This morning I found myself asking the same thing that many Etsy sellers ask themselves regularly- The million dollar question; "Why are some Etsy shops selling so Darn many items while others (myself in particular) are not". So I did what I normally do when faced with a dilemma- I turned to my cat and asked; "What's going on Beans?" And since he refused to share any helpful info (useless fur ball) I decided to conduct a bit of research for myself.
My criteria for comparison would be;
- For the high selling shops in the comparison, all shops must obviously have had a good number of sales (ranging from 30 items per year to 425).
- All shops must have a substantial percentage of products/art that is comparable to what I sell at Weird Woolly Designs, namely embroidery hoops.
- All shops must have the highest quality products, wonderful craftsmanship and highly aesthetically pleasing pieces.
- They must all have good, eye-catching photography
So assuming all of the sellers in this comparison (the high sellers and low sellers alike) all posses these same admirable qualities, then what elements of the Etsy shop experience does that leave for us to examine? After giving it some thought I began to see a rather large gap between the pricing and variety in products offered at Weird Woolly Designs and that of the highly successful 4 sellers.
THE ANALYSIS:
Weird Woolly Design's PRICE RANGE
Considering only my embroidery hoops, my prices range from $30-$80
The price range of all items in my shop is $10- $80
Another (Low) Seller of beautifully crafted embroidery hoops PRICE RANGE
$26-$40
The 4 Comparison Shops' PRICE RANGES
All of these other shops offer product pricing starting in the single digits and going up to the triple digits. The average price range amongst these sellers is about $5-$150 (an average of about $15-$40 for embroidery hoops).
Weird Woolly Design's PRODUCT VARIETY
I currently have 17 total items in my shop, 14 of which are embroidered hoops. Not much variety there.
Another (Low) Seller of beautifully crafted embroidery hoops
No variety what-so-ever, 100% of their items are embroidered hoops
The 4 Comparison Shops' PRODUCT VARIETY
These shops offer a wide variety of items. Although their embroidery hoops may be the strongest items (no bias there) they do offer a wide array of other products as well, such as stationary, antiques, jewelry and stuffed animals.
Hmmm... Makes me think about expanding my product offerings just a bit.
One More Consideration...
I was reading a blog this morning that mentioned what a turn off it is to potential international buyers to see that a seller does not offer International shipping, or doesn't display International shipping rates in their shop. Let's see what my 4 star Etsy sellers are doing on that front;
Oh look at that, they list shipping rates for Canada, US and Everywhere else.
Yep. Shipping rates for the US and Everywhere else.
How about this one- FREE WORLDWIDE shipping! (With 425 sales/year there just might be something to this!)
Nope US shipping only
Conclusion
While there are limitless factors to take into account when an Etsy shop is not doing well in sales, at this point there are a few obvious places for me to start as I update Weird Woolly Designs. Adding the International shipping option could be well worth the effort as well as expanding my product line, range of prices and product variety.
Well I gotta run. It looks like my to-do list for today just got a lot longer and I have some fast and furious crafting to do...
Thumbnails left to right; raccooncatcreations' shop, itsastitch's shop, MontclairMade's shop, mydarlingdinosaur's shop, www.WeirdWoollyDesigns.Etsy.com
No comments:
Post a Comment