Are you considering an Etsy shop to sell your homemade goods? Running an Etsy shop is a great way to generate income while creating beautiful products that you love. To help your future Etsy shop really kick butt, we’ve put together some great tips from the most successful Etsy shop owners:
- Take irresistible pictures. Your photos are your potential customer’s only way to experience your product before committing to buy it. Provide as many pictures as you can to show off every aspect of your product. Since your photos are your customer’s first impression of your business, you want to make sure every photo you post is a great representative of your brand. Keep your photos bright, clean, and precise. You don’t have to be a professional photographer with a $1 million camera to take professional looking product photos. Read more about taking great Etsy photos with your smartphone here.
- Make your packaging an experience. Imagine you’re at a darling boutique with charming products on a whimsical display. Don’t you immediately want to shove all of your money in the owner’s face and take all of their goods? While you may not have the brick-and-mortar shop to give your customers that kind of experience, your shipping and packaging can have the same impact. It’s perfectly acceptable to put your product in bland cheap mailers with cheap laser labels identical to what their bills look like and be on your way. But, if you take those same cheap mailers and add a custom stamp or design your own cute printable sticker labels, wrap the product in a piece of tissue paper tied with a ribbon, your customers will get the same sense of delight when opening the cheap mailers that they would get walking through your adorable imaginary boutique. You’re inviting them to come back and buy more goods, to have this experience again.
- Give your customers great customer service. As the children’s song goes, “Make new customers, but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold.” Making loyal, repeat customers depends on giving them fantastic customer service as much as selling them a great product. Send them updates on the status of their product from order confirmation all the way through to following up by asking about their satisfaction. Including a short hand-written thank-you note in their order will go miles for your customers’ satisfaction. Don’t be shy about asking for reviews from customers who have great experience, and offer discounts for referral business. Word-of-mouth is every business owner’s best friend.
- Be savvy about social media. Social media is a powerful tool for any online business, but you have to approach it the way Goldilocks approached the three bear’s porridge: Not too much, not too little, it needs to be just right. Stay active so your followers remember you, but don’t spam them on Instagram and Facebook; use it to post new products, promotions, and shop news. And if you see an applicable and amusing meme that will make your followers chuckle, that’s okay once in a while too!
Do you have any other great tips for running a successful Etsy shop? Please share them in the comment section below!
