Evening all, I’m wondering if anyone has a minute to take a wee look at my shop and give me some advice on how I could do things better - I’ve had some views but no sales yet and am wondering if it’s something I’m doing wrong.
I had a bundle of clocks and purses originally but sold some at a local craft fair so don’t have as many items listed as I’d like, but I want to make some sales first before creating more stock… or do I really just have to list more to sell more?
I’ve just reduced the price of my clocks as I was worried they were too expensive, although now I’m concerned that after fees I won’t make much on them either…
Any advice gratefully received.
Cheers, Emily
Hello Emily, I’ve had a quick look at your shop, I think your photos are lovely. I am not an expert but others will give you advice. The only thing I noticed is that you put a lovely welcome at the beginning of your description, but I think you should be putting the words you have in your title, i.e. “A coin purse in attractive fabric” or something like that. I may not be explaining this correctly. You are on social media so that should help.
If you go on the Folksy blog there are articles on selling etc. if you have time to read them.
Everyone says have as many items in your shop as possible. Please don’t reduce your prices, as you don’t want to make something for nothing.
Good luck. Marg.
Hi Emily
I think your shop is lovely and your items look to be really well made. I’m rubbish at all the social media stuff which I’m sure works very well if done properly; my best runs of sales come when I get organised enough to drip feed new items into my shop. I hope you don’t give up!
Hi Emily, lovely shop but I would take a look at the photos again. The photo for your purse for example is in natural light, and there is some space around the purse so that when people are searching for purses they can see the whole item at a glance. Whereas your bows are taken with a flash and are cropped slightly. When you sell online photos are what grabs the person’s attention first so they need to be as best as they can be.
Also you have to promote and keep on promoting, which some find very hard to do (I know I struggle with it). There is lots of info on the Folksy blog, so grab a cuppa and have a browse.
Don’t drop your prices! The rationale behind it is if it’s too cheap people won’t see the value in it and appreciate the hard work that goes into handmade.
My in person sales far out do my online sales - I think it takes lots of promotion to do well online - so don’t give up just yet.
Looking at your purse and bow listings there are no approximate dimensions these are worth including (I know you have shots with coins for scale but international customers might not know what size they are, I have this issue when buying things fro the USA where they have put a cent in for scale and I don’t have one of those!). I’ve also found that it is worth including colours in the title, description and tags - someone might search cream hair clip rather than floral hair clip and yours would fit with either search. If you can rope a friend in to help you think of tags that can be a real bonus as they often view things differently and think of search terms you wouldn’t of (one woman’s hair slide is another’s hair grip), you can have upto 15 tags so you might as well use them.
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The hair bows look very pretty but you don’t put down the size or say what fabric is used ie is it cotton or polyester, wool etc
You have no dimensions ie length and width of bow, no measurement for the metal clip bit or what metal the clip bit is made from.
These are the things that potential customer s will be looking for as they can’t pick the item up and feel it, or read the contents on the back of the packaging like in a bricks and mortar shop.
Think about the words you use in your title, first line of description and tags as they need to contain the words potential customer will type into a search bar to find an item.
And as said it takes a lot of promoting your items to get seen on the internet.
Also please be aware it’s a long up hill struggle where most people give in as they don’t give it the time and effort required. Most businesses fail within the first 2 years so you just have to keep plodding on and you’ll see slowly grow. It’s not a quick process but as long as you are willing to keep at it over the long term then the sales will begin to slowly drip in.
So big welcome and all the best.
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Many thanks for your reply Eileen, you have given me some very helpful feedback there. I will certainly get measurements etc updated tonight, and get sorted with tags too. And for promotion, well I’ll certainly try harder - I just need to make sure I set time aside to do it, and regularly! I’m becoming aware from reading comments that it does take time and I need to keep at it, so thanks for the encouragement 
Thank you for taking the time to have a look at my wee shop, and for your help. Another lady has also mentioned measurements to me just now and I’m starting to understand how important they are - I suppose because I have them in front of me I wrongly think others can tell the size too, silly of me! And I love your suggestion of asking a friend for tagging help; I know just the person and think it’s a really good idea to get another perspective, cheers!
Also it’s interesting that your personal sales do better than online, thanks for noting that as it’s the case for me too. I think the face to face interaction really helps - although I don’t sell clothes I sometimes make my own and did have a lady strike up a conversation at a craft fair once because she liked my skirt. She didn’t buy anything but took a card and I think would remember me if she saw me again because of that interaction.
Thank you for your kind words Liz. I know he bow photos are a bit shoddy but suppose I thought they’d ‘do’ at the time because I was in a rush to put a bundle of things up. Bad me, I realise now I do need to dedicate some proper time, tea in hand, to both forum browsing and making sure my listings are as good as they can be. I tried hard to get good clock photos but may have given up slightly with the smaller items, which I know is wrong, so thank you for pointing that out. And I knooooow that about prices, I have always maintained what you said there, but had a low, despondent moment, so thank you immensely for reminding me otherwise!
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I know the drip feeding is hard, I think that’s what I struggle with too - I have started to get the hang of scheduling posts on my facebook page though so that’s worth a shout advertising wise if you haven’t already given it a go. Sometimes I link listings, other times I just put pictures of semi related Yellow Shed things, but listing a bundle of posts at the same time is quite handy, I don’t think folksy has a similar feature though…?
Thanks for your tips Marg. I had a rather despondent moment when I reduced my prices so have rectified that now… I will definitely have a look at tweaking the points you mentioned (yes, you explained perfectly!) and will have a good read of forums too, thank you!
