Don't Lose Your Etsy's Visitors | Check What Can Be The Reasons

If you're not making sales on Etsy or maybe not as many sales as you'd like it all boils down to two main problems that need to be addressed. Let's talk about what those are and how to fix them. 

How do friends, Now I help you start and grow your Etsy shop into a small business and I've been a full-time seller in NC for over a year and a half If you want to know "How to Get More Views that turn into sales then keep on reading to the end. Seriously

So, let's start with the obvious you need eyeballs on your shop to make sales. The same thing with a brick and mortar store right you can't make any sales if nobody walks in the door. 

Part of your job on Etsy is to make sure that your products get recommended in the search and also on the homepage and in the Etsy app. 

Of course, some of your views can come from things like social media or paid ads whether the ads are through Etsy or you know Facebook or whatever, but those are not essential. 

You can't have a very successful Etsy shop without paying for ads ever and it's actually preferable to the Etsy algorithm to let Etsy drive the traffic for you instead of doing it yourself.

These are 4 Reasons Why There is Less Traffic on Your Etsy Shop  

There are four things that are affecting your visibility on Etsy and I'm gonna rank them from least likely to most likely and I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this starts before you even make a listing. 

A hard lesson that a lot of businesses will learn is that just because you have a product to sell doesn't mean people are just going to buy it. Thankfully making an Etsy listing of just one item like that's handmade will cost you very little. The cost of supplies and 20 cents to make the listing. 

So, it's relatively low risk to try out your handmade stuff on Etsy. This does not mean that just because you're not getting views, your product is bad. There are a lot of other factors as well but this is just 

1. Product Demand

Least likely reason but you need to make sure that there is actually a demand for your product. So, for this you need to ask yourself are there similar products for sale on Etsy already and are those shops making sales. If the answer to those is no then you might want to rethink.

2. Quality Score

This slightly more likely reason that you're not getting views. Is your quality score. Quality score is basically a pretty big factor in how Etsy determines search ranking. Your SEO matters a little bit to an extent. So, SEO is your things like title tags, description which i mentioned in that post also. 

But those things really only tell Etsy what the item is. SEO does not really determine where your item is ranked. So, the only problem you can really have with your SEO is that it's not clear what your product actually is. So, Etsy doesn't know where to put it. 

Like i discussed in that post about quality score and SEO. There are factors outside of your actual listing that go into it. So, things like your info being complete like your info and about sections, your reviews, your conversion rate, if you ship on time, if you're active in the shop things like that. 

Many people including myself and I started in my shop make the same mistake that you think that you can just set it and forget it on Etsy put some listings on there and leave it alone which I'm sure you figured out by now if you're reading this post that doesn't work.

3. Photo Size

Your photos could affect your visibility as well. If you've done some shopping on Etsy yourself. You may have noticed, especially if you use the app that sometimes they only show the photo. They do not show the title, your shop name, your reviews, or even the price. 

I've said it before. Your photos and the video are the only opportunities your customers have to experience the product because they can't see it and touch it in person and the photo, especially the main photo that shows up in the search results is your first impression. 

So, if it's not immediately clear what the product is or it's not enticing enough to get them to click on it. They're just gonna keep scrolling. 

4. Item Listing

Number four Most people don't want to hear this and they're gonna push back. I'd almost everyone that hears this pushes back on it. It is what it is, but this is the biggest reason that you are not getting views. 

The biggest reason that you're not getting views on Etsy is the number of items in your shop and think about it. There are 96 million listings on Etsy at the time. That doesn't mean, there's too much competition though. Don't get me wrong about that since there were over 80 million users on Etsy at the end of 2020. 

So, it's even more now. But there are only four million active sellers, so if you do the math on that, that is approximately 24 listings per shop. I wouldn't say that's like the median or the average necessarily but gives you an idea like if you have less than 20 items, not good, so just based on sheer probability the more items you have for sale the more likely they are to be seen. 

So, those are the four main issues now. Let's move on to these solutions

How to fix them?

1. Again. It's likely not the first one but its worth checking anyways. It can seem like you've struck a gold mine on Etsy if you have very low competition, but that could also mean not many people are searching for it.

If there is competition out there like more than a thousand or two thousand or so other listings. How to make your products better than theirs? Could you have better photos make it stand out in the search more, more features, more options. 

So, please don't scrap your listings. If you think, it's this one just keep that in mind when you add new products or want to research new products to add to your shop and who knows if you have something that nobody else on Etsy has it might get popular and you could strengthen big. 

2. Number two is fairly easy to check as well. Just pick one of your listings or one of your search terms your categories that you have and go into an incognito browser because the search also takes into account your personal search history, 

so you want to start fresh with an incognito browser and then just type in like your main keyword. Sometimes the keywords that you come up with are not exactly what somebody else would use or maybe you need to be more specific. 

You should always use the longtail keywords. Internet users, in general, know that just typing one word into a search like on Google or Etsy or Amazon or something is not going to be specific enough to get what they want, so they know they have to use like two to three maybe even four words. 

So, when you do the search you want to make sure that the search term brings up items that are similar to yours. If not that could be the problem, if they are similar to your product and your listings are just really far down in the search. This could be improved by your quality score and also number four having more listings. 

Your quality score can be improved a bit by just working on some things in your shop. So, make sure your "About section" is filled out, you ship any orders that you do get on time, do something in your shop daily whether that's adding a new listing or updating an old listing, changing your announcement stuff like that. 

Make sure to ask your customers to leave a review because reviews count for it and the quality score of that item will improve significantly when you make a sale.

3. For the photos, if you're like me, you might spend a lot of time. Trying to make sure you think, they're perfect and then you kind of forget how other people might see them. For the listing as a whole for your conversion rate, you want to make sure you have all 10 photos and a video, but for now for increasing your views you want to focus on the main photo. 

I've seen a lot of listings, i would almost say 50% of the listings on Etsy like at least the things that I search for and shop for, its obvious that they have taken a square or vertical photo and tried to use it as their main photo, it doesn't work. 

Etsy won't get with the times and do square photos for the like no other platform uses horizontal photos, but I mean, when you take your photos, especially when you're doing the main photo. Make sure you take it, horizontally or at least from a very wide angle so you can crop it to horizontal dimensions. The main photo looks best at 2000 by 1,600 pixels and if you try to upload a photo that is square or vertical, Etsy will crop it. You can click on it and adjust it a little bit from my experience, it doesn't always accept your change and that doesn't always help anyway because if it's taken a square or vertical format. It's going to get cut off somewhere. 

So, it's best to upload it to the correct size in the first place, so it doesn't get cropped. 

You absolutely have to make sure that your product is the star of the photo. Remember you're not selling your backdrop, you're not selling the table that it's on, you're not selling any props that are in the photo, You're selling the product so it should stand out and contrast with the background. 

So, don't use any busy patterns that may be distracting or any colors that are too similar to the product and if you're not sure that your photo clearly shows what the item is, you can show it to a family member or a friend and ask them what they think it is. 

And obviously, make sure it's well lit and clear and all that you know. 

4. And the answer to number four is simply to make more listings. I know you're gonna have to suck it up that supersedes the other three reasons for the vast majority of shops like 99% at least. 

Any shop of any size will see the benefit of adding new listings regularly, not only does that give you more visibility and search but it boosts your quality score by being active regularly and it helps you to see what works and what doesn't. 

You can't sell what you don't have for sale, So if you want to make a full-time income from your Etsy shop and you don't have enough products to sell to make that happen. It's not going to work. 

I completely understand that adding new listings takes money but trust me it is well worth it. This is like the golden ticket to success on Etsy is having a lot of listings. 

but as long as you're adding new listings at least a couple times a week. If you can't do once a day, you're golden. But those listings still need to be good quality, so don't just like throw stuff and not do your SEO and description all that stuff because that's also important.

So those were the four main reasons that you may not be getting views on Etsy.