Getting Initial Reviews

Reviews are one of the most important things on Etsy. They helps your product listings rank better, but more importantly, they give shoppers confidence to buy.

After you open your shop, tell your friends and family about your new shop, most of the time they will be happy to try your product and give you feedback.

Make sure you follow Etsy’s rule for selling to family and friends: “Transactions and reviews between friends and family are not considered shilling as long as they reflect the honest, unbiased opinion of the buyer and meet the following criteria”.

Asking For Customer Reviews

It’s time to set up some templates for asking customer reviews.

The best approach to this is to be friendly and ask customers about their experience and feedback. End the message with an ask for review, adding it’s very important to a small new business.

Here’s a template you can use:

“Thank you again for your order! I hope you like using it/find it useful/etc.

If you are happy with the product, I’d appreciate if you can leave a positive review. It can really help a small business like mine.

https://www.etsy.com/your/purchases

Thank you!”

Biggest reason for doing this is to stack up reviews early on so that your shop looks more experienced and reputable. A good amount of 5-star reviews can also protect you from unreasonable or hard to satisfy customers who would leave a negative review no matter what.

Especially for digital products, the competition is high. A shop with no sales/reviews are hard to get that first sale.

The more sales and reviews you get, the more customers will be comfortable buying from you. And the higher your conversion rate will be. That means, the better your shop will rank on Etsy search.

Customer Service

Set up saved replies of commonly asked questions or add the answer to product description.

Some of the commonly asked questions will be:

• How does it work
• How to edit the design
• Will I get physical products

In the beginning, if you get any unhappy customers, just send refund and cancel the order. It’s not worth the risk of dealing with negative reviews. It is very hard for a new shop to come back from negative reviews.

Pricing Strategy

There is no right answer in pricing. You can match your competitor’s price, provide a more premium product, or try to compete with a lower price.

My recommendation, and the strategy that worked well for Growing Your Craft, is to set a slightly lower price in the beginning while offering the same high quality products. Good thing about digital product is that there is little to no costs of selling more.

But be careful of putting your price too low. You will of course get some sales, but a lot of shoppers may have the impression that your design is not as high quality.

Also, you can ‘Run a sale’ on your products to convince shoppers that they are getting a good deal.

Here is the strategy I recommend in the beginning:

• Set the original price the similar to your biggest competitors
• Start with a 30% discount on your product (feel free to test out a higher or lower percentage)

Given that your digital product is high quality, the product photos are eye-catching and the SEO is done correctly, sales should come in quickly - usually within a few days.

This is a good way to quickly get sales and reviews so that customers are comfortable buying from you and Etsy algorithm will push your products up in search results.

You can slowly increase the price once you get more sales or consistent sales.

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