops? That the experimenting that seems to be affecting sales, is not having an effect on sales?
A: As part of the recent realignment, Etsy now has a dedicated group of admin (called Voice of the Consumer) who are listening to all channels to hear from sellers…

Q: Some feel that morale among sellers on Etsy is at an all-time low. Shop owners could use more timely information from Etsy.

A: We are currently working on better communication plans. We will communicate better with our sellers. This week there are lots of meetings going on at Etsy about being more transparent to sellers. We are working to be better at letting sellers know testing and experiments, ones that are working and not working.

😎 Thanks to long-time Etsy vintage sellers Gail and JD for the above information!

Etsy's new stats - why VISITS matter

Etsy just made a bunch of changes. Here are a few. A recent big change is how sellers see their statistics.

Many wonder why Etsy switched from "views" to unique visitors ("visits"). The truth is, there is more information to be gleaned from unique visitors than plain old views.

In fact, your sales-to-visits-ratio can accurately predict how many sales you can make. Did I just say that you can predict how many sales you will have? I did! 

Use this simple equation to calculate your conversion rate:

Sales (or conversions) / visits x 100 = your conversion rate (a percentage). 

Click this link to see the raw numbers for your shop's data for this year. The two numbers you need are the number of orders and the number of visits. Plug them in and voila, you have your number.

Your answer is how many per 100 unique visitors to your shop actually buy from you.  Pure and simple, the more unique visitors, the more sales you make.

How has your conversion rate changed over time?

Industry standard is said to be 3%. I was unable to find a vintage shop on Etsy that is anywhere near that number. The sellers I polled averaged from 0.7 to 1.5 for their conversion rate.

It is difficult to compare between shops because there are so many variables. Do not be so concerned about what your individual number is.

The best thing to do is to know what your conversion rate is and keep track of it. New shops should begin tracking this number at about three months of sales.

Once you start, there is no need to do it every day, or even every week. Record your conversion rate about once a month, for that month. Look for trends in the number as time passes. 

If you have never tracked this number, you can go back into your statistics. Pull these numbers from your past data and look for trends.

Bear in mind that Etsy's search algorithm takes your conversion rate into consideration. The higher the better.

As your visits go up, watch the sales pile up. If your ratio goes down, try to determine why 🔍.

Stats 7 – Conversion rate & dollars per order

We have been considering Etsy's powerful stats. How can we use them to improve our shops?

Conversion Rate

That’s our views-to-sales ratio. For that, we need to pull up a longer period of time, like 6 months or a year. Calculate the number and then compare it with another similar amount of time. Look for trends in that data.

As an example, here are figures from my shop. During a recent 12-month period, I had 73,730 views and 450 orders. That’s 163 views per order. Last calendar year, my ratio was 145 views per order.

Which is better? Less views per order. (Think about it: one view per order is much better than thousands of views before someone buys.)

The $64,000 question is, why? In my case, I have an idea. I had increased my views by my team activities, which was skewing my statistics in that direction. I’m OK with that.

Conversion rate is taken into consideration for search ranking. We should aimfor a lower ratio of hearts and views to sales to bump up our items in Etsy and Google searches. (Of course, this is only one aspect of our shop that Etsy's search algorithm uses to determine ranking. Ranking is defined as where our items fall on the search pages.)

Put another way, if you play a lot of games which raise your hearts/clicks and favorites, but the items don't sell, your ratio of clicks to sales is different than if you don't. They are saying that Etsy's search algorithm favorsitems that sell with minimal clicks.

69279 views/354 orders = 195 views/order ... $5386.22/354 orders = $15.22/order

Dollars per Order

I have been working at selling fewer high-dollar items. That is less work than selling more low-dollar items. Am I making progress?

To determine this number, I divided my total revenue for a period of time by the number of orders for that same period. In my case, the last 12 months was $18.46 per order, compared with $16.31 per order last calendar year. That’s an improvement. The numbers are moving in the right direction for my own shop goal.