What’s the worst thing you can do to try and increase sales? 

I remember once being discouraged by my Etsy Sales. I started to brainstorm what I could do to attract more buyers to my store. I saw other people having thousands of sales with similar products, sure they had been in business quite a bit longer, they had more sales and had more reviews but why not me? So I thought to myself what if it were my product against theirs, sitting next to each other on a store shelf, what would make a customer pick mine instead of theirs? I know… price. 

What did I do to try and increase sales? 

My first attempt at increasing sales, decrease the price.

My first thought was, if I were standing at target (which let’s be honest is a regular occurrence) and I saw two #2 pencils packs I’d pick the cheaper pack. So I thought in theory this should work, just price my products marginally cheaper and boom the people will come and the sales will increase, customers will be choosing my products over the competitors and I’d have those thousands of sales cha-changing in to my notifications. 

What happened after my attempt to increase sales by decreasing price:  

Crickets…. I was a little bit confused why isn’t this working? 

What happened next? No sales increase, and then negative reviews about my material

During this time I got a couple bad reviews about the material I had been using to print my art on. I was printing on a material called a standouts, a hard foam backing that I mounted my artwork to and well… people had never owned a standout before so it was hard to set people’s expectations. This foam board was believe it or not expensive for me to purchase so after the negative reviews I decided to print my work on canvas instead. 

A change in strategy: increase the quality, increase the price

I found a product I loved, and guess what.. it was cheaper than the standout. Having this canvas made me think… I could price my items higher because I was offering a more superior product. These canvases were even better in quality than my competitors. They had a hard backing and were so neat and tidy and the printing was so vibrant. 

Photography: quality photos show off amazing quality

When I put these canvases up in my listings I knew I had to take fabulous photos to show my customers the quality. I took pictures of myself holding the canvas to show size, I took detail shots of the texture, the side and even the back! Now what happened? 

These changes made my sales skyrockret! The new listing thumbnail photo brought me more views. More views on the products with amazing photography showing off the quality made the sales increase. The reviews came in, more people felt comfortable buying and my shop was now one of those with over 1,000 sales. My road to the increase in sales was a step learning curve, it didn’t happen because of the knowledge I had gained about pricing and product quality, it came from tough learning over time. 

Let’s break down how I could have shifted at the beginning to increase sales instead of going through that painful exercise of trying to decrease the price to increase sales. 

What you should do to increase sales: 

First, Etsy is not Target, it’s not Walmart either, it’s not even a nice little boutique in your historic downtown. It’s an online marketplace, buyers are often in community with the makers. The makers are very often willing to personalize and even create offerings that are requested, custom orders with the customer’s ideas. When people come to Etsy they are not in the Walmart mindset. They want a unique product, sometimes made just for them… handcrafted, not mass produced. Now I realize not everyone has an economics degree; however, people understand that you pay more to receive this sort of attention, this sort of craftsmanship, products you can’t find anywhere else. So pricing isn’t the first thing people think of when deciding to buy one product over another. Much of the time the buyers even consider the higher priced item to be more valuable. So…. I would really try and convince you not to solely lower your price, it goes against your buyers mindset when attracting them. 

What you should do is… think about how your materials and photography are within your shop. Do you have an opportunity to enhance your materials? Could you give your customers a product that they are thrilled with? What about your photography, are you happy with it? The thumbnail photo in search entices people, remember when you look like a million bucks you can charge a million bucks. But looking like a million bucks isn’t the end of the story here. You have the quality in your product, so choose something that when you buyer holds just seems a bit better than what you could have done. The customers will mention this over and over again in their reviews! Remember, more positive reviews attract more buyers. 

You’ve got this friend! Want to dig in further? Make sure your listings are optimized for search so they can be found? Download the Ideal Etsy Listing Guide. https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5e1b0e059d1c5d00271e0429