11 Quick Tips to Improve Your Etsy Shop

This topic has come up quite often on the Sac Etsy Team's Yahoo Group discussion, so it seemed like something worth writing about! Completing these tasks may help improve your rankings in Google and other search engines!

1. Be Sure Your Shop Policies are Complete: It is important to let shoppers know your Shop Policies.
a. What form of payment do you accept?
b. How do you ship?
c. Do you ship internationally?
d. Will you accept returns and will you give a refund or are you willing to let the customer exchange their purchase for a different item? Who pays the return shipping? If it is an exchange, who pays the shipping for the replacement item?

2. Your Shop Announcement: Your Shop Announcement is the text immediately below your banner.

The first 160 characters of your shop announcement will be used by search engines as the description, so be sure to use words which describe your shop and merchandise rather than something like "Hi, Welcome to my shop! It's so nice to have you visit today!" which would tell someone browsing the search results absolutely nothing about your shop and why they should click on that particular link.

I'm not sure why Google truncated my announcement after "collectors," but I hope you get the general idea. The date was added by Google; this is the date your shop was opened. Etsy admins claim to be working with Google to have them remove this date, as it could give the impression that was the last date the page (shop) was updated.

3. Your Shop Title: Another important thing to remember for the search engines is that your Shop Title will be the title of the search listing for your shop. Your Shop Title is the text beneath your Shop Name on the left side above. Compare my Shop Title to the Google search results shown in #2 above. MANY Etsy sellers make the mistake of repeating the name of their shop here. This results in having a Google listing labeled, for example, "Prairie Primitives by PrairiePrimitives on Etsy." Probably not what you had in mind, right? Use words here which shoppers might use to find the type of products you're selling.

4. Be Sure to Have a Banner: Having a banner gives your shop a finished and more professional appeaerance. A banner is the rectangular graphic at the top of many (most) Etsy shops. If you don't have the skills to create your own, Etsy offers an online banner generator to create a generic banner, or you can hire someone to design a banner for you. It's a good idea to include your business name on your banner; this helps with name recognition, as some (many?) shoppers may not otherwise pay attention to the shop's or artist's name. I use Irfanview or Microsoft Paint to add text to my images (many other programs can be used for text too!).

5. Include Your Location: Be sure to include your location so your shop can be found by shoppers using Etsy's "Shop Local" feature! Many shoppers appreciate, and prefer, to spend their hard-earned dollars within their own community. If a shopper is looking for your hand painted handbag and they find several bags which they like about the same and one is made by a local artisan and the other(s) is not, there's a pretty good chance they will choose your bag! Shoppers enjoy shopping local because they like to support local artists, because they will receive their purchase more quickly, and because it keeps the shipping cost down -- and perhaps eliminates it altogether if you can meet up with the shopper to deliver their purchase! [NOTE: When meeting anyone from online, it's a good idea to meet in a public place!] At one time, zip codes worked with "Shop Local," but they don't seem to be working now.

6. Consider Your Item Title: Etsy allots you 255 characters for the title of your listing. Many sellers err on the side of too lengthy a title, while others err on the side of a less-than-descriptive title. If you are selling a handbag, for example featuring a hand painted iris, using "Purple Iris" as the entire title doesn't tell the shopper what the item is. While they could tell what the item is from the photo, a poor title will probably hurt your SEO ranking, so shoppers searching for a handbag with an iris design might not find your handbag since the word "handbag" isn't included in the title.

7. Item Description: Be sure to write an adequate description, including as much information about your item as possible. Include details about the materials used, and a bit of detail about what inspired you to create the item can be a good selling point. Also remember to include the measurements in both metric and imperial (standard U.S.) terms, as this can be a huge help in acquiring international customers!

8. Work Those Tags: Etsy gives you space to include 14 tags. Tags are words which shoppers might be inclined to search on when looking for your item. Keep an eye on Etsy's Merchandising Desk articles and incorporate key words and phrases based on what the Etsy merchandisers will be searching for; this could help your items land on the front page or possibly be featured in a Storque article or elsewhere on the Etsy web site! Members of the Sac Etsy Team should include Sac Etsy Team as one of their 14 tags, and if you're a member of other teams, include their team tag as well! I always include my shop name as one of my tags.

9. Optimize Your Shop for Relevancy: A couple months ago, Etsy changed from showing search results based on recency to showing them based on relevancy. Important things to be aware of include using multiple-word tags, rather than the single-word tags which Etsy pretty much insisted on for many years. Now your tags should be phrases which shoppers may search on, such as "primitive doll" (rather than "primitive" and "doll" as separate tags) or "blue dress" (rather than "blue" and "dress" as separate tags), and so on. Unfortunately, sellers are still limited to just 20 characters for each tag, which can make this somewhat challenging! Also, your title should have the noun ("what it is") near the beginning of the title, in the first 2 or 3 words if not the very first word. And I've been hearing and reading that the first 3 words of your description should be a phrase from the title which is also used in the tags.

10. Photographing Your Item: Because you are selling online, your photographs have to tell the whole story. Shoppers aren't able to touch, feel, or smell your product, so you'll need to do it for them through your photographs. When photographing your items, think how they would be portrayed in a magazine; consider what type of props, if any, would be appropriate for your item. Remember that most items will benefit from the inclusion of more than one photograph in the listing.
a. Be sure your photographs are in focus; of course "creative" out-of-focus backgrounds are fine, as long as the item you're selling is plainly visible.
b. Think about how you "style" your photos. Read this article from the Etsy Storque for some tips.
c. Be mindful about undesired shadows in your photos (there are times when a bit of shadow can be a good thing, but this isn't always the case).
d. Using a pure white background will often make your item appear much sharper and crisper, as if it's in an art gallery setting.

11. List More Items: If you just have a handful of items listed (less than one page), list more items! My current goal is to get a minimum of 50 items listed in my Etsy shop. Having more items, as well as a wider variety of items, will enable more shoppers to find your shop. A few years ago, a friend of mine was doing quite well with her product on eBay, however she was getting very fed up with the high fees on that site. I talked her into opening an Etsy shop. She did and listed about half a dozen items. When she didn't have any sales in a week or so, she became frustrated. I asked if she could list two dozen items. She said yes and got them listed and the sales started rolling in almost immediately. She has since had more than 200 items listed on a fairly regular basis, and has sold more than 2800 items in just a little over 2 years; there have even been several days when she has sold more than 20 items in a day! This seller has decided to move on to other venues, at least for now. She is starting to do some craft fairs and is selling in some consignment shops near her home.