What is Wrong with the Visit Listings?

[NedsDrawings]

Is there a point to having number of views of each listing made visible to potential customers? I don't understand Etsy. Looking at my Dashboard, over last 7 days (yes I posted earlier this week), I have 67 views. I went through my three pages of items and counted up each supposed view for each listing, which is 74 views. Now these items have been up for several months, so I don't think any of these 67 views are reflected under items, nor will they ever be. And no it won't take up to a month, because the view numbers are still very low, a struggle to get above 5 per individual item, and that's with the daily drip of views, which never get past 8, 10 views for a single item. What is the point? 

[NanaLetha · Accepted solution]

How many times a listing is viewed is not shown to buyers.

[ArtDollsbyJD · Accepted solution]

Your items may be hard to find in search because the titles aren't much of a help.  They don't describe the subject matter.  If I were looking for this type I would be using a subject to search by and not the technical words used in the titles.

That may be why you have fewer views overall.  People may be stumbling on to your work.

Maybe others will have better insight.   

[WitticismsRus · Accepted solution]

@NedsDrawings 

"Is there a point to having number of views of each listing made visible to potential customers?"

I'm a bit confused. The number of views for each listing is not visible to potential customers. You can see the info in shop manager but nobody else can. Where are you seeing that information? In shop manager listing manager? In stats? Shoppers don't have access to that info.

[NedsDrawings]

Thank you, but still the question is the view numbers supposed to let me know which items are more popular, and thus steer me in that creative direction? Not if those numbers aren't the same from one page to another. And yes thanks I've changed titles again and again. I feel compelled to put words such as "digital print," "glicee print," etc, and some subject matter nouns -- "man, woman, buffalo, etc." -- and strike a balance between form and subject, but when it works, it works for a day or two, and either way doesn't lead to a sale. It's too random, surreal, whimsical, I get it. "Upbeat" is not a noun. 

[PrairieCrocusStudio · Accepted solution]

Write good titles and tags, then leave them alone. When you change them, it takes a while for the system to catch up and show them for the right searches. 

[VibeEnvy · Accepted solution]

Popularity didn't mean anything without sales. My most "popular" items are far from my best sellers.

Conversion rate is more important than high amounts of traffic, if thousands of people view and don't buy it actually hurts your listing and ranks it down.

Favorites are a better judge of popularity than views. And views just get them to the item, it's there at that point that something can turn them on or off, if they see info they don't like or pics they don't like the view didn't even matter, it's all about the item and listing convincing the customer to buy "after" they view the item.

[NedsDrawings]

I'm seeing those views on my internal Listings page with the little round Stats toggle button pushed right. 

[PrairieCrocusStudio · Accepted solution]

If you want to know why you don't have more views per listing, you can ask that specific question in the Shop Critiques forum, and you will get some suggestions on how to improve titles and tags for Etsy search, etc. 

[NedsDrawings]

Yes thank you Prairie but my question was why do the 67 visits listed on my Dashboard not appear on my Listings page? If this were working, even with just a view visits a day, each Listing should have say 10 or more visits, and say "10 visits." 

[PrairieCrocusStudio · Accepted solution]

...

Edited:  as NanaLetha points out below, the listing shows last 30 days. Make sure your dashboard stats are set to last 30 days to compare. 

[PrairieCrocusStudio · Accepted solution]

I just stumbled onto Etsy's definition of Visits: 

Visits: The number of people who looked at your shop or listings

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015628207-Shop-Stats-Glossary?segment=selling

So your shop can have a lot of visitors who don't click on a listing. 

[NanaLetha · Accepted solution]

Number of listing visits are shown in shop manager>listings under each listing but only for the last 30 days.

[NedsDrawings]

Okay thank you both. Is that to save on memory? 

[NedsDrawings]

And again, I was talking about the Dashboard visits listed from the past seven days--what happened to all of them? The last seven days is within the last 30 days. I know none of you are responsible for this confusion; thanks for trying to make sense of it. 

[NedsDrawings]

Thank you VibeEnvy, I agree with everything you say, except that it's all tangential to my question. 

[VibeEnvy · Accepted solution]

The just recent anything sometimes doesn't show. When I get a new order I have to wait a few hours until my stats count the extra order. My year over year won't be accurate for a few to several hours sometimes. You may have several views from the last day that don't show yet. Also Etsy will adjust your views to remove bots so I'm the morning you may have 200 views and I'm the afternoon only have 160 as Etsy removed fake traffic, you will see an "updated 3 hours ago" or something like that and could change by the time it updates.

[WNYTradingCo]

Thank you, VibeEnvy.  I think you answered my question about how the number of views on an individual listing could decrease from one day to the next.  Sounds like it might be Etsy removing the bot views.  Makes sense. Interesting to learn which listings of ours they're "watching!" 

[NedsDrawings]

That makes sense, but I don't think it's true in my case. I'm sure that next to none of the 67 visits listed on my Dashboard will carry over to Listings page, for what it's worth, which is very little, as only sales matter, of course, I agree. I guess what I'm realizing is that there's no point to checking the Dashboard listings or views. Thanks for your time. I don't know if it's any benefit to you, but I will accept all your responses as solutions. 

[NoFrogsAllowed · Accepted solution]

You have to compare 7 days to 7 days.  You can't compare 7 days to 30 days.  

If I had more listings, I would use the 30 day views on the listings page to decide whether to renew an item or not.  Listings are for 4 months and those last 30 days of the 4 month time period should help you decide whether to renew or revamp or let it expire.  The first couple months of a new listing wouldn't be very useful in predicting performance.

I think you would be better off looking at the stats page instead of the dashboard, which I don't find to be very accurate, not that stats are very accurate and useful either.  Stats are closest to being correct at the couple of times they update each day and the next morning.

[CraftyCraftsCorners]

Etsy has had a few glitches since Friday on over the weekend may still have a few left. Updating site big time, this may not have help.

[ChillwolfArt · Accepted solution]

Helpful advice from others.

(You may already know this).  When you are in the Shop Manager/Dashboard > Stats...you can filter them to 7 days, 30 days, etc.  At the bottom of this drop down filter is "Custom" (you can type in your own time frame).  I've done this several times.

Hope this is helpful.

[WNYTradingCo]

Has anyone experienced a DROP in the number of visits to a listing from one day to the next?  I began a sale on some of our items yesterday (July11) and wanted to track whether or not the sale would drive at least more visits.  So, I created a spreadsheet, and imagine my surprise to discover that not one, but six of the items I'm tracking experienced a drop in the number of visits from yesterday to today. 

I am tracking thusly: Shop Manager > Listings > Last 30 days > # of visits.  None of the listings in question had been renewed, nor had anything else occurred that I can think of that would have caused the number of visits to diminish.

Of course the world isn't going to end, and those that want to visit will do so, but what is the point of a metric if data can't be relied upon? Naturally it makes me suspicious of my other shop stats and consequently difficult to forge and carry out marketing plans for future seasons.

I will be charting this through the end of the sale to see whether or not I can determine a pattern.  Meanwhile, I'd be interested to know if anyone else has had this happen and if they found the answer!  Thank you for your time and thoughts!

[NedsDrawings]

I appreciate your thought and effort to respond, thank you all. I think choosing a time-window filter isn't the issue. For example, a new example, I looked at my Dashboard today, and chose yesterday's results (updated 17 hours ago). I read that Etsy drew in 93% of the visit results, which is 25 visits (out of a total 29 visits), so it says. When I click on this result, the "Etsy app and Other Etsy Pages" for a breakdown, I see two pages of items, each with one visit yesterday. How many items in total? 10 items. Etsy just told me that it reported 25 visits. Now, am I supposed to remember this result, and hope to see it ACCURATELY reflected after 7 days, or a month? That's neither right nor acceptable. So now you see. 

[NoFrogsAllowed · Accepted solution]

@NedsDrawings 

You need to realize that people can visit your shop without going to any of your listings.  When you posted here in the forum yesterday you immediately got a bunch of people that went to your homepage and because of the nature of your post some of them stopped right there and others maybe checked out your about or your policies, but unless they were specifically interested in something they saw on your home page did not click into any of your listings.  I am one of those people that looked at your shop but did not look at any specific listing, so because of me you got a visit, but it isn't associated with any specific listing