Another Folksy special event comes to an end, the posting deadline for Valentine’s Day is past, and my Folksy sales drop to zero.
Still getting a sale a day on a certain other platform we try not to talk about too much though, so I thought I’d look at my stats for the past week to see whether I’m right to attribute the difference to the orders-of-magnitude difference in size between the two platforms. Am I getting seven times the traffic over there because of its hugeness/high level of consumer awareness/ridiculously massive advertising budget?
No. No I am not.
Over the past seven days I have had 31 shop visits and 93 item visits on Folksy. Zero conversion.
And on the other place I have had 68 visits and 95 listing views. Ten per cent conversion of visits to orders. According to their own info their ‘visits’ include someone looking at shop OR listings so they are not completely comparable, but I’m guessing ‘listing views’ is pretty much equivalent to Folksy item visits and those figures are pretty much exactly the same.
Time for me to start duplicating my remaining (mostly personalisable) listings on that other platform and promoting them in my Folksy shop methinks. Because I’m clearly not selling what my Folksy visitors actually want to buy!
Although that doesn’t explain why my Folksy visitors aren’t buying the personalisable items that I already have over here…
Will muse on this further and do some more experimenting. I’d be interested to hear anyone else’s thoughts too!
I’m going to guess Folksy stats also include some seller views, who maybe aren’t looking with the intention to buy but searching for items to include in Folksy Friday boards and things like that.
It’s not something you can easily identify how much or be sure of (until you see one of your items in someone else’s post) but because of the Folksy community I would expect some of the views here may be with different intentions, but as I haven’t seen that strong, sharing community from Etsy for a long time, I’d guess more of their views are made by people specifically looking to buy.
Good point, thank you! It’s still much less of a difference in traffic than I was expecting though. Hmmm, I wonder whether I can gain an insight by looking at my Folksy activity to see who’s favourited things?
Thank you for your post, I am interested in the outcome of your experiment. My stats are similar to yours on both platforms.
I wonder if the difference could be the other platform promote refunds much more (if you are not happy as a buyer or your item arrives late), giving the buyer more confidence in buying, knowing if they are not happy that can get a refund quickly.
There are so many scammers out there now it makes people more wary of buying from an unknown business. Plus unfortunately this platform is not as well known, I tell people about it and they say what is that! If people have not heard of it, they are less likely to purchase from it too.
I’m wondering if the views and faves generated by the forum challenges and showcases is also skewing your stats? I’m quite an enthusiastic fav’er on here in the hope it bumps people to the front page, but I do sometimes wonder if I am doing more harm than good?
It would be really helpful if Folksy admin were to update some of the SEO advice on their platform. I read some really interesting blog articles recently about how to improve my tags and make my description stand out, before realising they were written over 5 years ago and referred to functionality no longer supported on Folksy .
I don’t think it’s to do with refunds, the items I’ve still got listed over there are all custom personalised ones so they aren’t eligible for refunds. I’m just intrigued to find that people are looking at my Folksy shop just as much, so they are finding the site, but not purchasing (or at least not from me) once they get here. Perhaps it’s to do with my shop only accepting Paypal - have people lost faith in PP as a payment method maybe?
You may be right. I do a lot of favouriting and sharing too. And I definitely second the need for more advice on Folksy SEO as it currently functions - I’m still trying to get to grips with how the search works, the tagging seems very different from what I’ve been used to in my other shop and I’m no longer sure whether to use single words, or phrases, or what! But even a vastly improved search performance wouldn’t change the fact that my conversion rate is much lower here although I suppose it would bring more overall visits and improve the chances of a sale…
I’m making a conscious effort to really push Folksy on Pinterest. That seems to be my biggest external source on the site that must not be named. I think that might help get Folksy better known.
While not linked to conversion rate, I’ve also realised I’m guilty of the cardinal sin of duplicate content (copying from another of my listings or from another platform). So, of course, any search for my stuff will default to the most well known I’m very busy re-writing new content.
Forgot to tell you, the latest forks and spoons I ordered from you are fabulous. I’ve left a review, and also done the review for the set I bought ages ago but missed …
Very interesting thread, thank you @LooneySpoons for starting it.
I don’t have another shop so can’t compare stats but I do keep a rolling 7 day spreadsheet so that I can see how many visitors I get & which items are most popular.
So over the last 7 days I have had 34 visits to my shop with zero conversion.
I also participate in the forums so will get other sellers looking at my shop / items. I tend to concentrate on Facebook for my social media & don’t do much on Pinterest but maybe I should give it more of a chance.
I always forget about Pinterest but yes, it does seem to be a big passive driver of traffic to the other place so I really should get in there and boost my Folksy presence a bit, thanks for the suggestion! Also duplicate content is something I have a lot of too, my items are all pretty similar so the ‘boring’ bits of the item description tend to just get copied and pasted, but I am on a rewriting mission.
And thank you so much for the nice reviews, I’m glad you are enjoying your spoons and forks
I spotted a good suggestion on the Folksy blog that suggested moving the “boring stuff” to static pages such as About me and Information. It’s easier to come up with some variations of "go here for more info… ". And it reduces your word count - apparently people like shorter listings (that’s me failed then!!!)
I do have stuff on my static pages but I like the customer to have everything they need in one place in the listing description so they don’t need to click away!
I really struggle here, and not really promoted it since September as after 9 months of constant promoting i wasn’t getting sales. My views/visits don’t change much on here around 70 views/40 visits on the 7 day stats. 3 orders since Christmas.
I don’t promote the ‘other’ shop either and so far this year 69 orders.
I have tried to rewrite some listings on here after the workshop last year on listings, but its made no difference.
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