One of the most frustrating things about selling on the Etsy ecosystem is understanding exactly how getting and increasing the traffic to your listings works.
After all, we can all agree that getting more views can lead to more sales and that more sales means more money in the bank, but it can be hard to understand what can help us solve the first part of this equation.
That's what this article is for.
What’s The Difference Between a View and A Visit On Etsy?
Before we jump into all of the ins and outs of how to increase traffic to your Etsy listings, I wanted to quickly clarify the difference between a view and a visit inside of your Etsy analytics.
At its most simple, whenever you see the term views used inside of Etsy's analytics, this refers to the total number of times that your products have been viewed.
For example, if one person views all 15 products in your Etsy shop, this would count as 15 views.
On the other hand, when you see visits inside of your Etsy analytics, This refers to the number of unique people who visited your listings.
Which Should I Pay More Attention To?
Although it can be extremely tempting to rely on your number of views as the baseline for your analytics, this can lead you down the wrong path.
As much as I love to see the bigger number that views typically show, relying on the visits metric for your analytics Baseline is a much more solid foundation.
Since the visits metric tells us the total number of people (and is therefore a much better estimate of how many potential sales We could make), keeping it close eye on this number and doing what we can to improve it goes a much longer way to improving your bottom line.
Additionally, if you're following the niche-based approach that we advocate for (rather than selling a single product type like t-shirts) improving the number of visits will almost always result in an increased number of views since the people interested in your shop will be interested in a wider variety of products.
Where Do Etsy Views and Visits Come From
If you're looking to increase traffic to your Etsy shop, there are only really two places where you can look to improve.
The most common place where an Etsy visit will come from is inside Etsy itself.
These internal visits can be driven either by ranking well in Etsy's search engine algorithm and showing up when people search or by using Etsy ads.
In addition to the traffic, you can earn from Etsy itself, You can get additional visits from external traffic sources, such as social media networks, external ads, email marketing, or other channels such as your own website.
If you already have an Etsy shop, I would suggest focusing your time and effort on gaining as many visits as you can from Etsy, before focusing on any external traffic sources.
The Simple 5-Step Process We Used To Generate $64,000 In 12 Months Working Part Time On Etsy.
Yes, Send Me The Roadmap!How To Increase Views and Visits On Etsy
Now that we understand the difference between views and visits on Etsy, let's take a little bit of a deeper dive into a few of the things we can do to improve our numbers.
How To Increase Visits and Views From Traffic On Etsy
As I mentioned above, if you have an existing Etsy shop I would suggest focusing on getting the most out of the traffic that Etsy already has to offer before starting to gain additional visits and views from external traffic sources.
Let's dive in and take a look at a few of the different ways we can start to dial up the number of views and visits we are getting from inside Etsy.
Turn On (or Up) Etsy Ads
The quickest, easiest, and often most overlooked way of increasing visits and views on Etsy is by utilizing their ads platform.
Turning on Etsy's pay-per-click ads is not only an extremely profitable way of driving more traffic to your listings, but it's virtually instantaneous.
We typically suggest that people start with a budget of about $5 per day to see the results.
One of the nice things about utilizing Etsy's ad platform is that for just a few pennies, you can show up at the top of search results for any keyword or phrase Etsy thinks is relevant to your product.
This means we cannot only have two possible placements for each keyword relevant to our listing (one paid ad and one organic placement), but we can also start to gather a ton of data about which keywords lead to the most visits to our listings
Although Etsy has started to roll this keyword data out on the organic side as well, it's much more limited and requires that you rank organically for that keyword, to begin with.
On the other hand, when you're using Etsy ads you'll get a more in-depth look at all of the potential keywords you could rank for on the Etsy platform and you start getting data virtually. Instantaneously.
Even if these ads never directly led to a sale ( and they do), being able to shortcut this data-gathering process and driving more visits and views along the way is 100% worth it.
Run a Sale/Promotion
In addition to turning on ads, another newly instantaneous way to increase your views and visits on Etsy is by taking advantage of their promotions feature inside of your marketing tab.
Offering a discount through this feature will not only increase the conversion rate of people coming to your listing and buying your products, but it has a nice side benefit of increasing overall traffic.
This happens for a few different reasons.
When you set up a promotion within Etsy they actively notify people via emails and push notifications that a product they may be interested in is available at a discount.
Although these limitations are typically limited to people who have favored the item or added it to their carts, these are also the people who are most likely to buy from you and these notifications can drive a nice spike in views and visits in the short term.
Additionally, as your promotion winds down (typically within the last 48 hours) and it will begin showing a countdown timer for the promotion on the main search results page.
These types of countdown timers can go a long way to making your listing stand out in the organic search results and typically will lead to a large click-through rate increase.
This increase not only helps drive views and visits in the short term but can go a long way to helping boost your overall organic ranking inside of Etsy, leading to more views and visits from existing search traffic.
Improve Your Etsy SEO
With the first two methods out of the way, now it's time to focus on some of the things that take a little bit more time.
If your goal is to gain more views and visits from inside of Etsy, there's no better place to start than with improving your listing SEO.
Although this is a bit of a more advanced topic (You can find our full breakdown on how Etsy's search engine algorithm works here) there are a few key areas that you should be focusing on.
At its core, the search algorithm on Etsy is looking at two main factors.
The first thing they are looking for is to see if your listing is relevant to the keywords or phrases that someone is typing in.
The second thing that is used to rank your listing is how likely your listing is to lead to a sale when someone types in the keyword or phrase that they are searching for.
The easiest place to start is by making sure that your title, description, and tags contain the most relevant keywords for your product.
Take a look at the top-selling listings for each product in your shop and make sure you are using similar keywords in your title, tags, and description.
Once you've cleaned up the three main areas of your listing, it's time to focus on getting more people to buy your products.
Take a few minutes to compare your listing photos to those of the top sellers and make sure you're similarly showcasing your product.
Changing or improving your photos not only will lead to more people clicking on your listing from the search results (the first step in them being able to buy your product), but it's also likely to increase the conversion rate of people buying your products.
Create More Listings
In addition to improving the discoverability of your existing listings, one easy way to increase views and visits on Etsy is by launching more products.
Whether you're talking about creating new designs or taking existing designs that sell well on one product type and moving them to another product type (e.g. taking a pillow that sells well and also putting the same design on a t-shirt), having more lines in the water typically means catching more fish.
If you're interested in the effect that adding more listings can have on your views, visits, and sales, you may want to check out what happened when we added 30 products in 30 days.
Niche Down
One of the more counterintuitive ways to increase views and visits is to niche down.
Although many Etsy ” gurus” advocate for launching as many t-shirts or coffee mugs as you possibly can try to grab a few visits from people in every niche imaginable, this strategy is simply backward.
Not only does this make it harder for Etsy to understand who is the ideal customer for our products (a critical part of Etsy’s SEO algorithm), but it also means that we will seldom see visits turn into more than one view.
It's not hard to understand that someone interested in bass fishing would be interested in clicking over to your shop and exploring a wide variety of the different bass fishing-related products that you have to offer.
On the other hand, if you follow the “be everything to everyone approach” when that same person interested in bass fishing finds your bass fishing t-shirt and goes to visit your store, they aren't likely to find anything else they're interested in.
This not only limits the number of views that we can have from each visit, but it also reduces the number of potential sales we can have from each customer.
How To Increase Views From Non-Etsy Traffic
Once you've maximized the traffic you're getting from inside Etsy's ecosystem, you can start to focus on bringing traffic from outside of Etsy.
Build an Email List
The very first thing any serious store owner should do if they want to drive. External traffic is to create an email list.
Although email marketing may be considered old school, it is still considered the top return on investment marketing activity for e-commerce businesses.
The first step in creating your email list should be to take advantage of Etsy's native integration with Aweber.
This integration allows you to capture the names and email addresses of all of your existing and future Etsy customers.
Once you have this list created, you can start looking at other ways of growing your email list, such as using the giveaway method that we've talked about in the past.
Create Content
Once you have your email list created, it's time to start thinking about creating content.
What I'm talking about here is not throwing up images onto Instagram, but rather creating the type of content that people who are interested in your niche are already looking for.
If you're comfortable in front of a camera, my suggestion would be to start with YouTube and build a presence there.
If you aren't, then consider starting a niche website (which you can learn more about here ).
Either way, getting the attention of potential customers before they are ready to buy is a great way to be at the top of their minds when they finally are.
Build Your Social Channels
After you started doing a little bit of content creation, you can consider adding in a little bit of social media.
Although it can be tempting to look at places like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, these platforms are not very evergreen and you will often find yourself creating content that no one sees.
If you're just getting started with adding social media into your mix, my suggestion would be to focus on more evergreen channels, such as Pinterest, where your content can live and be found forever.
Run Ads
Lastly, take a look at running external ads over to your Etsy shop.
Although you may have heard a few “Etsy Gurus” Tell you that driving external traffic to Etsy is a bad thing, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Using things like Facebook's carousel ads to drive people to the exact product they might be interested in is not only a great way to increase views and visits from your ideal audience but can also result in a nice sales bump.
Quick Recap
Although it can be a bit difficult at first to understand exactly what you can do to increase your traffic and sales on Etsy, understanding how to boost your visits and views can go a long way to getting you sent in the right direction.
Whether you were interested in boosting the number of unique people who see your products or simply getting people to view more of your products when they come to your shop, the simple steps laid out in this article will help you get there.
Chris Shaffer
Chris lives at the intersection of business strategy and growth tactics. Having consulted with dozens of different businesses (as well as building several of his own), he brings a unique perspective on what's working across the eCommerce world in businesses of all shapes and sizes.The Simple 5-Step Process We Used To Generate $64,000 In 12 Months Working Part Time On Etsy.
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