Sales tanked- searches are not good

[TwogetherCo]

Both gift mode and old search are broken… hence no sales… my products used to show right at the top when I searched for cotton anniversary gift, now a whole bunch of cards clutter the pages until finally, I appeared. Gift mode is rubbish, rubbish for buyers too, give a very bad shopping experience… convoluted and not to the point, even when you add more and more search terms! Come on Etsy! Get it sorted! 

[rarefinds4u]

Agreed.  I would try to promote or promote on a new platform on your own outside of Etsy to attempt to combat this.  Just a thought......

[EvilEyeCuriosities]

I never had huge sales, but I got to the point where most days I'd have at least 1. Then sales dropped to 1 or 2 a week and now I've had nothing for weeks. I'm at a point now where I'm starting to do markets/events instead of thinking of Etsy as my main selling space. Its just crickets.

[TheWestminsterAttic]

Now that they have gone globally with "gift mode" sales have decreased everywhere. The best part is you can not comment on their main announcement page. What are they worried about? The truth they messed up big time??? 

[LoonLakeBookstore]

Our sales this year are down 12% from last year, and much worse than from 2022.  This in spite of our store having more and better items than ever before.

[TheWestminsterAttic]

Now that they have gone globally with "gift mode" sales have decreased everywhere. The best part is you can not comment on the main announcement page. What are they worried about? The truth they messed up big time??? 

[fireflycats]

In my case "Visits decreased 53% compared to the same period last year." Despite offering free shipping now, lowering many prices and more items for sale, I've only had one sale this year from hundreds of visits. Last time I tried free shipping, sales tanked but I'm not sure that is the whole deal this time. Seems that handmade and vintage items have been "cheapened" here by pushes to offer coupons for items in carts, "free" shipping and other changes that have flooded this site with cheap junk and non-handmade copies to compete with. Someone I know who used to sell here quit after Etsy went public... it just drifted too far away from being a place to shop for truly handmade items and too much non-relevant junk to sort through.  Also, maybe people just have less disposable income these days.  I am looking at alternatives but being a full time worker and cancer patient it's pretty tough already.

[TheWestminsterAttic]

Now that they have gone globally with "gift mode" sales have decreased everywhere. The best part is you can not comment on main announcement page. What are they worried about? The truth they messed up big time??? 

[PoochandTabby]

Sellers also have to keep in mind that Etsy has changed the algos again with the big push on AI technology so if you haven't updated your shop to the new requirements that Etsy is asking for, you're not going to rank well and your shop is not going to do well.

I'm in the same boat as other sellers with less orders, but every time I do a batch of updates on older listings or do a batch of new items, I get a surge in orders and see positive outcomes in my shop.  If you aren't in compliance with the new recommendations and if you aren't hitting the minimums for what is required, then you really can't simply just blame Etsy. They're telling us what they want.

I do agree though that we are continuously pushed to give discounts and I see the emails that Etsy sends to the general public that are like DEALS DEALS DEALS! and it's pretty gross. Especially with the abandon cart offers, I feel like it's training customers to just put things in your cart and you'll get a discount. I get more sales when my items are NOT on sale vs when they are. 

Factor in competition too. I've been on Etsy since 2013 and at one point I was getting 250- 500 sales a month. I didn't even have to do my own marketing and I had sales flying in, but it's not like that anymore. Now there are a crap ton more sellers on Etsy selling the same thing I am and many of them are just bought off Aliexpress and re-sold, so people want low prices, but with that comes low quality, a lot of times.  

There are many things that we can't control that are at play, but for the ones that you CAN control, getting on board, despite all the extra work it's going to take, just helps you in the long run.

[fireflycats]

Thank you for bringing this up: "Etsy has changed the algos again with the big push on AI technology so if you haven't updated your shop to the new requirements that Etsy is asking for"- overcoming big personal challenges the past three years, I have not had much time to keep up with all of Etsy's announcements but I will look for the updates they are asking for and will try that to see if that helps. Grateful for your post, thanks!

[fireflycats]

Does anyone have the link to the AI updates Etsy is asking for? Thanks.

[PoochandTabby]

@fireflycats

Here are a few links that can help:

This is image sizes. Keep in mind the pixels are correct, but the images need to either be 1:1 or 5:4 with the image in the center that can be cropped square. Images are now a huge part of ranking whereas it wasn't before, due to search being run by AI

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015663347-Requirements-and-Best-Practices-for-Images-in-Y...

This one on photography, some of the chapters have been updated more recently:

https://www.etsy.com/ca/seller-handbook/article/143986679284

This is for search and I find it explains well how to do tags and titles for search: 

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115015745428-How-Etsy-Search-Works?segment=selling

This is the legal disclosure on how search and ranking works and how your items get ranked/what is taken into account:

https://www.etsy.com/ca/legal/policy/search-advertisement-recommendation/899478564529

And finally, I find it helpful to follow the @cindylouwho2 blog, as she does in-depth testing and analysis on Etsy and is up to date on what is going on here and also has a newsletter that I subscribe to to get more frequent information and updates. She'll also posts great factual info on the forums, so you can look up her posts.

https://www.cindylouwho2.com/blog 

I also find it helpful when @FallsAveVintage posts on Etsy's quarterly reports and summarizes the info that comes from those. The quarterly reports talk about how they're using AI:

https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/FYI-Sellers-on-Etsy-Q4-report/m-p/144873660

https://community.etsy.com/t5/All-Things-Finance/Etsy-stock-tanking/td-p/145485683

[fireflycats]

Thank you so much @PoochandTabby for the very useful links and information, very grateful! I'll check them out, study and work on applying the info. Best wishes to you and much success!

[lj808wo7msr1mfs9]

I started my shop the end of last year. Had a few sales a week and it seemed good for a new store. After Christmas it all stopped. Not a thing. I'm hoping it will pick up soon.

[ArtDollsbyJD]

It is probably not search but your tags and titles may not be optimized for the way Etsy works today.

I suggest getting a shop critique to see if there is changes that can help.

[PracticalPrintsByLee]

Were breaking even from the same period YOY, sales have been up and down a lot, so only time will tell, i don't understand gift mode and never used it, i wonder how much of it actually leads to a sale compared to a general search, the preview thing they came out with too has only been used 200k times since it was brought in in Jan, thats a very low figure, i'm not quite sure what the point of that is tbh, since etsy is meant to be handmade/vintage/supplies, sending someone a generic image of something that they are going to recieve persoalised wouldn't go down too well i would imagine

[VioGemini]

My sales are down 90% in all my stores. I used to get anxiety from Cha-Chings, this how many orders I used to get, and now I forgot the sound of it. 

[TwogetherCo]

Me too, what tells me that something is wrong is that I do not get viewed as much as before and fewer favourites too... but once shown I get visited just as much... but conversion is lower (which I can believe is down to discretionary spending)...

[pHashIONpassION]

Thank you PoochandTabby for sharing all of these helpful links...Much appreciated.

[PracticalPrintsByLee]

Your most likely in some sort of test, i know we are as i can see the changes as they happen, 1st it was showing in 20+ peoples baskets where everyone else was shown how many sold in last 24 hours, now its a new test showing crap reviews at the top again

[DougsVintageStore]

The traffic issue is the coding change in the search engine here.
Search engine code is still used for the same thing since it was invented.
To find things.
I dont many people when they first come to my vintage store look for my Star Seller Status.
So if themes, markets and demand are still the same, why does this search engine
not give you the listing you are looking for.
Shoppers will go elsewhere fast if they dont get the results they are looking for in the first return results.