The most important stat that Etsy has available to us is our Etsy shop conversion rate. It tells you how many of the visitors to your shop purchase.

Today we will answer…

What is a conversation rate?

What is the average etsy shop conversion rate?

How do you calculate your conversion rate? 

How do you increase your conversion rate?

Is your conversion rate telling you what to do next? 

WHAT IS AN ETSY SHOP CONVERSION RATE?

A conversion rate is how many visits to your shop does it take to get one order.

Meaning how many times will someone visit your shop before they purchase a listing? Wouldn’t it be amazing if that were 100%, 100% of the time when someone visited your shop they bought. Well, we know that’s not going to be the case. So you need to know what the average conversion rate is. 

WHAT IS THE AVERAGE ETSY SHOP CONVERSION RATE?

The average conversion rate on Etsy is 1% (stated by Etsy SEO Tool Marmalead). If you are like the average Etsy shop, this means you will need about 100 visits in order to get a sale. 

Yes, you can get above 1% with the right shop & listing optimization and some marketing. Don’t get down on yourself if you are watching your stats like a hawk. Wondering why you havn’t made a sale when 50 people have visited your shop. Deep breath, it’s normal… the good news is you can take action to increase your conversion rate. Once you have a large amount of visits on converting items, voila the revenue comes in. 

HOW DO YOU CALCULATE YOUR ETSY SHOP CONVERSION RATE?

Etsy gives a great view of conversion rate in your shop manager. Navigate to Shop Manager > Stats and view your conversion rate at the top of the page. Remember to extend to at least a 30 day timeframe. This is a great high level stat! If this is above 1% then you are doing better than the average Etsy Shop. If it’s below 1% there maybe a few reasons. 

REASONS WHY YOUR ETSY SHOP CONVERSION RATE MAY BE LOW AND WHAT TO DO TO INCREASE IT.

Here are some reasons why you may have a low conversion rate. We will cover what you can do to increase your conversion rate: 

Reason #1: You are a new shop. You don’t have any or many orders or reviews to build trust with your customer. 

What you can do: Ask friends and family to purchase from your Etsy shop. If you are selling outside of Etsy, direct people to buy from Etsy. You can even offer friends and family a 1-70% off coupon. This is a good way to offer a discount to those you know. You can increase your order count and get feedback from those you trust. Ask those friends and family to leave a review to help build up your shop’s trust factor. 

Reason #2: Your customer was intrigued by your first listing photo and clicked in; however, they didn’t purchase. This is because they couldn’t get a good grasp of what the item would really look like and be like once it arrived. 

What you can do: Make sure you have taken photos in natural light that show the up close detail of your product. Take a photo and be so close that you can see the texture of the product. Even turn your product around, and take pictures of different angles. Show your product’s size in relation to another object. Show your product in use or in a styled scene, so the customer can imagine it in their space. Video is an amazing tool. Take the under 15 second video in natural light, you don’t even have to worry about sound here! Use all your photos and video to really have the customer feel like they’ve picked up the product themselves. They will then know what to expect when it arrives. You can even show the packaging to assure customers their purchase will arrive safely. 

Reason #3 Your item wasn’t quite what they were looking for, they wanted something slightly different. 

What you can do: Your customer may be looking for an item that really closely matches what they saw in your first image that appeared in search. Perhaps they want a different color, size, material, or slightly different design. Make sure you show variations of your product in your photos. Lots of sellers show swatches of different colors they offer right in the photos. You can also show different sizes that you offer in your photos as well. Etsy has the function where you can link a variation in the drop down to photos. Use this to really show what a variation will look like.

Remember to list similar items in your descriptions. Link to sections of your shop and similar items, perhaps a bundle with your item included. This will keep shoppers in your shop, looking for the perfect item. There’s also an option to offer custom orders, do this if you’d like your customers to request an item you don’t have in your shop. To enable this head to, Shop Manager > Settings > Options > Custom Order Requests > Enabled.

WHAT IS YOUR ETSY SHOP CONVERSION RATE TELLING YOU, AND WHAT TO DO NEXT

Your conversion rate is really telling you what to do next! If your listings aren’t converting, you need to update/refresh them with the tips above. If your listings are converting well, you need to drive traffic to them! 

I like to gauge my overall shop’s conversion rate, via the stats view in my shop manager. However, where you can really make a difference is at the individual listing level. Navigate to your shop manager and navigate down to your listings. The goal is to see what your conversion rates are per listing. Once you do this you’ll be able to see your best converting listings. Take your orders / views x 100, or use this calculator HERE, to easily see all your listing’s conversion rates calculated automatically. 

Learn from your listings that are doing well. Take a look at your photos, your video, the variations you offer, your description, and your shipping cost. Change your listings with the lowest conversion rate, implement things that work well in your high converting listings.

The good news is, the actions that you take to improve your listing’s conversion can pay off as soon as you make the change.

The listings that are converting well, should be the listings you market! Share these stars on social media, get pinning them, drive traffic to them from outside of Etsy. It’s worth your time to market these listings because they are already converting well! 

We now we have a targeted strategy to increase your listing’s conversion rate, and drive traffic to the listings that are converting well. The Etsy search algorithm favors high converting listings. If your items convert well, Etsy search will display them higher in search results. Want to learn more about Etsy search? Check out this blog post, here. The work you do will pay off in multiple ways! Let’s convert browsers into buyers and give your shop the momentum it needs to be a roaring success!