ESS-210 ~ Walk-through of the New Etsy Shop Manager Dashboard

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Fair warning: this walk-through of the new Etsy Shop Manager dashboard is best followed when you have yours open and listen to me walk you through as you follow along… The post below is somewhat long-winded but it’s all in the podcast recording so you won’t miss a thing if you don’t read it word-for you skim through it and just listen to the podcast instead 🙂

Let’s start at the top left-hand corner of your new Shop Manager

• You’ll see the words “Shop Manager” with a little house icon on the left of it and a drop-down arrow on the right
• This is like your home base button… Click on the drop-down arrow to navigate between the “Shop Manager” home page, which is also the same as the “Dashboard” tab
  • Your other navigation options from the drop-down arrow are the “Etsy Marketplace” …Which, annoyingly to me, opens up in the same window
  • And the “Etsy Studio Marketplace” …which also opens up in the same window
    • Now even though you can easily bounce back to the Shop manager by using the “Back” button, my preference would have been to have the market places open up in a new window

Moving on down the left hand menu…

The next tab is “Search” and this one got me really excited…

• Click on “Search” and a pull-out window opens up on the right
  • Under the Search Box you’ll see two headings “Shop Manager” and “Etsy Marketplace”, both will have a zero (“0”) next to them… At first, this didn’t make sense to me but go ahead and type in a search term… Let’s use “sew on patch”
  • Before you hit “Enter” be aware that this “Search” box will perform a search across your listings, convos, your orders, and/or the Help section
  • Okay… Now press enter
    • At the top you’ll see all your listings, if any, that contain the search term you entered >> If your listings are set to auto-renew, you’ll see what date they will be renewed on
    • The next section will list all the orders, if any, you have fulfilled, that contain the search term
    • Next, you will see any convos you have exchanged that contain that search term
    • And finally, if Etsy has any Help articles that contain your search term, they will be listed under the “Help Articles” section, if not, it will say “No results”
    • All these you will find under the “Shop Manager” tab… The number in parentheses next to “Shop Manager” is the total number of results found for that section
  • Now let’s move over to the “Etsy Marketplace” tab… Go ahead and click on that …This is one of the new features I’m excited about…
    • Next to the words “Etsy Marketplace” at the top you’ll see a number in parentheses and this number represents the total number of search suggestions that contain the search term you entered
    • So for my search term “sew on patch”, at the time of this writing, there are 11 search suggestions that contain that phrase
      • The first reason I like this is because these search suggestions give me a clue about what search terms shoppers are entering on Etsy and I can use any applicable ones to tweak my titles and tags if necessary so that I ensure that my listings are showing up for the terms people are searching on
      • Under the “search suggestions” you can find shops that have that term in their name and above the “search suggestions” you can click on the link to search the Etsy marketplace for the exact term you entered
      • You should also note that clicking on any of the search suggestions will take you to a search results page for that term

The next tab down is “Dashboard”

• • This is your primary landing page within the “Shop Manager”… It is where you will be taken to automatically anytime you go to the “Shop Manager”
  • On the “Dashboard” you get a quick snapshot of the following:
    • Your “Open Orders” and “Active Listings” at the very top
      • Under your “Active Listings” you’ll also see how many listings are expired and how many you’ve “Sold Out” of
    • The next section shows your “Conversations”
      • Here you’ll be able to see how many, if any, unread convos you have and there’s also a link in the top right corner that will take you to all your convos, even ones you’ve already read and responded to
    • “Stats Overview”
      • By using the drop-down in the first box, you can select what range of time you want to view stats for
      • Your choices are “Today… Yesterday… Last 7 Days… Last 30 Days… This Month…”
      • And in the second drop-down box you select which channels you want to view stats for… “Etsy… Etsy Studio… and I assume Pattern, if you subscribe to it”
        • For me, the choices are Etsy.com and Etsy Studio because I sell crafting supplies
      • The “Stats overview” shows you how many “Visits” you’ve had for the time period and channels selected… How many “Orders”… As well as how much “Revenue” you have for the date range and channels you’ve selected.
    • I plan to do a whole detailed walk-through of the new “Stats” in a separate episode for you because there’s a LOT behind that little box down there so stay tuned for that 🙂
    • Also, at the very top of your Shop Manager, you will see a personalized greeting and how much money you have available to be deposited into your account as well as what date the deposit will be made
    • On the right is the “Scrolling right-hand sidebar”
      • At the top is the Shop Advisor >> this is where you’ll see messages that pertain to your shop, such as “Suggested Reading and Informational Tips” or listings that will be expiring soon

• Recent activity

• • • • You can either scroll down and see everything and the sidebar will continue populating as you scroll, or…
      • Use the Drop-down arrow to filter “Recent Activity” by Purchases, Reviews, Shop Favorites, or Listing Favorites

The next tab down is “Listings”

• This is pretty self-explanatory… So this might get redundant 🙂
  • At the top of the main section you can use the search bar to search through your listings and quickly find what you’re looking for rather than scrolling through pages of listings
  • The main section has all your active listings by default but you can use the radio buttons on the right too
  • You can make bulk changes to your listings by either selecting the listings you want to change manually, or by using the small box in the top corner of the center of the main section
  • In the column on the right, you can use the big orange “Add a Listing” button to… you guessed it… add a listing!
  • Click the “Quick Edit” button to change all your listings to “quick edit” mode and quickly edit some key sections of your listings
    • Editable sections in this mode are: the title, whether or not the listing should be “featured”, quantity, price, shop section, product weight and dimensions, and tags
  • Underneath the “Quick Edit” button you can use the “Stats” switch to toggle each listings stats on and off
  • Beside the “Stats” toggle switch you can choose how you want to view your listings in the window, either in “Grid” form or “List” form
  • Under that is the “Sort” filter… Use this to choose how you want to sort your listings view…
  • Other “Listings” features that you can quickly access and manage from this menu are:
    • Your “Featured” items
    • …Click on the “More Filters” button and you’ll get an additional menu which you can use to:
      • manage your “Shipping Profiles”…
      • add “Production Partners” if you have any (don’t forget, if you do, Etsy asks that you reveal them), and finally…
      • your “Tags”… You can use this feature to filter your listings by the tags used and then play around with adjusting them… Or switching out tags, etc.

Moving on down the left-side navigation menu, next up is the “Conversations” tab

• Not much has changed with the Etsy convos once you get in this tab

The next tab down is the “Orders” tab

• Here you’ll see all your Open orders, Completed orders, All your orders (both Open and Completed), and finally your Cancelled orders

The next tab down is “Stats”

• As I mentioned earlier, the new “Stats” need their own dedicated episode because there’s quite a lot to dig into so I’ll just give you a brief overview now and record an in-depth episode for you later
  • In the top right-hand corner you can filter your Stats based on which Etsy platform you want to look at…
    • The default is “All Shops”, but note, this doesn’t include multiple Etsy shops if you have more than one… I think it’s a misnomer and should actually say “All platforms” because this drop-down will allow you to filter stats on the main Etsy site, Etsy Studio, and I assume “Pattern by Etsy” if you are subscribed…
  • You can also use the “Date Range” filter to select, you guessed it… a “date range’.
    • It automatically defaults to the “Last 30 Days” because this is Etsy’s recommendation, but you can select from a menu of other options including putting in a “custom” date range.
• The first view you have is of your “Traffic”, note that at the top you can navigate between your “Traffic” stats, “Listings” stats, and “Customer” stats
  • So without getting too deep in the weeds, you can quickly see where your traffic is coming from and how people are finding your shop and listings
    • Pay special attention to the search terms that people use to find your shop and use that information to adjust and update your tags as needed
  • You can also see how well, or not, your social media efforts are working for you
    • Use what you learn here to tweak your social media marketing strategy… Note that this could also mean leaving platforms that aren’t giving you a good return on your time invested or… testing out platforms that you aren’t currently on
  • If you have a blog for your Etsy shop OR if you advertise your Etsy shop on other blogs, then you’ll want to pay particular attention to the “Websites” section to see how well those efforts and/or dollars (or whichever currency you use), are working for you
  • Now go back to the top of your “Stats” window, move over to the right, and click on your “Listings” tab
    • Here you’ll see your “Most Visited Listings” and your “Least Visited Listings”
      • Soooo, what do you do with this intel? You want to make sure that your popular i.e. “Most visited listings” are turning into actual sales and that people aren’t just looking and leaving… And if they are, why???
      • And for your “Least visited listings” you’ll want to figure out why they aren’t getting much love… You’ll see some recommendations from Etsy about how to improve these listings and they’ll have a quick link for you to edit the individual listings
      • Next, below your “Most & Least visited listings” you’ll see how all your listings rank…
        • This is actually a fun section because you can see what your revenue generators are and which products are your duds
        • You can even decide to do things like special promotions or sales, or even adjust your prices up or down based on the info you get here… This section was an eye-opener for me
        • Don’t forget to play around with the “Date range” here too
  • Now go back again to the top of your “Stats” window, let’s take a quick look at the “Customers” tab and then we’ll move on to the next section of the Shop Manager
    • This section is kind of “Google-esque” in that, it gives you information about your customers that can be pretty powerful for you as a seller…
    • The top section tells you what other items your customers searched for… Use this information to consider what direction you can expand your inventory in and what potential future product lines you may want to carry
      • This section was pretty interesting for me because I sell crafting supplies and one of the more popular terms my customers searched for was “taxidermy”… I don’t see the connection and it could have been a search from just one customer, but it did get me thinking about the potential for carrying taxidermy supplies for makers who do taxidermy…
    • Below that is a global map that shows where your customers are coming from…
      • If you don’t yet ship internationally, this will give you an idea of what your potential international sales could be and whether or not there is a lot of (or any) interest in your product line outside of your home country
    • Finally, you’ll see what devices your customers are using… I haven’t yet figured out how to leverage this information or what the benefit of having it is, but I’m sure there’s something to it or Etsy wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of including it… Or would they…?

That’s it for “Stats” for now… Let’s go down to “Finances”

The next four tabs – Finances, Marketing, Community & Help, and Settings all have sub-menus under them so navigating each one will be a 2-step process in our walk-through

• Click on “Finances” and then “Payment Account”…
  • This is basically your “show me the money” section
  • Use this to review payments that are being deposited into your bank account as well as fees you are being assessed
• Click on “Finances” and then “Your Bill”…
  • Here you can see when your next scheduled payment is due and what your current outstanding balance is
  • You can also update your credit card on file (this is the card that Etsy bills for your fees), and you can also choose to make a manual payment
  • You can click on a particular month to view your detailed statement, including listing fees, transaction fees, renewal fees, shipping costs (well, I should say, the cost of postage, it doesn’t include the cost of your shipping supplies of course),
  • Lastly, if you’ve set up automatic bill payments, this is where you can turn those off
• Next, let’s go to “Finances” and then “Payment Settings”…
  • This will bring you to the first of 5 tabs… which is the “Payment methods” tab
    • A while back there was some controversy about Etsy pushing sellers to use “Etsy Payments” in lieu of PayPal… Well, Etsy Payments is now the default payment method but if you want to be able to receive checks, money orders, or some other form of payment, you can set that up here by clicking on the “Enable manual payment methods” link
    • Note that if you get payments by any method other than “Etsy Payments”, you will forfeit being covered by the Etsy Seller Protection Program
    • In this tab, you can also update the bank information for your payments from Etsy, as well as how often you want Etsy to make deposits into your account
  • Back at the top let’s go to the next tab which is “Sales Tax”
    • This is only applicable in the U.S. and there’s a link here to a handy setup guide
    • You’ll need to also know what your local state and county tax laws are in order to be sure you set this section up correctly
  • The third tab at the top is “Shop Currency”
    • This is where you select what currency you want to list your products in and also where you can change the currency of your shop
    • Scroll down to the bottom and be sure to read the blurb about “Price Conversion Preferences” and then decide whether you want to round your prices or not
  • Back at the top, let’s go to the “Billing” tab…
    • This is a simple one… Your payment credit card information is here and you can update this as needed
    • Note, this credit card (or debit card) is the one Etsy will bill your fees to, the information stored here is not used to pay for purchases you make on the Etsy marketplace
  • The fifth and final tab is the “Address” tab and it’s pretty straightforward…
    • Update your address as necessary
    • If you have registered your business then use your business address here instead of your home address… You must be able to receive mail at this address

Let’s move down to the “Marketing” tab

• Click on “Marketing” and the very first tab is “Google Shopping” so go ahead and click on that
  • I won’t open this Pandora’s box right now… And I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean that Google Shopping will have to be an episode of it’s own
  • But, just know that if you want to start advertising on Google to drive traffic to your shop that way, this is how you get to where you can begin to set up your campaigns
• Next, click on “Marketing” and then “Promoted Listings”
  • As with Google Shopping, this is your launching pad to set up Promoted Listing campaigns for your products
  • A deep-dive into this is also going to have to be an episode unto itself… Which, by the way, you’ll have access to as a paid subscriber to my new Etsy Success Strategies ~ The Audio Series membership site
    • And if that sounds like it will cost you an arm and a leg to join, I promise it won’t… If you’re an early subscriber when it launches it will cost just $5/month
    • Because I will be actively building the library of audio recordings, the price will go up as I hit certain milestones because new members that join later on will have access to more audio recordings up front when they join than those who joined at the very beginning
    • Shameless plug over 🙂
• The third tab is “Sales & Coupons”… Click on “Marketing” and then “Sales & Coupons”
  • Etsy is currently rolling out a new platform for you to offer Sales & Coupons and I don’t yet have all the details, though they recently sent an email with info about this, but as you might have guessed… This will be it’s own recorded episode in the very near future 🙂
• The fourth and final tab in the Marketing section is “Key Shopping Dates”… Click on “Marketing” and then “Key Shopping Dates”…
  • This is one of those new hidden gems in the new Shop Manager Dashboard
  • The information in here will help you stay on top of upcoming holidays and shopping trends
    • The good thing is that its updated all throughout the year as seasons and trends change
    • The downside is that the information here only focuses on the U.S. and U.K. markets… But don’t worry, even if you live outside these areas, if you sell products to people in these regions you can still use this information in your marketing efforts
    • The blocks in here will tell you what holidays or seasons are coming up and what items are good to promote for these events…
    • …And in some cases, there will be a quick link button to create a sale or coupon for that event
  • Personally, I think that’s a pretty cool feature to have easy access to within your dashboard

The next tab down is the “Community & Help” tab and each sub-section under this will lead you outside of the Shop Manager and over to that part of the Etsy site

• Essentially, these are just handy dandy quick links to the following areas of the Etsy site:
  • Teams
  • Forums
  • The Help section
  • The Seller Handbook
  • The Shipping Help section, and
  • App marketplace – in this marketplace you can find productivity apps that use the Etsy API to do different things…
    • There are apps for integrating newsletter signups, inventory management, social media management, and much more…
  • Then there’s a link to Etsy’s site policies, and finally…
  • A “Contact Us” page
    • Even though finding a phone number to call Etsy is next to impossible, you can actually use the menu here to request a phone call…
      • Of course it has to be in the languages they offer (currently that’s  just English and German…)
      • And during the hours they offer… Mon-Fri 8am-8pm (ET) and Sat & Sun 10am-6pm (ET) for English; German language phone service hours are Mon-Fri 11am-6pm (CST)

The final Shop Manager tab is the Settings tab… You’ll be pretty familiar with almost all of these…

• The first tab is Info & Appearance… Go to Settings >> Info & Appearance
  • Not much changed once you get in here… You have four tabs to use to edit your shop… >> Info & Appearance, Policies, Shop Name, and Languages
• Next, go to Settings and then About Your Shop
  • In here you can edit your member profile and add shop members, these are done in the “Members” tab
  • The second tab in here is the “Story” tab and this is your shop’s “About” page
    • You can also add a video here… Update your shop photos
    • This is also where you can add links to all your social media and website accounts
  • The third and final tab in here is the Manufacturers tab, however… once you get into this tab you’ll see another button that will re-direct you to the new Production Partners manager…
    • If you work with any manufacturers or production partners, this is where you go to declare who they are
• Next, go back to Settings and click on Options
  • This tab will also be familiar to you…
    • The first tab in here is the “Options” tab and here you can choose how you want your shop arranged…
    • whether or not to accept custom orders…
    • if you want your listings automatically translated into any one Etsy’s supported languages or if you will do translations manually (…I’m not sure why you would, except maybe if the Etsy translations aren’t accurate or if that affects SEO, but I don’t know for sure…).
    • You can also decide whether or not you want shoppers (or your competition) to see what listings you’ve sold (your competitors can use this information to see what products are best sellers and which are duds and then possibly adjust their product lines accordingly)…
    • And finally, you can set your timezone in here as well
  • The next tab is Vacation Mode…
    • You don’t only have to use this when you’re going on vacation… You can also switch to this mode if you’re backlogged on orders and need time to catch up..
    • Use the Announcement box and the Conversation Auto-Reply below the toggle buttons to give visitors more information about your vacation/short break when they visit your shop or if they send you convos
  • Tab #3 is Web Analytics…
    • Etsy web analytics is powered by Google Analytics  – now, I have never delved into this so I don’t have much more to say about it other than there is a guide that Etsy has provided to get you up and running and once I read it I’ll come back here and record a summarized step-by-step walk-through of how to get set up and all
    • You will need a Google Analytics account in order to use this feature so you might as well go ahead and set one up… They’re free…!
  • Tab 4 is the Download Data tab and this where you come to download data… of course… 🙂
    • If you don’t have an integrated accounting system, then this is where you’ll want to head to at tax time in order to get reports on all your Etsy-related financial activity
    • You can download files for items you currently have listed
    • You can also download various Order files as well as Payment and Deposit data
    • You also get to choose what period you want to download data for… As of the time of this writing, you can download data going back to 2005
  • The last tab in this section is the Close Shop tab… If this is something you want to do…
    • You’ll need to first pay off any balances you owe
    • Other than that, I think this tab is pretty self-explanatory
• Now let’s go back to the Settings tab and then click on Shipping Settings…
  • If the items you sell are pretty uniform then it would behoove you to set up shipping profiles and you can do that in the first tab in this section, and that’s the Shipping Profiles tab
    • If you already have shipping profiles set up, this is where you can make bulk edits to them…
      • I will often come in here and change my processing times when I am going to be out of town, that way I don’t have to put my shop on vacation, and shoppers will know when their product will ship and I don’t get dinged for being tardy with my shipping
      • The other advantage to having shipping profiles is that you can easily make bulk edits, and this is a great time saver when you need to make changes across many listings
  • The second tab in Shipping Settings is the Package Preferences…
    • Here you can create profiles for the packages you use most often to ship your items… Alternatively, you can opt to use common Etsy package sizes
    • It is best that you go ahead and set these up rather than entering the dimensions of your packaging each time you send a shipment… It took me some time to figure this out but eventually it clicked 🙂
    • In this section you can also add a package fee if you’d like to… This will be charged to your customer on top of the actual shipping cost
  • The third and final tab in the Shipping Settings section is the Rates & Upgrades tab…
    • In the Shipping Rates section you can select either Post Office retail rates or Etsy Shipping Label rates
      • You get some benefits from using the Etsy Shipping Label rates, such as a higher weight allowance
    • The section under that is the Shipping Upgrades section…
      • Here you can enable the feature that will allow buyers to select expedited shipping when they checkout
• Now go back to the Settings tab and click on Production Partners…
  • This is where you can now add in your Production Partners… And just in case you were wondering:
    • A production partner is defined as anyone that helps you to physically produce your items but who isn’t a part of your shop
  • Adding a Production Partner is kind of a 2-step process, you first add them to your shop profile, then inside of the Listings Manager, you can then connect them with the individual listings that they helped you produce
• To round off the Settings tab… Go back to Settings then click on Shopping Engine Ads…
  • There’s a description and explanation here of what shopping engine ads are and how they work…
  • All you have to do in this tab is read what it says and then decide whether or not you would like to enable or disable this feature
  • Then click “Save” and then you’re done!

But wait… There’s more…

The Sales Channels section

• At the bottom of the left navigation sidebar, you can quickly jump into any of your Etsy shops within the Etsy ecosphere, so Etsy.com, Etsy Studio, and Pattern by Etsy
  • If you don’t have a Pattern by Etsy site, you can create one from here by clicking on the “Add Channels” link
• If you want to edit your Etsy shop, click on the “pencil” icon and it will redirect you to your Etsy shop in “Edit mode”

At the bottom of the navbar you’ll see your name and clicking on it will open up a menu with three options…

• Click on Account Information to update your account information, including:
  • Editing your profile, connecting your social media accounts, and changing your password >> All this is done in the “Account” tab
  • Sliding over to the right is the Preferences tab >> here you get to set your communication and payment preferences
    • Choose your default language and region
    • Select your preferred currency…
    • …And, whether or not you want to receive calls and postal mail from Etsy
  • The next tab over is the Privacy tab >> Decide if you want to be found by your email address and also… Wipe the slate clean of your “recently viewed” listings if you don’t want them showing up on your main Etsy page anymore
    • Just be aware that the tracking will start again as soon as you start browsing so come back in here and clear out your history as often as you need to
  • Tab #4 is Security… >> update your security settings here
    • Decide whether or not you want to use 2-factor authentication, receive notifications when there is a sign in to your account from a new device, and if you want access to your sign-in history
  • The next tab is Addresses >> here you can add a new address and select which address to use as your default
  • Tab 6 is Credit Cards and that’s self-explanatory
    • Do note that the credit card here is for payments when you shop on Etsy and if you want to add a new card, you can only do so when you’re checking out
  • The next tab over is Emails >> and here you get to decide what emails you want to receive from Etsy
  • The last tab is the Taxpayer ID tab
    • You can enter either your Employer Identification Number (EIN) or your Social Security Number (please note, this applies to U.S. sellers only, I’m not sure what the interface looks like here for sellers outside the U.S.)
    • Then, if you meet the requirements, Etsy will send you a 1099-K for tax filing purposes

• Go back now to the navbar where your name is, open the drop-down menu and then select Your Profile
  • Update your profile, including your profile picture, in here… Don’t forget to click “Save Changes’ when you’re done

• The last button in that drop-down menu from your name is the Sign Out button, and you know what that does…

Phew…! And there you have it… The new Etsy Shop Manager.

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Now It’s Your Turn:

• If you like what you heard in this episode and think you could benefit from having this type of detailed educational tutorials about ways to make your Etsy selling experience better and more profitable, then please consider getting on the early notification list for (and subsequently subscribing to) “Etsy Success Strategies ~ The Audio Series” once it launches… Go to ConvoMe.com/ReadToMe to sign up
• Now, please go and log in to your Etsy shop and do something constructive with what you’ve just learned.
• Still have questions? Leave them in the comments section below this episode and I’ll do my best to answer them
• Lastly, if you’ve found this helpful, could you please help me spread the word about this resource to other current or aspiring Etsy sellers?

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