Getting Traffic & Sales
We have two objectives in this module:
1. Knowing how to get traffic to your shop
2. Getting customers to return again and again
First part, we will look at the ways to get people to your shop - Both internal traffic within Etsy, and external traffic from outside Etsy.
After that, we will see how to leverage email marketing to get customers to buy from you again and again.
Before starting to work on your Etsy shop marketing, it’s a good idea to make sure the Etsy shop and listings are optimised. That includes your product offering, listing photos, listing description, pricing, branding, etc. An optimised shop will make sure that the traffic coming in has the best chance to convert into sales.
Also, when it comes to traffic, quality is more important than quantity. Quality traffic means that you are bring in traffic that closely resembles your target customers. That is why promoting on Etsy forums is not an effective strategy, because most people using the Etsy forum are sellers and are not interested in buying.
In fact, if you bring in traffic that doesn't buy from you, it could hurt your conversion rate and listing quality score, which can cause your search ranking to drop.
With that in mind, let’s start working on bringing good traffic to your Etsy shop.
The majority of your traffic should come from Etsy search. To learn how to rank better on Etsy search, click here to review the Etsy SEO Course.
However, there are additional strategies that you can use to get more shoppers into your shop.
Etsy Ads
Etsy ads is a good way to generate a lot of views in a short time, and can be very useful for smaller shops at the start of the shop. Just keep in mind that ads fee can add up very quickly if you are not careful.
Before turning on the ads, it's a good idea to first optimise your listings.
After that, here are the 7 steps to test profitable Etsy ads:
- Choose 10-20 initial items - They can be bestsellers, recently sold products, products with high margin, products in many shopper's carts, etc.
- Test for a week - I use a budget of $5 daily. Many sellers set the budget too low or the testing period too short, making it impossible to make informed decisions to improve their Etsy ads performance.
- Analyse & improve - Keep high conversion rate listings (>3%), improve photo of low click rate listings, optimise listing of high click rate low order rate listings. And if the view, click and conversion rates are low, turn the ads off for them.
- Add new products to test if necessary - They could be products recently sold, products on sale, etc.
- Test for another week and analyse again
- Turn off listings that still have low conversion rate or click rate. You should be left with the best performing listings
- Scale up
For more details, click here to read the Etsy Ads course.
Product scarcity
Sometimes, Etsy puts “only 3 available and it’s in X people’s cart” to create scarcity and urgency for shoppers. It makes them feel if they don’t act soon, they may lose the chance of buying that popular product.
You can take advantage of this by putting the quantity of your bestsellers to 3 or lower. It increases the chance of that sentence showing underneath your listing, which creates a powerful sense of urgency for your potential shopper at 0 cost to you.
Create product bundles
Combine some of your products together to create new bundle listings. Even better if the products make sense to be together (e.g. same color, frequently used together). This way you will be able to create more listings to cover more long-tail keywords, potentially reaching more customers.
Additional traffic is always good, but one thing to keep in mind is to not overwhelm yourself and spread yourself too thin.
A lot of successful Etsy shops, including mine, are built without many external traffic sources like social media, blogs, etc. If your foundation is good (great product offering with optimised listings), you may be surprised of how little you need from external traffic.
But if your shop is ready, here are 3 ways that you can bring in traffic from outside Etsy:
- Social media
- Forums and Quora
- Your own blog
Social media
I would recommend learning the basics of 1-2 social media. If you have a platform that you use regularly and are already familiar with, start with that. Don't spread yourself thin by being on every social media platform.
The main aim for social media is to build better relationship with your followers by providing useful content for them. Useful content can include educational (like infographic about your niche), behind the scene (especially good if your product requires skills to produce), or even just entertaining (e.g. funny, trendy reels on Instagram).
If you'd like to start bringing in traffic from Instagram, read this comprehensive course.
Forums & Quora
By forum, I’m referring to forums external to Etsy’s like Quora, Reddit and other sites. Don’t waste your time promoting on Etsy forum as most people there are sellers, not buyers.
To promote your shop on forums, you need to be a helpful expert in your niche. Use your expertise and skills to answer your potential customers’ questions. Show them that you are a trustworthy advisor. Show them you are an expert.
You can ‘soft sell’ your shop by mentioning it inside your answer/post, but pushing your shop shouldn’t be the main focus.
Starting your own blog
Starting your own blog can be a big commitment if you don’t have the experience. It can take months of hard work before you see any decent traffic to your blog.
You will need to spend quite a bit of time to learn how to build a website. Options like Squarespace, Wix, Shopify are relatively easy to pick up, but if you want more control, you may look into options like Webflow (Growing Your Craft is built on Webflow FYI).
Also, you’ll need to find the right topics to research and write. Remember keyword research from the Etsy SEO course? You will need to do the same for your blog articles. Only this time, instead of trying to rank on Etsy, you are trying to rank on Google.
Write blog posts that your potential customers would care about. For example, if you sell crystals, a post about “10 crystals that help with love” could interest your target customer. Or if you sell kitchen supplies, you can consider writing recipes that use the supplies you sell.
Despite the work that you’d need to put in for starting your own blog, there are a lot of positives. You will have a lot more control over the design of your website compared to your Etsy shop. And a successful blog can bring in a lot of traffic, and the traffic is generally more consistent over time. Also, it gives you more opportunity to collect emails from potential customers through lead magnets.
I would recommend giving it a try as many website builders have free trials available, and knowing how to build and customise a website is a valuable skill.
Email Marketing is a tool to help you convert shoppers into customers, and most importantly, customers into long-term fans.
Many Etsy sellers ignore the power of email marketing and are basically leaving money on the table.
Let's look at how to effectively capture customer emails, build an automatic email system and market to your customers so that they come back again and again.
Creating A Lead Magnet
Lead magnet is the incentive or a freebie that you give to shoppers or customers to sign up to your email list. They could be a discount, free shipping, relevant information like style guide, etc.
Ask People To Sign Up
You can't just add your customers to your email list as that is against Etsy's rules.
For customers, there are two main ways for you to contact them for a sign up: direct messages on Etsy and automatic receipt message in their order receipt. A simple message like this can do the trick:
“Thank you so much for your order! I really appreciate it!
I’d like to send you some useful information on how to take care of your product, special deals during holidays and new products when they come out. I promise there won’t be any spam!
Please follow this link for the signup:
(link to signup form)
The first email would be a guide to making sure your product lasts a long time.
Can’t wait to talk to you soon!”
Choosing Email Marketing Services
Here are the ones that I recommend because of good functionalities and high deliverability (so that the emails actually ends in your customer's mailboxes:
What Types Of Emails To Send
- Product launch email - Send out email when you launch exciting new products. Pairing a product launch with a discount can make it more effective. Just be careful not to give discount too often because it can lower the perceived value of your products
- Holiday sale email - Sale seasons like Black Friday and Christmas are huge. And email is the best way to reach your customers directly, and it's way cheaper than placing ads because ads tend to be a lot more expensive in sale seasons. Black Friday sale should be the biggest of the year, and you can highlight that in the email subject line: “Our biggest sale of the year”
- Product care email - Sending care instruction or use guide for your product can improve the overall experience of your customers, making them more likely to leave a positive review and come back in the future
- Review ask email - You can also send out email to ask for reviews after your customers have received the products
Click here to start the email marketing course for in-depth strategies
Really Good Emails for email design and message inspirations
Sales and promotion are a double edged sword. On one hand, it can boost your shop’s sales drastically. On the other hand, if it’s overused, it can cut into your profit as customers won’t buy at regular price any more.
Sales and coupons are more powerful when combined with email marketing. Customers can be informed of promotion when they happen, or the promotion can be paired with new product launches. Refer to the Email Marketing course for more details.
There are 3 types of special offers you can run on Etsy:
Run A Sale
You can choose to offering a percentage off discount or free shipping discount. You can also set the minimum order to qualify, duration of sale and location where it will be valid. If you choose ‘none’ for the minimum order to qualify, then you can pick which listings you want to run the sale on.
Send offers to interested shoppers
There are 3 types of situations where Etsy can send a coupon code automatically:
- When a shopper favourites your item
- When a shopper leaves your item in their shopping cart without checking out (abandoned cart)
- After a customer’s order is shipped
In my experience, they can be very useful in turning shoppers into customers, and also encouraging customers to come back to purchase again. The set up process is pretty easy as well. Just keep in mind not to offer a discount too big that it discourage shoppers from buying your products in regular price.
Create a coupon
Unlike running a sale, coupon code is only applicable to people who have the code. Other shoppers/customers will not see the discount in your shop.
Other than a percentage discount and free shipping, you can also create a coupon code that discounts a fixed amount per order. One thing to keep in mind is that a fixed amount may discourage bigger orders, as the amount of discount doesn’t change even for more items in an order.