There are a thousand little tricks and settings you can use to boost the sales results of your Etsy shop. This post is the first in a series I share to help you improve your Etsy shop at zero cost, with only a couple clicks. Stay tuned and come back for more goodies in the next blog posts.
But now, let’s talk about the first secret weapon: the announcement.
What is the announcement good for on Etsy?
The announcement is the first thing your potential buyers will see when they click on your shop. This is your first chance to start building a relationship with the visitors to your shop and grab their attention with some great offers. There is no character limit to the length of your announcement, but you don’t want to keep it too long, because it gets boring. If it’s too long, nobody will read it, if it’s too short, you are losing chances to sell.
Only the first two lines will show without clicking on the link that opens up the rest of the text. Make sure you write something good enough in the first 200 characters to keep your visitor reading, otherwise nobody will click to read the rest.
Quick recipe for a winner announcement on Etsy
- Use your words wisely when writing the first 200 characters. Consider that this is your chance to introduce your shop in one sentence and flash something that will get people reading.
- Introduce your product offering but do it in a way that includes the most important keywords. (We will talk about keywords in a different post.)
- Share some up-to-date info with your potential customers that can affect their order or the length of delivery, for example. In the current circumstances, it is important to address delays that the COVID crisis may cause or any other delivery issues.
- You can include an immediately available coupon code to entice your customers to buy more. If there is a special occasion (for example the holidays or even your shop’s birthday on Etsy), it’s all the more reason to share a coupon. (We’ll talk about coupons in a different post, keep an eye out for it.)
- This is a great place to share the subscription link, if you run a newsletter for your customers. As an incentive, always use a special offer. It can be a discount or a buy one get one free offer, whatever is suitable for your business and products.
- It is a good idea to include your social media links here. It is a bit unfortunate that the links aren’t clickable, but it will draw attention to your social media accounts and will make people look you up there to connect.
- Emojis are a fun way to jazz up the text and so are capital letters. Use them, but be conservative, less is more here. However, they may be a good tool to draw the eyes of your potential customers to the coupons, so use them wisely.
Change your announcement on Etsy regularly
We can’t emphasize it enough that announcements are not carved in stone. You can – and as a matter of fact, should – change them according to seasons, holidays, special offers or any topical reasons.
Make it clear and visible in those critical first 200 characters that you are sharing something new, so that those customers who have already read your announcement, would click on it again and read the whole thing. Repeat visitors are more likely to shop from you even if they choose not to in the past.
Practice makes perfect
Since the 200 characters are so short, it may be difficult to find the right words that motivate your visitors to click, but don’t lose heart. Get a go at it, try again until it feels right.
It is an iterative process, so set up a version, give it some time and check your statistics after a couple of weeks. If your results could be better, try to change the text of the announcement again and see what happens.
To save some time and effort, you can always ask for help to get started.
