E-commerce tips for selling on Etsy

Here are some great tips for Etsy sellers that will help improve your shop and generate more revenue each month!

- Make your shop look more professional 

Make a logo, banner, fill out shop info, bio, about me, shop member section, announcement, make everything look official.

-Take better product photos 

Use editing apps/programs to make the colors on your listing look more appealing to buyers. Use a photo box or create your own product photo setup.

- Update your prices 

Maybe your price is too high, going from $25 to $19.99 could make the entire difference. 

- Run a sale

Everyone loves getting a good deal, even running a 10% off sale could encourage a buyer to make that purchase. 

- Do Market Research

Are you using all 13 tags for your listings? These tags will help buyers find out about your products. Make sure you're using all 13 tags, but more importantly, make sure you're using effective tags. You may be using a tag that gets little to no search results, when you could replace that tag with a word that gets 20,000+ searches. 

- Enable Etsy's free shipping guarantee on orders $35+

Shoppers on Etsy are 20% more likely to complete their purchase when the item is marked as shipping for free. Items that ship free and shops that guarantee free shipping to buyers in the US on orders $35 and above will get priority placement in US search results. This option is also great because when a potential buyer is looking at your listing, Etsy will recommend purchasing another one of your items to reach $35+ for free shipping.

- Following up with customers for reviews

Reviews are a big deal for all e-commerce stores. Having more reviews will make customers more likely to purchase from your shop. One technique I used for my shop was following up with every order marked as delivered. I would send the same copy & pasted message to every delivered order that said something like this: "Hello! Just checking in to make sure you received your order. If you're satisfied with your order, please leave a review when you get some free time, it would be greatly appreciated :). Thank you for supporting my small business! -Shop owner name"

This message format is proven to be effective as my Etsy shop had 5,224 orders with 2,236 reviews. This means that roughly 1 out of every 2.3 customers left a review on their order. This message works great because you start off by checking in with the customer to make sure they received their order and they're satisfied. After that, you'll ask them to leave a review when they have some free time and thank them for supporting your business. Most customers who read this message will leave your shop a review that you otherwise wouldn't have gotten. It also works great because you'll say "If you're satisfied with your order, please leave a review when you get some free time". This will give customers who weren't satisfied with their order the opportunity to talk with you in messages before leaving a review. This is a great way to prevent getting any reviews that aren't 5/5 stars as you'll be able to talk with the customer and find a solution to turn that into a 5/5 star review.

- Post on social media

Social media is a MUST if you run any e-commerce store. Posting pictures on your social media page & story are great, but your main focus should be with creating <60 videos to promote the products available on your shop. The way social media works in the year 2023 is not the same as it used to be. Every social media platform has adopted the tiktok "For you page" style algorithm where you can have little to no followers and post a video that reaches millions of people. This works the same with tiktok videos, instagram reels, facebook reels, and youtube shorts. Every video you post has the opportunity to go viral, posting normal pictures won't. 

Your shop should have a presence on the 4 major social media platforms: Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube. You can create one <60 second video and post that same video on every platform. Tiktok, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and youtube shorts. This will allow you to get the maximum amount of reach for your effort creating videos. Your videos may only get a few views at first, but don't get discouraged and stay consistent. Having 100 extra people see the products your shop sells is much better than zero. And making videos is free, who doesn't love free advertisement! You're only one viral video away from completely changing the game for your shop. The more followers your social media pages gain, the more free marketing you'll be able to do in the future. Remember, everyone starts with zero followers, the best time to start is today.