My team captain posted this in etsy West Michigan: Thought it would be useful stuff for us to think about:
Spring cleaning. It's not just for your house anymore!
Perhaps it's time to give your shop a spring cleaning. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
* SHOP BANNER: Do you use one? Do you still like it or is it time to change it?
* SHOP PROFILE: check your profile to make sure it isn't outdated. Read it. Read it out loud. Does it flow? Do you mention something like, oh, Christmas shipping that no longer belongs in there? A vacation that's long over? Do you have a new product? Talk about it.
* SHOP SECTIONS: are you using shop sections? Do your section make sense to your shoppers? Can you easily read the sections? Are any empty? Is everything is a section and in the correct section?
* SHOP POLICIES: Etsy give us a lot of areas here - it's a good idea to use them. Have you filled out all the sections? If someone comes to your shop, and wonders about your shipping policy, can they find the answer?
- Welcome message - tell a bit about yourself and/or the purpose of your shop
- Payment - what kind of payments do you take? check? paypal? money order? other?
- Shipping - do you ship international? how long does it take you to ship something?
- Refunds & exchanges - do you accept returns/exchanges? do they need prior approval?
- Additional policies and FAQ - what else do you want your customer to know? do you do custom orders? down payment needed on those?
* HOW IS YOUR SHOP'S APPEARANCE?: Did you know you can rearrange your shop? You can put things together by type of item, by color or whatever blows your hair back. (Oops, did I just date myself with that phrase?)
* DO YOU HAVE LOTS OF LINKS TO YOUR SHOP WITHIN YOUR SHOP?: This was a great hint by SaraLynn on our team blog recently. See the article here:
http://etsywestmichigan.blogspot.com/2011/04/simple-seo-in-bound-links.html go on...go add a dozen to start!
* MESSAGE TO BUYERS: do you have this filled out? It's a great way to automatically thank your buyer and to remind them of your shipping policies.
I'll stop now as this is more than enough, right? Ok, your turn - what else would you do to spring clean YOUR shop