Are you thinking about moving away from Etsy?

Well, we thought about it for about 3 months before we took one huge step in the right direction. This post will focus on 3 tips when transitioning away from Etsy to use to drive traffic to your website as well as 3 bonus steps on how to get started with that transition.

3 Simple Steps to ensuring that your traffic to the website is as good as it was on Etsy:

// Step 1

• Use your Etsy store banner, email signature, and shop photo header to announce:

  • Your website URL

  • More selection

  • Better prices

  • Still Free Shipping (if you offer that on Etsy it is hard not to offer on the website, thanks to Amazon)

• Why? Because this lets the customer base that IS finding you through Etsy or any links associated with Etsy that you have MORE to offer at better prices one click away.

• Example of a listing with an announcement hidden in it:

  • https://www.etsy.com/listing/772640099/deep-plain-3-tiered-wood-display-stand?ref=shop_home_active_2&pro=1&frs=1

  • The FIRST thing you read is, “Check out our website for better prices and more variety: www.verticalledge.com”

• Example of a shop header announcement and shop announcement:

  • https://www.etsy.com/shop/VerticalLedge?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

// Step 2

• Raise your prices on Etsy, do not lower them on your website.

  • This encourages your customers to take advantage of your website and see what else you have to offer.

• By making the prices higher on Etsy, you have nothing to lose.

  • Especially if it is clear that you have a website and that website offers a better price and YET they still choose to pay the higher price on Etsy, at least your getting your money back from Etsy.

• Take off all your un-popular items on Etsy.

  • You are paying to keep up all your listings, might-as-well take them down and put them on your website.

// Step 3

• Re-direct all the links on your social platforms- especially Pinterest to go to your website.

  • By redirecting all your links, you push all your traffic away from Etsy and towards your site.

  • If you are not on Pinterest yet, do not be alarmed. We will do a deep dive into how Pinterest is the best place for your artisan products and more soon!

  • Use an app like milkshake to direct buyers to various options from your Instagram profile link. We use Amazon, Etsy and Squarespace to sell so we have all three of those options for our buyers (note this is not ideal and is only for testing purposes on our end).

// 3 Bonus tips to get started with this transition:

// Tip 1

• DO YOUR ANALYTICS research on Etsy. Run the numbers. Do the simple math.

  • Start off with looking at your ENTIRE year’s worth of sales, and costs.

  • See how much you paid Etsy in fees.

  • To give you some of our real numbers, Etsy took around $2k (not including shipping) from us last year alone, and only brought us (SHOCKING) 2% of our sales. So, looking at that math, we moved to a website that does not take a percentage per sale, is an annual cost of $500 plus a few monthly memberships to email integration and other extras that Etsy did not offer (will do another post on this as well).

  • You need to figure out what works for YOU!

// Tip 2

• Research what website hosting platform you want to use. DO YOUR RESEARCH, different platforms work better for different things. I would look into Shopify and Squarespace.

// Tip 3

• Look into hiring a photographer for website photos. Just invest the few hundreds of dollars and put your best photos on the website. Make sure to have a variety, some with you, some of you specifically and a ton of your products.

We made the transition away from Etsy, and still are, and have been so happy with the results. Sure it took about a month for us to get fully up and running but that is nothing when shifting a company to a new platform.

I hope this was helpful for you, stay tuned for more on Pinterest analytics and Email integrations we love.

See ya next time, artisans!

//

Sydney