Are you feeling a bit panicked because the sales for one (or more) of your products have stopped?
Maybe your best seller isn’t selling anymore?
Or you’re noticing that some of your products that used to have consistent sales have slowed down – significantly?
And the million-dollar question in your mind is:
“What do I do about it?”
That’s exactly what we’re covering today!!
So, ready? Let’s dive in.
If you have some listings that used to do great sales-wise but are not selling anymore, it’s a very unsettling feeling . . . that dreadful pit-in-your-stomach feeling . . . and you want to fix it – like yesterday!
Most makers in your position come to me with a version of this question:
“I need to work on this listing, but should I just make changes to my current listing and keep the listing’s history OR should I relist this item in a new listing, to essentially start fresh in the eyes of the algorithm?”
Now in today’s scenario your listing has a positive history with Etsy because it has sales, it probably has reviews – hopefully good ones – and it probably has some favorites as well. And so essentially, there is beneficial data that’s attached to this listing ID with Etsy, so for this specific situation – my advice would not be to delete it and relist it, I would instead tweak it so that you can keep that positive data attached to the listing.
The next question then becomes:
“What changes should I make? Like… where should I start?”
Well.. to decide what to tweak and change, we need to figure out why it stopped selling.
But first . . .
Before we dive into changing your listing, there are two things you need to check.
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First, you want to make sure that the decline in sales isn’t simply a case of seasonal sales changes. Is this a product that sells more in the summer, and sales have dropped in the fall?
Take a look at the sales history for that listing and the trends over the years.
If you see signs that this is a seasonal product, then leave that listing alone — it will likely come and pick back up when that season comes again.
You can also look at the keyword data on eRank for example for the keywords that you use on that listing and see if there are mostly seasonal keywords that are bringing traffic to your listing.
I know it might sound obvious to some of you, but some of you may not have thought about that so I want to mention it to be sure you don’t go to a lot of work changing a listing that doesn’t need to be changed if it’s just a case of seasonal demand!
The second thing you want to do is to make sure that you’re seeing a real trend.
When you look at your product sales, you don’t want to panic about changes over the last two weeks or over the last month – or even the last couple months. You want to make sure that this is a real trend and not just a normal fluctuation of your sales with that listing, because sometimes we can act a little too quickly.
I see OH so many posts in Facebook groups for example that sound like “my listing used to sell well until last Tuesday when it kinda suddenly stopped – what should I do?”
The answer is NOTHING. Two weeks is not enough time so you do nothing.
Now I am using two weeks as an example but my point is that you want to give it a little bit more time.
Sure you can and should definitely keep an eye on it, but there’s no need to take action quite yet.
If you have determined that it’s not just a normal fluctuation, and it’s not seasonal, then you are ready to decide what changes you want to make to your listing.
The changes you make will depend on what your specific scenario is, and by that I mean what “symptom” is accompanying your drop in sales. Typically when sales drop, either 1) your product conversion rate has dropped or 2) the product views have dropped – but your conversion rate has stayed the same.
If I was troubleshooting with you, the first question I would ask you is
“Has the conversion rate dropped on your listing?”
. . . and by that I mean has your conversion rate dropped while other competing listings on the platform had their conversion rate go up.
When this happens, Etsy will keep sending views to your listing for a while. But if it’s starting to make less sales, and other listings are starting to make more, then Etsy will start sending searchers to the other listings instead… which means you’ll then start to get less views.
So if your answer is yes, my conversion rate has dropped, then here are the things you will want to look at:
To address a drop in conversion rate, you want to look at your competition and at individual competitor’s listings and ask yourself these questions:
Are there more competitors selling the same type of product now vs. when you first launched that listing?
Do those competitors have a lower price?
Do they ship their products faster, or offer cheaper shipping?
Also, look at your competitor’s photos within the product listing, because these are the ones that affect the conversion rate. We’ll talk about thumbnails a little later in the article, for here you want to focus on photos inside the listing because those are the ones that affect your conversion rate the most.
If your competitors have higher quality photos, photos that answer questions potential shoppers might have that your photos fail to communicate, better props or backdrops – anything like that which might make their conversion rate higher than yours.
Of course you will also want to look at product descriptions, product titles, etc — anything that might comparatively make your product seem less appealing than the competitor’s product.
Essentially, what you want to ask yourself is, has your market – and when I say market I don’t mean Etsy or even your niche on Etsy, but at an even more zoomed-in level within your niche, looking at the competitors for that specific listing and product – has it evolved and changed? And more importantly, are you changing with it?
And if you aren’t, I know it’s a bit of a hard truth to hear, but the reality is that you’ve got to keep up or you’re going to get left behind. A listing that might have been great two years ago might now not look very competitive compared to other listings that are currently on Etsy.
And as soon as you lose the conversion rate on your listing, those views are going to drop, and from that point on it becomes a vicious cycle of fewer conversions ⇾ less views ⇾ repeat.
So I would work on each of the things I just mentioned first to see if you can create an uptick in your conversions by improving the quality of the listing.
Now, if your conversion rate hasn’t dropped, then the next question I would ask you is
“Have you had a sudden drop in views?”
If your conversion rate hasn’t been affected, but you are experiencing a sudden drop in views, then I would look at these other factors:
The first thing I would do is do some keyword research looking at the keyword search volume and the volume of competition for your keywords.
What you are trying to determine here is, are the keywords that you’re using actually still being searched? And also – has the volume of competition on those keywords changed?
So this kind of goes back to what I was saying about trends and competitors.
If something is not trending anymore, then that keyword in the search data – so for example, in Erank – is going to show very low search volume, or at least lower search volume than it showed previously.
If it’s still trending, the Erank data will show that the keywords are still popular, but you may see that there is a lot more competition for that keyword now vs. when you first listed your product.
So here you are looking at the data from a purely keyword competition aspect to see if you discover a possible reason for your decrease in product views.
You will also want to look at the thumbnail photos of competing listings, because the thumbnail is what gets the clicks and the views.
If your views have dropped, is your thumbnail not so appealing anymore so that when it shows in search results people aren’t clicking on it?
Do their products “pop” more than yours?
Are the props or backdrops better?
Ask yourself why those thumbnails are getting more clicks than yours, and use that information to create better thumbnail photos for your product.
Now I know we talked about pricing in the conversion rate discussion, but I want to mention it again when we’re talking about a drop in views because customers will compare your price with those of competing listings when they are looking at search results and deciding which listing to click on.
Now – once again – I want to say that you do not want to get into a pricing competition because that is just a race to the bottom.
BUT . . . you do want to take a look at your price and compare it to the products showing in the search results.
If your price is totally out of line with theirs and you’re thinking “dang, my prices are way too high”, don’t worry! I have an article all about what to do when your handmade prices are too high that you can read when you’re done with this one!
The next thing to check is if there is something about your product that’s not so “trendy” anymore.
For example, let’s say you sell tshirts that have quotes on them. Is it a quote that was popular for a while but not so much lately? Or, is the color or pattern you used not as trendy as it used to be?
Trends can be words, colors, styles . . . so many things! So you want to look at each detail of your product and consider whether or not the demand for it might simply have dropped.
The last thing I want to talk to you about is a very important detail, and that is to be sure you aren’t putting all your eggs in one basket – as in one product.
As hard as it may be to hear – but I need to say it- the reality is that sometimes your best seller just stops being a best seller.
And while you want to have best sellers and maximize sales on those best sellers, at the same time you don’t want to be relying solely on them for sales.
You want to keep adding new collections, new products, so that essentially you keep challenging your bestseller and trying to find something that’s going to sell as well or even better.
Here is a perfect example: You all have a favorite clothing boutique – online or a real storefront – that carries the style of clothing you love to wear, right?
Now imagine if every time you went to that boutique, they had the same clothes in the same colors. Time after time after time. After a while, you wouldn’t be as interested in going to that boutique anymore, right?
But, if it’s your favorite boutique, I’m betting that each time you visit it you find a few new items have been added, or perhaps your favorite item is now available in a whole set of different and new colors!
So you become excited to keep going back to that boutique because there may be something new that you want to buy.
The same goes for your handmade shop. You want to keep your customers excited to visit your shop and see what new exciting products or product varieties you are offering.
Because even for people who have never shopped from you before – if your window displays something that was on trend 2 years ago… are they really going to come inside your store and buy?
So it’s important to remember that bestsellers aren’t bestsellers forever. I mean, it can happen, obviously, and you want to try and get sales back up for those listings that used to sell and don’t anymore, but you don’t want to forget to create new listings as well — listings that could become your next best seller!
As you incorporate these tips into your current listing – or into the new listing you create – you also want to keep Etsy SEO in mind.
Now I know Etsy SEO can be a bit frustrating, but never fear! I have an article all about Etsy SEO — where to start, what things you need to learn, and in what order— so you will want to read that next!
Thanks for reading, and until next time, aurevoir!
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