Shop updates - are you missing out?

Etsy's Shop Updates have been around since the end of 2015. How have they worked for you?

It seems that a lot of sellers don’t take full advantage of this great tool. Do many still lack mobile devices? Or is it because sellers don’t see the point? 

 Why should we do shop updates?

Shop updates in my mind take the place of treasuries. (Admittedly, they are not as much fun.) Shop updates appear on the front page, increasing the exposure of our shop. We can upload photos of our items and other associated pictures and market our shop. It's a golden opportunity to show our creativity, and make a connection with the followers of our shop. 

Shop Updates appear on our Home Page

Shop Updates can be viewed in two prominent spots: 

1. On our Home Page. 
2. Next to our About Page.

Between our reviews and About Page.

They represent our shop, our brand. Shop Updates can build trust as to the authenticity or our shop, our love for vintage, our seriousness as a vintage seller.

We all have the opportunity to tell our shop’s story on a day-by-day basis. Isn’t that better than just once? At the same time, we can share our Shop Updates on some social media channels. It is a mini-blog, a form of shop promotion.

You will see shop updates from a shop if you:

1.      Favorited the shop.

2.      Favorited an item from the shop.

3.      Bought something from the shop.

4.      Own the shop.

If you're at all active browsing on Etsy, you will have updates coming through your feed. If you don't like a particular shop's updates, just shut them off (three little dots in one corner).

In my shop, I notice that featured items have a higher rate of selling. Other sellers feel the same. Perhaps our shops get a little bump up when we post. Or perhaps it is just the extra exposure our item receives.

How to post an update

You must have a mobile device that runs on iOS or Android. The alternative is to load an Android emulator on your PC (something like BlueStacks).

1.      Open "Sell on Etsy" app on your smartphone or tablet.

2.      Select "Shop Updates" in the menu (top left corner).

3.      Push the blue bar that appears across the bottom.

4.      “Take photo” or “choose existing photo.”

5.      Pinch and zoom. You can tweak your photo. (You will want to do any major editing before this step.) Select “next” in the top right corner.

6.      Tap the photo is the spot where you would like the orange Etsy tag to show.

7.      Select the item from your shop that you wish to promote. (Occasionally there are issues with this step. I have had to delete and reload the Sell On Etsy app a few times because this step failed to work.)

8.      Adjust the tag placement if necessary.

9.      Type a sentence or two that addresses “What is happening in this photo?” Be brief and upbeat.

10.   Push the blue bar, “Share on Etsy” which publishes it.

11.   A screen gives you the option to share your post on social media pages (Facebook, email, SMS and "Copy"). 

It's all done. Wasn’t that quick and easy?

Shop Update Visibility

Shop Updates show up on your feed from shops you have favorited or bought from. They are also part of our shop’s front page. Shop Updates are positioned between your reviews and About Page.

On your feed, you can hide certain updates, or all updates from a certain shop. (I do that if a shop just posts the same pic of their item that is on the listing or I don’t like their stuff, or if they just post too many updates in a row.) Look for three dots on the bottom right corner of the update you want to hide.

Ideas for Updates

Etsy is a venue designed for creative enterprises. It can seem daunting to come up with ideas for vintage shops. See dozens of ideas for vintage sellers here. 

How Often?

Etsy Traffic (right column)

Some sellers post updates rarely, less than once per month. How often do you want to appear in the feed of interested shoppers? I’ve seen a shop post four updates right in a row (Too annoying. I just deleted it.)

Some shop owners object to seeing their own updates in their feed. However, Etsy is letting us see how our updates fit into the rhythm of the feed. How often does your Shop Update feed refresh? I’ve read that once every 2-3 days is a goal to try. I actually aim for once per day, but sometimes miss.

Shop Overview Dashboard. Look for patterns.

It may seem like common sense, but I recommend placing your Etsy tag as close to the item as possible or even on it. We wouldn’t want our featured item to be removed from the photo during any cropping.

Hashtags

Using hashtags in our shop updates may improve our post if we plan to publish it across certain social media channels.

Edit or delete later

Sometimes it is necessary to edit or delete a shop update after posting it. To do that, open the Sell on Etsy app. Select the post. Your options appear when you tap the three dots in the top right corner display: delete, edit caption, move tag or share.

Stats

Shop update stats show up in two places:

1. In the right-hand column (traffic from within Etsy). 

2. Shop overview dashboard. Hold your cursor over days/months(/even hours). Below the chart it will tell you how many shop updates within that period.

Here is more information from Etsy about Shop Updates.

Stats 9 - How Etsy counts social media

This post is an effort to clear up a cloudy area of Etsy's stats. How are seller stats counted when traffic comes into our Etsy shop via social media?

On Etsy, social media use can be counted in two ways:

• Direct Traffic (left column, see my blog post on the subject)

• The exact social media. (These would be Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and likely others.)

Let's say that someone uses the web browser version of Instagram. If they click through to your shop, then it will show as traffic from Instagram.com.

On the other hand, perhaps they use the Instagram app. If they click through to view your shop in a browser or the Etsy app, then it shows more generically, as "direct traffic." That’s because the apps can't pass click-through referral data from one app to another.

From Etsy Admin: similarly, “a direct traffic shop stat can occur when clicking a link from a mobile social media app like Facebook or Twitter. Phone apps often do not pass referrer information. Additionally, this can also occur when going to a non-secure (http) site from a link on a secure (https) site, as the secure site won’t pass a referrer to the non-secure site. For instance, if someone clicks a link on example.com to go to example2.com, the analytics for example2.com will show the session as direct. Etsy links are generally https.”

“If you’d like to track all of the clicks from your social posts, I would suggest using a link shortener like bitly (bitly.com) to shorten links to your listings. This way, you’ll be able to look up those numbers at a later date with more clarity. Hope that helps! – Jessica”

I use shortened links from https://goo.gl/ in my blog posts so I can track any traffic better. It seems to work well. It tells you how many times the unique link has been used, which is nice.

Is it brighter?

I hope you have enjoyed delving into Etsy's stats. Stay tuned for more posts on how to better sell on Etsy.

Stats 8 - Why isn't my item selling?

Why isn't my item selling? My shop feels stagnant! Have you ever felt that way?

A very basic analysis of our stats can help. Let's use this powerful tool from Etsy to improve our poorest performing listings.

Etsy listing issues? Stats to the rescue!

Scroll down until you’re looking at a listing with a very small amount of traffic. Click on it to open a Listing Page View that offers a breakdown of traffic for that specific listing. Here's how to do that.

Ask yourself the following questions about the listing:

1. Is the first photo of high quality?

2. Does it have a powerful title? Be sure it has keywords and phrases that buyers will use when searching. Keep the most important search terms at the beginning of the listing to maximize their importance in search.

3. Am I making the most of my tags? Use all 13 tag slots. Use a blend of multiple-word phrases repeated from your title and description. Use terms that buyers will use to search for this item.

4. Is there market demand for the item? Are similar items selling online?

5. How is my pricing compared to similar available items?

Here is Etsy's tutorial on the subject.

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.

Stats 6 - What do our statistics tell us?

(Please note that the illustrations show Etsy's "old" stats."

Now that we have examined our shop stats in detail, what are they telling us?

Here are eight points for starters.

1. Lots of views? If a particular keyword or key phrase is bringing you a lot of views, make sure it is being used in all applicable tags and titles.

2. No views? If some keywords never appear in your shop stats (or are at the very bottom), these tags aren't bringing you views. Replace them with other words or phrases.

3. Are your efforts in social media bringing in results? (Instagram and other social media stats are not 100% tracked. Try publishing a coupon code for your IG followers and see if anyone bites.)

4. Is your social media traffic so high that it brings in more traffic than Etsy itself? (Check the top of the left-hand column for overall traffic.). That can mean that you are ready for your own standalone website!

5. Often I can tell what will sell soon because of increased views and favorites. Can you source (or make) more of the items?

Time for some research

6. Is a site you don’t recognize driving traffic to your shop? Google it. Consider sending a thank-you message. Offer to send them your newsletter. If it is a blog, find out who the audience is. Are you marketing to that audience?

7. "Search" should be in one the top three spots in Etsy traffic sources. If not, you need to optimize your shop for Etsy search.

8. An item sells well. What key words are bringing in your buyers? What are your primary traffic sources for the item? Could you use this information to improve other listings? Could this data help you better market other items in your shop?

DISCLAIMER: I am not a statistical expert by any means. I am sure that there are probably a few errors in this tutorial. Please keep this in mind when following the indicated steps. 

Stats secret: unlocking individual item listing data

(Etsy has changed many aspects of stats recently. Thank you for noting that some of the features covered here may have changed.)

Here is a secret about your Etsy stats. Many sellers don't realize that Etsy also provides stats for each individual item. This can be valuable information. I'll give you all of the tools to unlock them!

To access your individual item stats, open an item. There is a "Bars" button right above the picture. Select "today" (or the day you are interested in) for the time. Select the "Views" tab. You can also see search terms used to find this item during the date range you selected.

Individual listing stats include include the following:

Push the "bars" button to view

• Graph of a listing's views 
• Favorites (hearts) from each traffic source 
• Views (clicks) from each traffic source 
• Keywords that brought shoppers to the listing

How did the buyer find our item?

This feature is especially handy if you sell an item and wish to know how your buyer found the item. Check your individual stats for that item on the day that it sold. How many sets of keywords are there? Was there one keyword (or key phrase) used on the hour that the item sold? Then you know definitively.

Monitor team clicking games

Individual stats can also help monitor clicking team games. This only works if you don't have too much clicking data to muddy the waters (i.e. promote an item in only one place).

Open the item stats for the item in question for the day in question... See the graph? It tells you how many times and even what hour of the day that it was clicked. This gives you a good idea if people are clicking when they should.

If I sold this item at 7 PM, what search words did my buyer likely use?

See how to use your individual item stats to improve poor performing listings.

Individual listing stats can be our "secret weapon" to learn details about how buyers find our listings. Don't neglect this powerful tool!

Stats 4 - use the power of top keywords

What my stats show about my top keyword "Architectural Salvage."

Top Keywords 

That is a list of all of the search terms used to find your shop and items. The most popular are at the top.

Click on one. (If you get the full list, it is acting up. Back out and redo it and it usually works the second time.) This page, called the “keyword landing page” shows on what page(s) that keyword (combination) landed.

Above the chart are two drop-down menus. On the left, you will have a breakdown of search engines, including Etsy Search.

Try a click in the right field, where the current keyword is. All of your keywords will appear in descending order. Also available is a search box where you can type in a keyword to check.

Most Active Keywords

There are two lists across the Most Active page: Pages Viewed (“clicks”) and Listing Favorites (hearts). Click on any of those items to see how your traffic for those items is coming in. Where is the traffic coming from? 

What key words or phrases work to draw shoppers in?

Analyze, or take a look at the top keywords and phrases. Put together a few promising combinations of words and weave them into your titles and tags. Your time spent will be rewarded!

You may hear other sellers talking about "rankings." That refers to how highly our items fall on searches. If we find a keyword combination our customers use, that is a good thing. However, we need to realize that it it likely that lots of other shops have discovered this word combination. Try out similar word combinations to see if we can come up with a word combination that is even better.

More information from Etsy.