5 Top Common Mistakes Etsy Sellers Make

An essential part of growing your Etsy shop, besides making fantastic artisan products, is understanding what works and what doesn’t on Etsy. Many established Etsy sellers make amateur mistakes that hinder their success and sales. These mistakes range from simple mistakes like not adding an About section to grave ones like not promoting their Etsy shop on social media.

Today, we will discuss and detail the 5 top mistakes many Etsy sellers make and how you can avoid them.

Table of Contents:

• Not Optimizing Your Etsy Profile
• Unaesthetic Product Photos
• Not Understanding Your Target Audience
• Not Doing Your Keyword Research
• Not Promoting Your Etsy Shop on Social Media

Mistake #1: Not Optimizing Your Etsy Profile

Optimizing your Etsy profile ensures that people will find your shop and in turn buy your products.

This is a common mistake among Etsy sellers that costs them a lot in sales revenue. Optimizing your Etsy profile ensures that people will find your shop and in turn, buy your products. Many aspects enhance your chances of being discovered, and we will cover the most important ones in this blog post.

When creating an Etsy shop, you can target your ideal customer by adding tags to your listings. Etsy allows you to add 13 tags to each listing, but many sellers add way fewer. This is nothing but missed opportunities. When listing a new product, make sure to add all 13 tags to drive interested customers to your shop. These tags have to be long-tail keywords if possible. You can add descriptive tags or any relevant keywords. We will be discussing keyword research more later on. Like tags, categories play a big role in being discovered by interested customers. Adding general industry categories, as well as specific subcategories better your chances of visibility.

Being an online-only shop, you have to provide your customers with as many relevant attributes as possible. These attributes depend on the type of product you sell. For example, this Japanese-style jewelry box by EasternClassic provides a detailed description of the product.

These attributes help customers determine whether a piece of furniture will fit in their space or whether a dress will fit them.

One aspect that goes unnoticed by sellers is the About section. It is a very important element that allows you to connect more with your customer. According to Etsy, adding an About section about your business improves your chances of ranking high on the search engine.

Mistake #2: Unaesthetic Product Photos

Product photos greatly affect click-through rate and conversion rate.

There is nothing more unappealing to a customer, especially one whose only point of reference is a photo, than unaesthetic and blurry product photos. Your photos have to make your customers imagine themselves wearing or owning your product, a challenge many sellers fail at. Product photos greatly affect click-through rate and conversion rate.

Some common mistakes include failing to style products to the best of their potential. Instead of plunking a clothing item on a flat surface, model it or hire someone to model it for you. Having busy backgrounds and bad lighting are not good moves as well. One of my favorite Etsy Shops, While Olivia Sleeps Art, does product photos so well. They style the products minimally to let the art shine with a plain background and amazing lighting.

Mistake #3: Not Understanding Your Target Audience

The more you know your targeted audience, the better your chance of making sales.

Before writing your product listings, you have to first understand who you are selling to. This is a common mistake Etsy sellers do, therefore failing to target an audience that will buy their product. Understanding your target audience touches every aspect of your business. From what products you are selling, how to word your product listings to your pricing is all determined by who your customer is.

You want to make your ideal customer feel seen and your product must seem curated especially for them. The more you know your targeted audience, the better your chance of making sales.

Mistake #4: Not Doing Your Keyword Research

This research is very specific. What works for another shop, might not work for you.

As we have pointed out, a lot of elements that affect how well your shop rank on the search engine depend on doing relevant SEO research. Many sellers neglect to do the necessary research to better their chances of being discovered.

Ahrefs, Wordstream, and Semrush are among the keyword research tools and rank-tracking software we love and use ourselves.

These tools all have a free version you can use. You can feed your tool a seed word and it will generate the most common keywords in your industry, KD (ranking difficulty), and volume of searches... This research is very specific. What works for another shop, might not work for you. This research also applies to ranking on other search engines like Google and Shopify.

The results this research yields affect how you word everything in your Etsy shop. Your product listings, the About section, and tags must include your keywords for maximum visibility.

Mistake #5: Not Promoting your Etsy Shop on Social Media

Social media marketing is free and very effective once you build a loyal audience with far more reach than Etsy.

We have a dedicated blog post about promoting your Etsy shop on social media and one specifically about Pinterest. But, this point is always worth repeating. Many sellers neglect social media marketing, even in this day and age.

All of the mistakes we talked about before are related to Etsy itself. However, there are other spaces on the internet you can promote your product at. Some social media users who don’t know about Etsy can discover your products on other platforms. Social media marketing is free and very effective once you build a loyal audience with far more reach than Etsy.

One thing that discourages Etsy sellers from promoting their Etsy shop on social media is that it is a lot of work and a time investment. And, we agree. Managing multiple social media accounts on top of what you already do is sometimes not feasible. You can, however, have your cake and eat it too by using a social media management tool. Nuelink has this automation feature that allows you to auto-post your Etsy product listing as social media posts. Once you set up this automation, you can rest assured that your products are being promoted across your platforms.

As an Etsy seller, I understand the effort you put into attracting more visitors to your shop and boosting your sales. In your journey towards success on Etsy and beyond, this blog aims to assist you in avoiding common mistakes that others have made unintentionally. Naturally, there are numerous other mistakes that you might unknowingly make along the way. Therefore, it is crucial to stay informed about these mistakes, which is where this YouTube channel can be a helpful resource for you: Brandon Timothy