need help with critique!

Im pretty new to Etsy and currently trying to find my way. brief description of what I do; I transpose personal photos onto wood.

1. I need help with tagging and titles
2. photos, where do I need polishing?
3. is it clear what I do when viewing my shop?
4. once in my shop is it enticing or do you just move on to the next?

I am open to constructive criticism, fresh eyes point of view, new suggestions, opinions and ideas. I would like to get feedback on all areas of opportunity that help improve my shop.

Thank you in advance for viewing my shop and taking your time to critique it.
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Re: need help with critique!

I think it's a really cool idea that you have going!
What I think some of the pictures are lacking is staging, which might not entice people to buy the blocks. You are doing it well with the baby party favor picture, and I would like to see something like that for other pictures too. I think that you need to target particular occasions for which people might want pictures, and here are some ideas that I have:

1) Wedding anniversaries - especially for parents/grandparents: maybe offer a deal for 2 blocks like "then and now", one of the wedding photo and one of the couple today and put them side-by-side

2) Engagement photos to display at weddings - this is really popular nowadays and it's something a couple gets to keep afterwards. I'd suggest maybe going to a park and putting a block with photo among some flowers on a park bench, or something that has a wedding feel. Maybe you can look at some wedding photography photos and just stage how you envision your blocks being incorporated into a wedding decor.
I wish I knew of your shop before my wedding to order these!

I also think that some of the original photos that you used for the blocks are blurry and dark, which detracts from your work. I'm assuming that the quality of the image on the wood really depends on the quality of the original image. Maybe you can run a campaign, even on your facebook page, asking people for their photos (like wedding, engagement, professional pet or baby photos) that you can use in your promotional material in exchange for a discount on your products? This way you will build up a greater variety to display in your shop and might get more people to try your products since people like bargain deals :)

Hope these comments at least help a bit! Good luck!
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Re: need help with critique!

Hi Barbara!

Thank you so much for your input, it is very helpful! love your ideas!!
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Re: need help with critique!

Hi Gina,

You've made a decent start with your tags and titles, but you definitely have some room for improvement. I'll take a single example from your shop:
The title is "Pet Memories, pet wood print, wood wall art, pet wood photos, pet photos, rainbow bridge, memories for pets on wood, wood memory ideas pet"
I'll get back to your title in a moment, but first let's look at your tags. These are "Pet Supplies", "Urns & Memorials", "Pet Portraits", "vintage portraits", "pet portraits", "gifts and mementos", "pet memories", "pet art", "rainbow bridge", "pet loss", "the loss of a pet", "gifts", "animal pictures", "pet pictures", "pictures for dog", "pictures for cats"

Now the first three tags there are freebies based on the listing category. It's important to know that you get those freebies, because it means you don't have to repeat them in your own tags - you can get rid of your extra "pet portraits" tag. Next, "gifts" is a fairly useless tag. Generally speaking, single-word tags are inefficient, because you can put those words into phrases and be relevant for the entire phrase as well as any single word in it. You also have a lot of repetition in the words you chose, and you're missing out on some potentially great keywords. You've listed in the "urns and memorials" category, but you haven't used the keyword "memorial" anywhere! I'd add "pet memorial", "pet photo memorial", or maybe more specifically "dog photo memorial", etc. You also want to watch out for those kinds of phrases you reach for when you start to run out of ideas, like your "pictures for cat/dog" tags. Think about all the different ways a customer might really search for something like what you're selling. Personally, if I wanted an item like what you have here, I'd probably search using terms like "photo pet memorial", "pet loss gift", and "photo memorial". If you ask 20 friends and family members what they'd search for, you might get a whole lot of different answers, but a bunch of them will overlap, and those are your critical keywords that should go in both your tags and your titles. The other phrases will likely be what we call "long tail keywords" (referring to the long tail of a statistical distribution). Those should go in your tags. Not as many people will search for them, but there will also be fewer results in search when people do use those phrases, so you get a good chance of being seen.

Now, back to your title. This title is STUFFED - you've got a lot of wood in there, a lot of pets, and not a lot of clear, simple description of the item. What is it? That should be the first thing you answer in the title. So start with something like "Pet photo memorial plaque, your pet photo printed on wood, pet loss gift, personalized pet memento". You don't need to use the entire title space (I know some people in the forum recommend this, but it's not actually backed by data - it's totally just "i know a guy who knows a guy who heard..."). What you do need is to include a clear description and a few of your strongest keyword phrases, in a human-readable format.
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Re: need help with critique!

Hi Peggy,

Thank you so much for your critique, it has been extremely helpful! I will definitely review my tags and hopefully I can get better at it.

Once again thank you!
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Re: need help with critique!

Some great detailed suggestions from other folks already, so I'll just add that you could also try different category sections for your work, such as gifts, pets, weddings ( when the photo is appropriate of course) etc, and see what gets the most views!
I agree the 'baby party favour picture' makes it much clearer what you do than the other listing photos. Another thought- with the big photo of the dog over the sofa, it will give a better idea of scale if you have one photo from a greater distance, showing the whole sofa and the picture above it.
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Re: need help with critique!

Hi Bev,

Thank you very much for taking the time to critique and give advise. It is greatly appreciated.

I am taking notes from all of you!!
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Re: need help with critique!

Dear Gina,
I would work with:
1. Photos - one design, more quality.
2. Description - more and with more detailed processing time.
Thanks.
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