Attention, How the competition - BOT can lower your sales

[ZaNaDesignCraft]

Hello everyone,

First of all, I apologize for my English.

I wanted to share my observations based on my experience and the current situation of my store.

How easy it is to reduce conversions and sales of each store by cheating the Etsy algorithm.

Since the beginning of July, I have noticed a drastic increase in visits in my view statistics.

When I took a closer look, it turned out that these are visits usually at 6 am and 6 pm (most cases) every day throughout the entire period until today. These are sudden increases after 200-300 visits within an hour. Which causes a drastic decrease in conversion of my store and offers.

And as you know or not, the decrease in conversions translates into the fact that the Etsy algorithm evaluates my store and offers as less attractive, which causes a decrease in visibility and a decrease in sales.

I wonder if anyone else has this or has noticed such unnatural click inputs in the statistics.

As proof so that you can see it, I am sending a link to the statistics. and a comparison of the same period from last year.

https://fromsmash.com/etsy-unnatural-tics-of-visits 

Unfortunately, Etsy does not respond to my request for help in this matter. Similarly, when I sent a request for help in another matter, I did not receive a response to this day. And 1.5 months have passed.

The case concerned the fact that when a customer places an order, in some cases Etsy itself decides in what time I have to send the order (i.e. how much time I have for production). Unfortunately I still have a problem with this and sometimes I have to process orders in 1 day instead of the usual 2-3 days.

I hope this information will be helpful.

I am waiting for your comments.

Best regards

Sebastian

[AutumnHollowStudio]

I don't have an explanation for the "bot visits" - could be their AI scans for items that violate Etsy's selling policies. I did a reverse image search of some of your items, and the same photos are being used on sites such as Temu, Amazon, and some other etsy sellers. Etsy's AI picks up on that and eventually may take some of your listings down if they think you are reselling. That, in turn, will cause your shop to have decreased visibility in search results.

Etsy is also known for not responding to support requests from shops that they find to be in violation of their policies (which they assume all sellers know because you are agreeing to their terms when you open a shop).

The other problem with your shop is your shop name - it's not supposed to have "Etsy" in it.

Read this about Etsy's trademarks with their name, logos, etc: https://www.etsy.com/legal/trademarks/

we don’t allow the use of the “Etsy” trademark as part of your shop or company name, and also don’t allow the registration, ownership, or use of a domain name containing the “Etsy” trademark.

[CoquetteBath]

that's what I first noticed. OP could be shadow banned by doing something clearly against the policy here.

BUT, Etsy should also implement a spellcheck or something to catch that. I mean, they use AI to scan photos, they could get it to look for shop names that are not following the rules.

[CraftyCornishMaids]

we went round that loop for a VERY long thread,

poor people called betsy, who had their name in the shop name, would be clobbered

[ZaNaDesignCraft]

Hi,

As for the name, during registration I could add such a store name on Etsy. Of course, this is not a problem. The name can be changed.

I do not resell my products anywhere. We are present on Amazon handmade because we also have our store there, our brands. This is rather not forbidden. As for this, someone is using our photos illegally.

But it is known that Chinese sellers have such practices and not only.

But why would my offers be removed if I am not doing anything wrong.

It is not my fault that someone is using my photos illegally.

As for the answer to my question, I have not received an answer from Etsy to this day about the fact that when an order is placed, sometimes Etsy itself decides on the completion date. I have set the completion time / production time to 2-3 business days. And sometimes I have to send an order in 1 day because that's the deadline Etsy gave.
I understand that doesn't violate the rules.

[ZaNaDesignCraft]

The name of the shop has already been changed. Generally, I want to say that we do not break the rules on Etsy. We always act honestly and expect the same treatment.If AI Etsy acts in such a way that it lowers the visibility of our offers without even a simple notification from Etsy that something is wrong. Well, that's very nice. So to sum up, if I want AI Etsy not to remove my offers or lower their ranking. I should delete all my offers from Amazon and my own 2 stores or take completely new photos so that AI Etsy does not detect that it is the same product. In addition, I should politely ask Temu to remove my photos from their platform, just like if there are photos on Etsy from other sellers who use my photos illegally, I should also ask them to remove them.

[ZaNaDesignCraft]

I have another question about Etsy's rules that they don't respond to stores that violate the rules.

Is it possible to be a Star Seller for almost the entire year and violate Etsy's rules?

It seems to me that if, according to Etsy's AI algorithm, I violated the rules in my offers, I couldn't be a Star Seller.

Therefore, it is more likely that the visibility of offers is reduced because the Etsy algorithm sees that my offers are less attractive because the conversion rate has decreased due to the large number of bot clicks.

On Ads this year there have already been such situations where my offers were clicked by bots. And then Etsy reacted and even refunded me (several times).

[CraftyCornishMaids]

star wseller ids for the criteria they list.

If they catch you doing something else you shouldn't, they can remove star seller
If they don't catch you. you get away with it - until they do

[CraftyCornishMaids]

the bots are probably picking up the "etsy" in your shop name - remove it (apart from the fact etsy says don't)

[ZaNaDesignCraft]

Thank you, I've already done that.

[PoochandTabby]

While it is not your fault is another seller/site takes your pics, it is your responsibility to police your images. Etsy will absolutely think you are the reseller, not the actual reseller if they find your products elsewhere and then you will have a hell of a fight to get your products reinstated if they remove them. Any strike they make against your shop will hurt you in the long run, so you need to fight the other sites to have your images removed if they are yours before it becomes a problem. 

Bot traffic should be filtered out by Etsy, but there are a lot of shops that get hit with bot traffic and the site doesn't seem to be doing much about it. 

As for visibility, you have collage photos, which Etsy doesn't want. Etsy is reducing the number of listings shown in search that appear identical. If your pics are the same and you are just swapping out the lettering on the cufflinks, for example, you are going to be shown in less searches. Etsy also doesn't allow for mock ups if you are making the item yourself, so the first image has to be a real photo of the real item you are selling.

You are using the word 'Amber' which might be causing an issue behind the scenes for you. Certain words are triggers and I believe amber is one of them. Etsy is big on quality, so you will want to make sure that you are hitting all the things that Etsy judges as a quality listing/item. But keep in mind that with so many shops and items on Etsy they rotate shops in and out, so less visibility can also be caused by shop rotations. 

[ZaNaDesignCraft]

Thank you for your reply and suggestions.

As for the collage, the question is how Etsy treats it.

By definition, a collage is a combination of 2 or more photos or for example if it shows the product from the back and front in one photo (of course combining 2 photos into one image).

This is a new tool on Etsy that detects if the photos are acceptable and if necessary suggests changes to you.

In my case, there were no objections.

Although you may be right that photos of the same product with different personalization patterns should be slightly different. This can affect visibility. Although I have been using such photos for 8 years and so far there has been no problem and there has been a fairly steady increase in sales.

As for the word "Amber" it may be so, although I don't know how else it would describe a product that is made of natural amber. I don't know an alternative name for this stone.

[PoochandTabby]

Etsy has changed their search algorithm a LOT since 8 years ago, even since just the Summer. You should take some time to go through the updated articles in the seller handbook, including search visibility, the new creativity standards and the seller legal policies, including the search and ranking. There you will see all the things that I have mentioned. I am not just assuming the visibility things I have pointed out. Everything is documented.

The new tool is very basic and doesn't tell you everything that is wrong, nor does it flag everything. It told me I had 100 listings that I had to fix the images in, as in they were too small. In actuality all my listings the images were no bigger than 1000 px on the longest size. So really all 400+ listings had image issues, not just 100. I have all my checkmarks with still about 200 listings to fix, some with images as small as 640px that were never flagged.

[ZaNaDesignCraft]

Yes, as for the resolution of the photo, 640 pixels is definitely too little.

I have most of my photos in the 1250 pix or 1500 pix range.

Etsy generally suggests a photo with a resolution of 2000 pixels.

At the beginning of the year I changed the photos of some products (which are still there) and it definitely improved the sale of these products. As for the rules on Etsy, they are very general.

To sum up, the photo must show a real product and must be original.