ESS-196 ~ Experiencing Etsy From a Buyer’s Perspective ~ Etsy Site Updates May 2017

this week, I’ll be updating you on the Etsy site updates for May 2017, just in case you missed them.

Etsy announced some changes they were making to the marketplace to make the buying experience for shoppers more satisfactory. The thinking is that if buyers are happier shopping on Etsy, then that will result in increased sales for you.

Here’s a summary of the updates they made and how they might possibly affect you… And no, you don’t have to hold your breath expecting the worst… 🙂

New Promotions Tool

There’s a new section in your Shop Manager that allows you to very quickly and easily set up and run sales and promotions for your products, or your entire Etsy shop
- To get to it, go to: Shop Manager >> Marketing >> Sales & Coupons
On the Etsy marketplace side, as of August 22nd, 2017, Etsy has added search filters and tools for buyers to use to find items that are on sale or have special promotions
The main benefits of this new tool for you include:
- As I mentioned above, the ease of scheduling and running promotions…
- You can schedule a sale or create a coupon (or more) to share with specific customers
- The tool allows you to take anywhere between 10% & 70% off your prices and you can also set minimum order requirements so that a buyer has to purchase a certain minimum quantity or $$ amount before the discount applies
  - This is a really handy feature because it gives you more control over the sale and how much you make
- If you’re strapped for ideas about when to offer sales and promotions, you can use the Key Shopping Dates feature in your Shop Manager to get suggestions on what events or seasonal trends are happening and also the types of products shoppers will be looking for during those times
  - To get there, go to your Shop Manager and then go to: Marketing >> Key Shopping Dates
  - The information in here changes throughout the year so be sure to check it on a fairly regular basis
  - For more information about this, listen to my Etsy Success Strategies Ep. 210, where I discuss this feature of the Shop Manager in the detailed walk-through I did in that episode
Another benefit is new customer attraction and retention of repeat customers
- Etsy now has filters so that buyers can shop for sale items in the marketplace
- As a seller, when you create a sale or promotion, the listing pages and listing cards for the items that are being promoted will be updated by Etsy in the search results so that buyers will be able to clearly tell that they have a special promotional offer
  - The listing cards will show the sale price as well the original price with a strikethrough… And if you’ve opted to have an order minimum, the words “with minimum” will also appear
  - Shoppers will only be able to use one offer per listing
A third benefit of this new promotions tool is the stats you’ll have access to about the promotions you run
- You’ll get detailed performance stats so you can make changes as necessary… Stats that include the quantity sold as part of the promotion as well as the revenue generated from each promotion
The final benefit will be good news to those who have tried to use coupons in the past…
- Now, when you create coupons you’ll get a URL that you can share with shoppers or your customers
- Clicking the link will automatically apply the coupon or sales promotion to shoppers carts… So, there’s no more having to enter a code in at checkout

The next update they announced is Etsy…

Working on the Trust Factor

At the time of this writing, Etsy is currently working on a project to test ways to increase shoppers’ trust in you by showing your star rating and reviews on your product listing pages
- They say they also want to highlight other important features about your shop but right now I don’t know what those are
- When this “Trust Factor” experiment officially becomes a thing on Etsy I’ll let you know…

Update #3…

Other Product Recommendations

Okay… For this one you can hold your breath because at first blush, you might not like what they have planned…
In a nutshell, Etsy says that buyers like to have more recommendations for products when they are shopping
- Think about your own behavior when you shop online and decide whether or not you agree with this…
Showing recommended items from multiple shops on listing pages is not a new thing… Etsy has been doing this since 2013 for shoppers that arrive at the site through the Google ads that Etsy pays for
- Etsy says that doing this resulted in an overall increase in purchases
So… Based on all that… Etsy is going to start testing showing recommended items on some listing pages, depending on the referral source (of the shopper), specifically, if they come from a search engine search or from a post on social media
- The experiment began in late May/early June
- What they are doing is showing listings from other shops within another shop’s product listing… And then in your Stats, you’ll be able to see how many visitors came to your shop from another Etsy shop
- That sounds all fine and dandy, however, the reverse is also true… That is, listings from other sellers will also show up within your own product listing
  - Now it’s sounding not so bueno huh…?
- Fortunately, there’s a way out if you don’t like the idea of having other sellers’ products showing up in your product listings…

How to Share a link Without Recommended Listings Showing Up

You’ll need to create a personalized link for your product listing by adding your shop name to the listing’s URL
- So when a customer goes to your listing by clicking on this personalized link, they will not see any recommendations from other Etsy shops
- So if you want to share a link on Twitter or Facebook or wherever on social media, the default URL will be something like “etsy.com/listing/12345”
- But instead, you will personalize your link to be “etsy.com/yourshopname/listing/12345”
- Note that this really only applies when you’re sharing your links, say on social media for instance
Also, note that if you share links to your other products within your listing descriptions (by the way… this is a great way to cross-promote your products, so if you aren’t doing this already, then you really should start doing it), be aware of the following:
- If you shorten the link to only show the listing number then shoppers will not see recommended listings from other shops
- If you remove the “https://” from the URL then shoppers will see recommended listings
- I use bit.ly to shorten my URLs, you can do the same thing with the Google link shortener as well, and if you do, just remember to personalize the URL before shortening it or all this will be for naught

Okay… now you can exhale… Let’s talk about other changes Etsy has in the works to make the marketplace better for buyers

The Etsy Search Experience

Etsy announced that they have been working on improving the search experience since about the beginning of this year and that included implementing things like the “Item Attributes” feature… Which, if you’re like me and had to go in and update over 200 listings so that they would be optimized for search in Etsy Studio as well, was a huge pain…
Currently they say they are testing “category search filters based on item attributes”… I don’t know what that means but it’s supposed to help give buyers better results when they search

And finally…

Sharing the Wealth

Etsy has said that they will share data about buyer behavior on the main Etsy site that they are privy to
- They’ll tell you what that behavior means for you as a seller and how to use it to your advantage
- And also, what tools and additional features they are working on

Now Over to You:

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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