How can you improve your listings to get more sales? One way is to submit your store for critique by experts, and on Tuesday, Etsy is hosting a shop optimization session. Sellers can submit their shops for review for a chance to have Etsy staff evaluate specific listings and share their feedback in the forums.
Announcement follows:
On Tuesday, July 11th, we’re going to be offering listing critiques to help get your shops into tip top shape! Etsy Admin worldwide, with guidance from the Shop Optimization Team, will be evaluating your specific listings and sharing their feedback in the Forums.
These critiques are a great opportunity for you to receive specialized feedback from Etsy Admin about what’s working and what you could improve on for a specific listing in your shop.
We will consider requests on a lottery based system, so folks who post throughout the hour could have their listings critiqued (rather than on a first come first serve basis). We have an internal system that will randomly select folks who have posted to receive a listing critique in the allotted hour. Please note that thoughtful critiques take time to construct, which means that we will not be able to get to every request during this session.
We will be accepting submissions for listing critiques from 12:00-1:00pm ET and critiques will be delivered between 12:00-4:00pm ET.
How to participate
Head into the Discussions section of the Forums on July 11th at 12:00 pm ET, where you will find a Listing Critique thread pinned to the top. You can respond to that thread with a link to one listing from your shop that you would like us to focus on before 1:00 pm ET. (Note: You can only post one item for the session, so choose wisely!)
Etsy Admin will share their feedback on a rolling basis from 12:00-4:00 pm ET. (Not necessarily in the order that the links are received.)
SOURCE: Etsy Announcement
Who would let them critique their shops?
Bad enough that Etsy promotes keyword spamming.
Now they are giving other sellers spotlights in your listings. (especially listing above your items for sale and directing buyers away from your shop)
And the buyers can’t find things with their searches.
This site has gotten worse with all the changes.
You can tell, the management have no selling skills or an idea how to sell.
I’m sorry but Etsy have no clue whatsoever about how customers search for their items. Etsy base their search criteria on how Etsy thinks items should be found but customers looking for products will want to type exactly what they are looking for to find what they need and not expect to have to scroll through pages and pages of items that do not relate at all to what they are looking for.
I sell digital downloads as do many other Etsy sellers and in fact make up a large proportion of sellers now on Etsy so Etsy should have the decency to listen to us which they do not!
We have no categories or attributes that match what we sell and nor do we even have a category for digital downloads or digital items.
Those of us selling digital downloads have to use the following attributes.
Craft & Supplies > Canvas & Surfaces > Stencils, Templates & Transfers > Clipart
None of the above relate to what we sell and makes absolutely no sense at all so how the hell is a customer supposed to find us.
I’d love for them to critique my shop. Maybe then they would realize that my items are not in the proper category making it impossible to list my items correctly. They have “Ribbon” under the category “Fabrics & Notions”. I sell wired ribbon & the last time I checked wired ribbon was not considered a fabric & I know that it certainly isn’t a notion. I have had my phone call returned at least 15 times about this subject by the telephone “Etsy Pacifiers”, I have filled out 4 taxonomy forms, I have emailed numerous times finally finding my way to “Pete” who is the “Shop Optimization Specialist” we have emailed each other numerous times & in one of his last emails he said no changes would be made because ” wired ribbon is used for sewing, which is why we have given buyers the opportunity to find it in both categories:
Craft Supplies & Tools > Sewing & Fiber > Sewing & Needlecraft Quilting
Craft Supplies & Tools > Sewing & Fiber > Sewing & Needlecraft > Sewing”
I asked Pete if he had a clue what wired ribbon is really used for & if I was to send him a piece of ribbon that you can actually sew with vs a piece of wired ribbon would he possibly learn something. He agreed that he had no idea what wired ribbon is used for even though he just sent the response quoted above.
They keep telling us important the attributes are going to be & that tags are not going to weigh in on the search equation (which is a joke anyway) anymore. If that’s the truth nobody will find my wired ribbon…. they give us up to 5 craft choices out of about 12 or so that we can use when listing, the only craft type that semi fits my wired ribbon under fabric & notions is “Flower Arranging” (Which shouldn’t even be a craft type listed under “Fabric & Notions”) Can their category options get much worse?
Pete finally told me that he doesn’t actually have the ability to change anything either, so I guess he too is an “Etsy Pacifier” just a more advanced one than the ones that I speak with on the phone.
This has been going on since they added the attributes to our listing & I can’t get anyone to listen. I’m about ready to fly from Calif to New York so I can walk into Etsy & let them know that nobody is leaving until they fix my category. The only thing stopping me is that I’m sure they have some kind of electronic key passcode or something to get into their upscale, green, multi-million dollar building.
The changes that Etsy has made in the first 6 months of 2017 have all been detrimental to both buyers & sellers & I can not figure out which way they are trying to go. Are they trying to work Etsy into the ground for some reason? Are they selling? Are they trying to fix it? I have no idea but watching them make the wrong decisions over & over again and watching them run tests that are not going to help the site, the buyers or the sellers in any way is brutal. I spoke to one of the Etsy Pacifiers on the telephone yesterday about the buyers complaining about Etsy taking things out of their shopping carts that they planned on purchasing later & putting them in their “saved for later file”. She said that was another test Etsy was running, she then said they only run tests on things that buyers have requested numerous times. I tried to explain that there was no way that numerous people asked for things to be taken out of their shopping carts & added to their saved for later file, if they had wanted it there they would have put it there themselves. She was adamant that tests were only run on things numerous people had requested.
It seems like Etsy is trying to drive their buyers away, if they aren’t trying to, I’d hate to see it if they were because the buyers are leaving Etsy every day due to the messed up search function (which might have something to do with the messed up category placements) & because Etsy keeps changing the shopping cart & they way that the buyers check out. The 1st thing an e-commerce site should learn is that you always want to make checking out as easy as possible & once your buyers are used to things being a certain way when checking out (Such as having numerous items in their cart that are saved for later), you don’t ever change it unless it’s absolutely necessary. In other words, you should never rock the apple cart.
So as this long drawn out post comes to a close… sure Etsy go ahead & critique my shop, so then you can let everyone know that you have messed up yet again & not put my items in the correct category. I’m sure it still wwouldn’t be corrected though.
Etsy 2017 = eBay 2008
Difference here is that Etsy may not survive the next nine MONTHS, let alone 9 years.