Visibility Warnings on Digital Listings

[NireValleyArt]

Hi everyone,

I’m a seller of digital downloads and have recently noticed a significant drop in my shop’s visibility. I’ve started receiving visibility warnings on my digital listings, even though they adhere to Etsy’s default policy of “No Returns” for digital products. As far as I know, this policy is uneditable and automatically applied to all digital products.

These warnings seem to be severely affecting my traffic and sales. Additionally, my Etsy Ads budget is hardly being used—despite setting a reasonable daily budget, the majority of it goes unspent, and my listings are not being shown since I started to get these warnings.

I’ve already reached out to Etsy support via chat, but my conversation was left unresolved. I’ve also noticed I can no longer access chat as the previous conversation is still “open.” This lack of resolution and proper support is frustrating and making it hard to maintain my business here.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with visibility warnings or ads underperforming? How did you resolve them?

Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated!

[CraftyCornishMaids]

There has been another seller in the forums saying they have the same issue - I haven't - yet

@cindylouwho2   ... another one

[NireValleyArt]

Thanks for replying ! It been happening since 13th/14th December and whenever I listed anything new I'd get the visibility warning that I needed to bulk update the listings to include a returns policy . I have asked on chat a few times and was told to update them(!!) but it doesn't make any sense and now I can't contact via chat as its stuck on an open window. It's obvious from looking at my shop stats that its impacting my visibility and views as its on a downward spiral from those dates.

[cindylouwho2]

@NireValleyArt to solve the Chat issue, you need to open an email ticket and ask them to unfreeze the Chat. Took about a day to get fixed for me. 

As for the issue with warnings, I wonder if the made-to-order downloads are the problem? Since there isn't a file immediately available, they may be flagging your whole shop in error, which is obviously a big problem. It's odd more shops aren't reporting this otherwise. @CraftyCornishMaids 

(You have a shipping on time with tracking badge, which many digital shops do not, so that means you must have some listings that Etsy needs marked as shipped. That caught my eye, so I went digging)

[NireValleyArt]

@cindylouwho2 Thanks so much for digging into this for me and great advice .i have sent an email to them to unfreeze it and awaiting a response.

 Thats a very interesting point about the shipping as I’ve just recently got an issue solved were it was showing all of my digital orders in the order page as ‘No Tracking’ and that took over a month to fix!  I never actually got a reason as to why it was happening other than a technical glitch and that started after the shipping change in October . I sell custom pet portraits also so they are obviously shipped so it’s a mixture in the shop . I have been concerned in the past that this has the potential to cause issues but Etsy have reassured me that’s not the case but aa of late I’m thinking they are wrong! 

Thanks again and I’ll keep you updated on what I find out or if and when Etsy respond.

[MossAndTwigPaperCo]

I'm now receiving them with every new listing - I sell digital downloads, as well and have been getting these new warnings. When I go in - the Etsy preset policies show that all my listings fall under it - but I have to accept that same policy in the portion above that says "Editable Policies", before everything is good to go. It's a royal pain. An extra step for every listing. You can't do anything about it in the listing itself - you have to wait until you list it and get the warning a while later and then go back in and 'accept' the no return policy or put something else in there.

[cindylouwho2]

@MossAndTwigPaperCo It is good to know there is a solution, even if it is tedious - thanks for posting it!