Wow great advice on this thread everyone! I just opened shop last week and am constantly trying to absorb new information. If anyone could give advice regarding my page it will be greatly appreciated!
Little Miss Bling NYC -- I also think you should focus on the descriptions with more keywords. I am not a fan of using models. I prefer the white background to display products. It is clean and really shows the customer the item and colors. Your product is very nice. Good luck on sales! Megan
Fabulous advice here, everyone. I've just gone through the entire thread with my shop open in another tab, tweaking as I read. Thanks for getting it all going, LittleMissBlingNYC, and best of luck to you.
One of the things I would suggest is to add A LOT more items. Buyers love shops that look fully stocked. Think of it this way, would you walk into a boutique with a few items on the selves? Probably not.
I would also try and get rid of the shadows in your images as much as possible. The best way to do this is to have great natural lighting if you do not want to buy fancy lighting equipment.
I would also suggest including how you ship your items (ie. How your wrap them and protect them), how a customer can order a custom item (people LOVE that, most of my sales are custom), if an item gets damaged or lost and how you would handle that situation Add policies, that helps too.
This personally turns me off to shops, when they have crazy high shipping. If there is any way you can reduce the shipping I would try and do that. Customers are already pay $40+ for an item, and most don’t want to pay an extra $20 for shipping.
Your items are lovely and very well crafted, just work a few things. :)
I will add one more comment about the shipping policy, this is in reference to me dealing with a purchase I made from another Etsy shop. I ordered a necklace for Christmas for my daughter in law. I ordered 4 weeks before Christmas wanting to make sure I had it for her. 10 days before Christmas, I contacted the seller, she was very slow to respond, told me there was nothing she could do about it, she had not shipped in a manner that she had a tracking number. Since I always ship with a tracking number and have my items insured I assumed she had. While I cannot blame her for the postal service, I was disappointed. I asked her to send another. Her response again was slow. I did get another and ended up giving it to my daughter in law after Christmas. Not ideal. I let the shop owner know I received the second one, and I gave her a nice review b/c the quality of the product was exactly what I expected. I did private message her, to let her know that I thought it would be best if especially during the holiday season, she offer to ship things with a tracking number and insurance. I never received any type of reply for my private message or the 5 star review I gave her. I will not be ordering from her again.
Nancy, that sounds like an all-around frustrating experience. She doesn't sound very professional or organized at all. I might have left feedback that said the item was lovely but the customer service was lacking (something to tip off future buyers).
Other sellers do other things outside of etsy and off the internet to promote themselves. They talk about their business, pass out cards, go to art shows, word of mouth from buyers. All this leads to sales. They say that it takes at least 3 years to really find your audience and get to become the professional selling artist that you want to be.
