Tips for Etsy Sellers!

Thanks to Petra from Petra's Creations for this fantastic guide. Arm yourself with a cup of tea and a notebook and be sure to take something from this insightful post :)

Hi all, this is Petra from Petra’s Creations. I have some tips for Etsy seller tools and third party tools that might prove handy for you.
Etsy Shop StatsFirst off lets start with the obvious one we all know about: Shop Stats. We all know there’s a shop stats page. We have probably all stalked the page at one point or another to see how many shop/page views we got, what search terms our shop was found with etc. But you can get a lot more information from shop stats than is obvious at first glance.


Hovering over the graph at different times tells you how many listings etc. were viewed at that time.
There are different graphs - tabs at the top of the graph
You can chose to view stats from today, the last 7 days, 12 months and so on
If you click on any link in your traffic sources it will tell you which listings were viewed by people from that source
Clicking on any link under ‘traffic sources on Etsy’ will tell you which listings were viewed and at what time.
Clicking on any of your items in the pages viewed’ or ‘favourites’ sections will give you the stats for that listing including views and favourites. You can chose the date range too.
Clicking on the ‘stats’ button at the top left of each section or item page in your shop will also give you stats on that section/item.
On the stats page under the Promote menu you’ll see etsy mini - you can create widgets of treasuries or your shop, to include on your blog or website.
Under ‘promote’ you’ll also see ‘off site’ where you’ll find codes you can copy and paste into other websites, blogs and which are like badges that point towards your shop.
Under ‘resources along with the must-read seller handbook you’ll find ‘Etsy apps’ where you can search through the many different apps available on etsy from wish lists to more seller tools.Why is knowing a bit more about shop stats useful? Well you can spot trends. See what items are more popular, what search terms and keywords are working for you, what times are usually the most active for your shop, what outside of etsy promotion might be most effective for you and so on.
Etsy searchDespite its frequent hissy fits and changes, etsy search is still your friend. It is still how many many buyers (and treasury curators) chose to search on etsy (as opposed to browse etc). By default, search used to show the most recent listings in any search. People can still chose to view search results by recency but the default is relevancy. Which is a much fairer system and stops people from having to spend money to be seen. But also means that buyers find what they want faster. More sales for etsy! Many of us might know all this but have you noticed the recent market research addition?
When you run a search eg ‘sapphire ring’ beside the ‘sort by…’ option selector at the upper right of the screen you’ll see 3 small squares in grey. The square furthest to the right has 3 little bars in it like a bar chart. This is for selecting to view your search in market research mode! Currently in its infancy and etsy is still gathering data so not every search will provide market research data. The searches that do are usually the most popular searches as they have generated the most data for etsy to analyse. Over time it should improve and this tool has real potential. Currently you can see the price ranges of recently sold items and currently listed items matching your search. This is to help you see where the customer buying trends are from a price point of view. Which may help you set your prices.
Google AnalyticsThere is a more in depth tool called Google Analytics for those that want more in depth trends information, what countries their views are coming from, even what platforms they’re using. I have found that GA is much better at telling me what direct traffic there is than Etsy shop stats as most direct traffic seems to just show up as direct traffic rather than telling me where it came from. As well as that GA picks up on search engine traffic much better in my experience. The main thing to be aware of when viewing GA is that GA and Etsy shop stats will differ in numbers because while GA offers more information - and I personally think Etsy shop stats misses some of the traffic - GA also show stats from situations like this:
A ‘referral’ for blogme.com shows in your GA stats. So you go to blogme.com to find out where your shop was linked. But nothing is coming up. There’s no reference to your shop there.
What happens is A person is viewing a blogme.com and click on a link to Etsy, enters Etsy into their url bar or clicks on an Etsy ad which leads to etsy.com. This person randomly ends up in your shop however briefly. Maybe from search, maybe from clicking something by accident, maybe they were shopping! Either way that’s how blogme ends up in you Google analytics. Whereas it’ll show up as Etsy internal traffic in your shop stats.

If you’re one of the Smartphone brigade like me - you might like the GA apps available. When viewing GA I’m most interested in views, sources, search engine keywords etc and I get this is in a free app from the iTunes store called analytics (by Applidium). There are actually several free aps for viewing GA stats. Just search for Google analytics in iTunes.Betsi and betsi liteYou might have heard of betsi and wondered what they were on about. There is a paid full version of betsi that allows bulk tagging amongst many other time saving actions. It works out at 54 Euro a year or thereabouts but is a huge timesaver for many. There is a free 7 day trial available for this full betsi programme, to see if its worth it for you.

There is also a free version called betsi lite, I use it a LOT. You can change prices, titles, add or remove text from listings on single or multiple listings. I found betsi lite a huge help when I ran a sale, you can’t edit tags but can mark up/down prices and insert text into listings so it saved hours of work.
Etsy on saleEtsy on sale is a third party app that allows you to run sale events and bulk tag for the sale - an example is tagging everything ‘black Friday sale’. It might seem a little confusing but it has proved to be a great tool for some shops. EOS runs on a credit system. You purchase however many credits you like and you can ‘spend’ them on holding sale events, bulk tagging or auto renewing.
A potentially useful tool if you have many many items and spend too much time monitoring what listings are about to expire and for those that hold sales.
Example:
10 credits is 10 US dollars. 100 credits is 25 US dollars
A sale event costs you 4 credits
1 Bulk tagging costs you 1 credit
1 months Auto renewing costs 5 creditsStatsyLocate where your items are found: enter the name of the product and find out what page it shows on in the search results. I have used this and found some items weren’t ‘found’ at all, which helped me find what search terms were working and which are duds. You can also use vutrac to look at item stats in a spreadsheet format. Lastly, you can sign up to be informed if etsy features you on their homepage.

CraftopolisOne of my favourite tools on craftopolis is the tag report. You’ll see what tags and search terms your items were being found with recently. This will give you an idea as to what item photos are grabbing peoples attention in the search results too. Other tools on craftopolis are shop lovers and edit express. See who is favourting your shop/items and do basic (free) edits to your listings.
Craft CultHere you’ll find the heart-o-matic to view shop and single item hearts and views. You’ll also find the vault where you can search the archives of etsy front page treasuries (to see if you were ever featured and to create widgets of those treasuries to use on your blog or website). You can create general widgets of your shop, that link to it. For use on websites, blogs etc. although etsy provides a similar tool - in shop stats - some prefer the user interface of the craft cult one.
Shop value calculatorCalculate your shop worth or check out the competition. See your shop stock worth, views, hearts, view to favourite ratio and more at a glance. Just enter your shop name. Can be a tool for gauging your shop performance.

ShmetsyA really really useful tool for creating treasuries really simply. Then sending conversations to the people in your treasury with a single click. A useful tool if you enjoy making the treasuries and spreading out some etsy joy but hate how long they take to make.

Shop Shaper
Shop shaper is a bulk editing and software tool - one which you can purchase a daily, monthly or yearly pass to. Plus there’s a free 3 day trial. If you need to bulk edit and cant use craftopolis and only want a 1 day pass this might be the option for you.

Prototypes on etsy

Did you know there’s an etsy prototype page for the various prototype testing teams? There might be something of interest to you here. Prototypes is oddly placed under the ‘more ways to shop’ tab on the etsy homepage but this is the link:http://www.etsy.com/prototypes?ref=fp_nav_prototypes

Google adwords keywords tool
This tool can help you find which words are worth using in your tags and which have more competition. It is not an actual etsy tool but is known to be of use to etsy sellers.
　
Google Analytics Shop stats analysis -www.google.ie/analytics/
Betsi and betsi lite bulk tool editor - http://www.blugrin.com/
Etsy on sale bulk tag editor and sales -http://www.etsyonsale.com/
Statsy more shop stats, featurer -http://statsy.org/
Craftopolis tag reports - http://www.craftopolis.com/
Craft cult hearts tracker -http://www.craftcult.com
Shop Value Calculator -http://shopvaluecalculator.com/
Shmetsy treasury making tool -http://www.shmetsy.com/
ShopShaper bulk editing and accounting -www.shopshaper.net/
Etsy prototypes -http://www.etsy.com/prototypes?ref=fp_nav_prototypes
Google adwords tool -https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool
Outright accountancy software -http://outright.com/etsy/
Analytic tool - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/analytic/id347040462?mt=8