I was wondering if I could get a bit of advice of how to boost the views on my Folksy shop.
I started my jewellery business, Curious Magpie, in September last year and opened my Folksy shop in October. I have two other online shops and sell my work in a local boutique shop and at craft fairs.
I’ve been overjoyed at the positive response from customers and have had a steady flow of sales however Folksy has been very quite for me. The only sales I have made are when I’ve promoted listing through the forums and all you lovely people have clicked on my links and loved my pieces.
Since the start of December I have not had a sale on Folksy which worries me as my other online shops have been much busier and I have promoted them as much as my Folksy shop. Often on a daily basis I only have 1 or 2 people looking at my products which is why I think my sales are so low.
Can anyone offer me any advice on how to get found on the Folksy site other than promoting on forums and on social media?
I think you’ll find promoting on social media invaluable in driving sales to your shop. How else can you let people know your shop is here for them to look at? What is your objection to using social media? Good luck with your shop!
Unfortunately folksy is a much smaller site than a certain american one that you also have a shop on (I had a look at your FB page, could do with a link to here as well as there) and the dark side always comes higher up on google searches compared to folksy thanks in part to its size. So if you have the same items on both sites and someone does a google search they will see the results for the other site first and since they are more likely to have heard of e*sy that is where they will go to shop. I don’t advertise my shop on the other side and it ticks along nicely (currently empty as it sold the few pieces it had in it with no help from me) such is the power of the dark side.
For people to find you if they are already searching folksy you need to make sure your tags and photos are up to scratch. Your photos look great to me so maybe ask your friends what search terms they would use to search for your items (or look and see what terms are being used to find your shop on the other side) and then try tweaking your tags. You might want to include pine cone as 2 words as well as pinecone for those listings.
It took my folksy shop a while to get going so you might need to be patient.
Hope that helps
Sasha
I’ve not got anything against social media - I do promote on twitter, Instagram and Facebook but most of my followers are friends and family! I guess as my business is so new it’s going to take some more time to build momentum. Thanks for the advice! xx
Thanks for the advice - yes I think you’re right and that does make sense about the other website I sell on. It’s a shame as I would much rather focus my energy into my Folksy shop as it’s UK based and there is much less saturation of the same type of product.
Yes, I’ll try updating my keywords and see whether that helps, good tip!
I’ve noticed on the full membership you are able to add and re-list products to your shop as many times as you like. Do you think it be worth upgrading to the full membership so I can keep adding more products to keep the shop looking fresh?
You have really lovely items. Your photos are lovely and clear.
Have you tried instagram or.craftjuice? I find they help.
It does take a while to get up and running I have been on here just over a year now and my first few months were terrible. The first good.month I had was just before the summer holidays.
So it must have been a good 6 months. I would say just keep doing what you are doing and it will get busier.
Remember there are times of the year when it goes quiet like.January bit things pick up again.
Have you tried using some of the other threads to promote as well?
I find everyone lovely and always helpful when it comes to,loving items extra.
Hi @hobbitgirlie1880 thanks so much for your lovely message. I’ve never used craftjuice so will defo check that out. I’ve just read a little about it on the website and think it may be worth a try
I know I’m probably being impatient… it’s not so much about the sales, I just really want my pieces to be seen, I know that sounds silly. I love designing and making jewellery and I just want to share my pieces with the world.
I do love the forums as everyone is always so helpful and supportive. Thank you! xx
Don’t worry I know what you mean about getting your items seen.
It’s always disappointing when you get low views. The other day I only had one view. But I know from another thread that the view counter hasn’t been working properly.
I notice on your Twitter and FB pages you link to your Etsy shop. If you swapped it to Folksy for a little while you could see how much social media is actually driving customers to your shops. I find a lot of FB’ers use those sidebar website links rather than post links (which I don’t tend to add so much as it limits the post reach).
Hi @JoSara It’s annoying you can only have one website on FB and Twitter. As my Etsy shop was my first I used that as a default however I think it will be a good test to see if changing it will get more traffic to my Folksy site. Fingers crossed Thanks for your help xx
I know what you mean about saturation - I use the dark side for pieces containing unusual stones where they need the larger audience (and higher google presence) to get found, thankfully their rarity stops the market getting saturated with similar pieces which would otherwise be a problem.
The plus account makes financial sense if you are going to list or relist 250 times but if you relist 21 items every month then thats your money back so to speak, you would need to decide if you want to do that. The more recently listed or relisted an item is then the higher up the search results it appears (if several items have the same relevance according to the search algorithm then the newest gets reported first, hopefully that makes sense). Regularly adding items to your shop helps keep it fresh in the minds of any followers you might have picked and if you can add items that are at the more accessible price points then that can help - people can buy eg the stud earrings now and then treat themselves to the matching bangle later. Related items can be sorted into collections to make coveting easier (but selection of what to buy harder).
There is also lots of info on how to promote your shop and drive traffic to it via social media over on the Folksy Blog. And if you’re on Twitter, join in with #folksyhour on Tues nights, 8pm for an hour. Lots of shop owners get together with Camilla @folksycontent and chat about relevant topics, and it’s well worth joining in. (Sadly I missed last nights - was watching a prog about baking in Victorian times and totally forgot until the programme ended )
According to GA, I had ovér 50 ,views yesterday, over half were from share button.com or something! So I’m getting traffic just ghost traffic! Probably because of twitter, so, it has its good and bad points with twitter.
Unfortunately, to get people to your Folksy shop, you have to use socia media as Folksy’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is very poor. It used to be great (3+ years ago), but it’s now almost impossible for anyone to find you here, through Google and other search engines.
Like you, I have no problem attracting views and sales elsewhere, without any promotion at all.
Promoting via social media takes masses of time and effort, so the promotion that I do occasionally do is not for my Folksy store, because Folksy’s fees are so much higher than those on the other platforms I use. I direct people to my website and Et** store instead.
I’ve used something called a static HTML iFrame tab. That sounds very grand and scary but it isn’t.
You search on Facebook in the box you would type in if looking for a person or business, for ‘static html iframe tab’ and click on the one that is by woobox. It looks like a pair of searching torches… click on it and it will take you through installing an app on your Facebook page. It has to be a page (you can select which one if you’ve more than one) as opposed to your normal Facebook.
Choose the page you wish it to be added to.
If asks for an HTML link to you shop/website. I know very little htmI used my blog to create the code for me. I started a new blog post, used the ‘link to another site’ just as if I was asking it to link to a site (cut and paste url address into the box (wordpress blog) and you can see the html. So, I cut and paste that into the box … add a picture for the ‘button’ which I made using Canva… (all this is free by the way).
Example html: < a href=“https://folksy.com/shops/JuliaYorkDesigns”>Folksy Shop (obviously replace the shop https etc bit with the address of your shop address) NOTE: take out the space between the first < and the a I’ve tried to force the page to show the code rather than a link…)
Go to Settings on the top right of you Facebook page click on it … find Apps in left hand menu and you should see the icon for the woodbox static iframe click on that and it will add it to the Apps part of the page. and then you should be able to see your new button in the Apps part of your Facebook page.
If you have any problems with this quick and dirty walk though then get back in touch and I’ll try and sort you out. I’m no expert obviously but it does work well enough for something that’s free.
Hi Hollie. For your shop and products to come up on as many Google searches as possible, you need to have as many links into your shop as possible. Like other people have said, social media is a great way of getting those links and shares. But if you’re reluctant to do a lot of social media, some press exposure could help boost your profile and views.
Your products are amazing, so it could be worth contacting some bloggers about your work. A good angle could be your methods of making the pinecones - at first glance you wouldn’t necessarily know they were handmade, so that’s really worth telling people about that and emphasising the making process. How you make them is a really interesting story you can share. Having a range of really brilliant products shots plus photos of your working methods and studio could help you get more press. This article has lots of advice about how to contact journalists and bloggers http://blog.folksy.com/2015/10/20/15-ways-to-get-your-work-featured-in-magazines-and-blogs
@HilaryP has done a bit of SEO digging for you and an incognito search for ‘Copper Pinecone necklace’ brings up two other links first below a sponsored google shopping ad. However those organic links don’t link to an individual shop listing, they go to general pages showing lots of search results pages for copper pinecone and pinecone necklaces. The next two links are for your copper pinecone necklace on Folksy, plus you’re featured in the first line of the image search. So although that is a niche search, it shows that your Folksy shop is returning good results for specific searches.
Thanks for your help xx
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