An Overlooked Mistake that New Etsy Sellers Often Make
More and more I'm noticing a trend amongst new Etsy sellers... they're not fully setting up their shops as they open for business.
I'm seeing a lot of newbie sellers in the forums asking for help, and most of the time, they haven't set up the framework for their Etsy store, focusing instead only on the listings, and then at a bare minimum.
This is problematic for a few reasons. The first of which are legal obligations that any seller needs to be aware of. This will depend on the product type, where you live and where you sell to. There are consumer laws in most jurisdictions, not only do you have to be aware of what those are in your own backyard, but you also need to be aware of any international selling issues.
The EU for example requires any retailer selling any type of products to it's citizens to have a privacy policy on their shopping page as well as visible contact info. Every Etsy shop selling to Europe needs to comply with this, if you don't, any and all disputes you have with a customer will automatically be decided in their favor.
The second problem has to do with trust. Etsy gives us specific slots to fill out in our shops, the framework, and each of these works to build trust with our customers. Not filling out these basic pieces of information puts a seller in the same league as a scammer or con artist.
There are a lot of bad players on Etsy looking to take advantage of unsuspecting buyers, and they generally do the least amount of work possible in their efforts. In order to stand out and be seen as a legit and honest seller, you need to make the effort and build that trust with potential shoppers.
And third, Etsy uses much of this information as part of your shop's quality score, which is used in part for search rankings. Want to rank a little higher in search? Fill out your policies and about section!
So many new shops I have visited this year have skipped over all these shop info pieces. Things like a shop banner, shop button, profile pic may seem un-necessary - and there's an argument to be made that these don't increase sales per say. But they do build trust. Your about section and policies though are a must have. So while on the surface it doesn't seem like these would necessarily be important or essential, it does in fact help in long term by building that trust, building a brand and building a following.
To illustrate my point I looked at the current top 100 selling Etsy shops to calculate how many were making use of certain shop features. Here are the results:
Shop Banner: 95% of top sellers had a shop banner
Shop Button: 100% had a shop button
Profile Pic: 99% filled this out with something
Shop Tagline: 93% made use of this for their branding
Shop Announcement: 86% were using this space
About Section: 85% had filled out at least part of this area
Policies: 100% had their policies filled in
This is how successful shops set themselves up. You can see from the numbers where the priorities lie.
The shop button and profile pic are used throughout the site and on various communications, these are key trust points and the most successful sellers know this. It aids in brand recognition.
The shop tagline should convey what your business is about, and it's searchable by external search engines like Google. So it's helpful all around to write this up well.
Policies have legal implications. Simply put, you have to have them.
The about section is really for your own benefit, Etsy counts it in your shop's quality score, it can nudge you up slightly in search and it's an awesome tool to communicate with buyers and let them know more about you or your business. You can also add your social links here. Really, why wouldn't you make use of this even in part?
The shop announcement is useful for communication, but doesn't otherwise have specific benefits. Successful sellers use this to convey all kinds of different things depending on their needs and the vast majority found something to add here.
Do the work, sell well
Shawnna