Viewing Views Differently

[#1]

Hi Team!

I wanted to share a few thoughts. I'm sure you're aware we've changed the way Etsy's search works. In this change, you may notice buyers looking at fewer items before they pounce. We're seeing more overall sales by the Etsy community. This is exciting, the quicker a buyer can find what they are looking for, the better. But this does mean they are viewing less items on their hunt for the perfect handmade or vintage item or supply.

A while back I wrote about the single sale highs and lows: http://www.etsy.com/teams/5002/etsy-success/discuss/6796368/ It's easy to get wrapped up in watching a sale or view counter get higher and higher - but this can be an arbitrary way of measuring success.

Now I want to talk about conversion rate. Your conversion rate would be the number of favorites you get in comparison to the number of visits, or the number of sales compared to the number of visits. (Or go ahead and track both!)

I'm sure many of you have thought about this already, but I want to bring it back up to you now, because I see many sellers focusing intently on the number of views they are getting in their shops. Remember all views are not created equal. Instead of trying to grab as many views as possible, you should be thinking about pulling in the right buyer (one who is ready to support you and become a collector)!

With all this said, it is important to update your shop so that your views don't drop too drastically. In the last Relevancy Shop Critique on Etsy's Online Labs page: http://www.etsy.com/community/online-labs. In this pre-recorded workshop HeyMichelle and I give you a way to come up with your own formula (SEO is never cut-and-dry) to help you optimize your titles and tags for Etsy search.

Before you go off updating, tweaking, coming up with your own formula - think about what your most important measurements of success are.

One more thing while I have your ear, I'd hate to see anyone spend more time than necessary trying to tweak titles and tags for any kind of search engine optimization. I can't tell you exactly how much time you should invest experimenting in this area. You may want to see where Etsy Search ranks in your top referrers list (you can see this in your Shop Stats). If it's at the very top - you're probably doing ok. If it's way down near the bottom of the list, perhaps you should do some more researching and testing. Again, there is no one path to success, but the first step is the same for all: set specific, important and reasonable goals. Then you'll know which path you should be on to get there.

I hope this helps! Please feel free to challenge me in your responses! I'd love to have a good discussion about this.

Danielle

[paulbead]

Danielle,
My sales are drastically down and my stats are basically the same as before the change. The majority of my views line up Your Shop, Your Listings and Search.
Is that the same with everybody?

[Former_Member]

Wow - a lot of good information here! I have tweaked a lot of my titles and tags, and I am watching my stats over the next week or so to see what happens! I definitely think switching to relevancy as a default is great, both for buyers and for sellers. I just have to figure out how to work it to my advantage as a seller:) It's already helped me as a buyer!

[Former_Member]

Paul, my top three, in order, for the last 7 days are:

Your Shop
Treasury
Search

One of my top searches right now is from Google - apparently a lot of people (relatively speaking) are finding my mustard yellow clutch in Google. WHOOOP!

[paulbead]

Congratulations 1mADwoman,
I would love to know if my etsy listings are going onto google. Do you know if Danielle means that we should all work towards having Search at the very top?
This has never affected sales before now?

[paulbead]

By the way yesterday it was Your shop, Teams, search search was very close to teams Search is always 3rd on the list of largest number views.

[Former_Member]

Glad someone knew my worm reference ;-P

PaulBead
Mine are pretty similar . . .

[paulbead]

So you want to have My Shop first or close to the top because it means that someone has bookmarked you and is returning. Also I would want to have people come in from search and want to look around. From what little i always understood about this stuff you want your viewers to look at other pages right???

[BirdinHandVTG]

Paul,
Re: search is 4th for me with Activity Feed being 3rd. Does that have to do
with Circles? My sales are drastically down too. I think I'm invisible.

[Former_Member]

Thanks so much for sharing this! Everytime I browse my Team threads, I see, "Why am I not getting so many views" etc. My Etsy Search is at the top of my stats so I feel happy with that :)

[paulbead]

Birdie1
I think so. I think as long as the search figure is relatively high you are o.k.

[Former_Member]

Thank you Danielle! You always give great advice!

[sherischart]

Thank you for this information. "Conversion rates" and all can be confusing in the least.
Appreciate all this.

[Former_Member]

Ok, so I have one tiny question. I just checked my stats to find out where Search.. was mine is #4. Do I want it to be first on the list? My shop, listings and treasuries are 1,2 and 3.

[Former_Member]

Marking to read after dinner :) Thanks Danielle

[Former_Member]

PaulBead-
Your Listings - Those are clicks from other listings in your shop
Search - Clicks from Etsy search results

[Former_Member]

Steampunkfunk - those seem like pretty good stats to me. You're rocking Treasuries, which is great!

[creativemind]

Checked the stats this morning, and I was surprised that all of the search hits were from outside Etsy. But then I saw what they were for, which is a specific type of hat I make. So that made sense - I think a lot of re-enactors might do a google or bing search because they haven't heard of Etsy. Hopefully now they know!

[Former_Member]

I rewrote a few of my titles to be a bit more basic and more common to be found, I have a Water Kelpie painting and if someone was looking for Water Kelpie it would show up no problem, there are NOT many there, but that's only the second part of the Title of my item, the first part says Original Framed Fantasy art, and I have tags that go along with that. I changed my I don't see any dragons title on one painting to just Green Dragon original fantasy artwork and I put the title in the description box instead. I noticed how on my stats the words green dragon come up, I have it in my tags but thought changing the title would be better. I am STILL not making a lot of sales, I am still at one but that one is a friend I made on Kaboodle and she said she's planning on Christmas shopping and she has an eye on a few items.

[Former_Member]

Good points. Any business person needs to get inside their customer's head to know what they are looking for, it is really tricky to learn what language they may use vs. what you may use. All of this re-tagging has been a good lesson on it and I've been able to see what keywords and searches get a response and which do not.

Also, a good point not to overspend time on tagging and checking. I felt I was getting a little OCD over this and it's best to give it your best shot and then take a break, work on your product, and see what the response is over a little more time.

[ClassicallyRomantic]

I don't know if this was mentioned since the first page or not but I totally agree with heartsabustin! ROMANTIC neeeeeeeeeeeds to be a style!!

[Former_Member]

This has been very helpful for me to read, as I am a self admitted "shop stats" stalker of my own shop. I feel better at least knowing what I should be looking for. I am new to Etsy and just opened my shop a couple of months ago, but I personally have liked the new relevancy search, as my views have definitely gone up. Now I need the same as everyone else, some more sales! I welcome any input that you may have. Thanks again!

[Former_Member]

My top search stat is Etsy Searches. But, I am only get less then 10 views a day. And, I have only sold items to friends. HELP?? I have tweaked my titles and tags for Charm Bracelets and Chandilier earrings and have noticed my views increased. Should I keep adjusting titles and tags for all items?? What else can I do to reach my market??

[paulbead]

Danielle,
Thanks so much for answering I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed.
I changed a few more listings and SEARCH went up to 2nd place.
YEA!!!!!!!!

[MysteriousCats]

Somehow for me, the views went up (40% according to Google Analytics) but the sales did not keep up.
The beginning of the month looked promising but now no orders...
I did all the SEO changes in the end of last month, seems I need to rethink them again as I want more sales. What am I doing wrong?

[ParadiseChicJewelry]

I keep tweeking and my views have been kind of slow, but I think I just need patience. Sometimes it might just depend on what people are looking for. I also keep reading about SEO. See what I could do beter. :)