Our latest series of Marketing Magic articles discusses how to analyze your Etsy Shop Stats to help increase your views and boost sales. Read the intro to the series here to get started. Test #1, reviewing your keywords, was discussed here last week.

This week, we’re discussing another easy analysis you can perform while looking at your Etsy shop stats.

#2. Separate Your Super Star Listings from the Duds

The Thought Process 

Your shop’s listings are your selling points. Whether you have a ton or only a few listings, you’ve probably noticed over time that some listings seem to be getting a lot of views and favorites, while others are barely seen. The discrepancy could be caused by many things; maybe you’re selling a mixture of more popular (and thus more viewed) and less popular (and less viewed) items. That makes sense and probably applies to you to some degree. However, it could also be due to some other factors.

The Testing Procedure 

Again, I suggest looking at your stats in chunks of at least 1 month’s time (like “last month”’s view for example) for this analysis. After filtering your dates to this view, scroll down to your “pages viewed” area. check out your top 2 or 3 viewed items (that are not pages or categories), we’ll call these your superstar listings…along with your least viewed 2 or 3 items (you will have to click to the very last page), or your duds.

You can click on the listing’s link in your stats and get individual stats for just that item, but it’s also helpful to look at the actual listing so you can view the keyword tags, title, and description you used.

Open the listing pages and the individual stat pages for your superstar listings and your duds, and get ready to do some thorough examination.

Questions to Ask Yourself 

What do your superstar items have in common? Try to think of every possibility, especially beyond the obvious ones (like they’re all Halloween-related and it’s October). Here are some starters:

• Do they all have great photographs on pristine white backgrounds?
• Do they all use the same keywords or tags?
• Were they all renewed that month?
• Did they all get traffic from a similar source, like treasuries, Twitter, or a recent ad campaign?
• Did they get more views from within your shop or from keyword searches (this tells you if someone spotted it whilst already in your shop or came directly to it after searching on Etsy)?

Now for those dud listings. What’s wrong with these guys? More questions to ponder regarding your least viewed items:

• Is it my pictures? Could I use better, more appealing photographs?
• Should I refine or retool my listing title and keyword tags to make it more searchable and SEO-friendly? Maybe your product is awesome, but people just aren’t finding it.
• Should I refine the item’s description to make it more appealing to my viewer? Does my description answer the most common questions a buyer might have? This might not really affect your views (since someone would click on the item before even seeing the description), but it can’t hurt!
• Could it be a problem with the item’s price? Does it seem too cheap or too expensive at first glance?
• Does this item not fit in with the rest of my shop’s inventory?
• Is this a seasonal item that I should think about not renewing until the right time of year?

Lessons Learned 

Note what you learned from this exercise. Are certain keywords or tags really popular right now? Maybe you could apply these to more of your listings. Do listings with a certain look or feel seem to be doing better? If you figure out some secret ingredient that seems to be boosting your superstar listings, try to incorporate it throughout the rest of your shop. Or maybe you need to be making more items that are similar to your superstars!

Take time also to analyze what sources are bringing the views in for your superstars. Are they being found from keyword searches, from links within your Etsy shop, or from a social media blast? Take note of what you’ve been doing that’s working and what’s missing.

There are also probably some steps you can take to improve your dud listings’ chances of being found and seen. At the very least, you have little to lose by sprucing up their tags, titles, or photos to breathe a little new life into them. However, if you notice some of the same listings showing up in the dud section each time you perform this test, you might consider not renewing them next time to save yourself a few cents.

Periodically monitoring your superstar and dud listings for patterns is just another way of using your Etsy shop stats to boost your views and sales. Come back soon for test #3, and don’t forget to read back on test #1, reviewing your keywords, if you missed it last week. Also, check out our step-by-step guide on how to easily download your Etsy sales spreadsheet!