How to Improve Your Jewelry Store on Etsy
In the 2021 Q4 financial report, Etsy declared that the number of sellers on their platform had reached the 5.3 million mark. This was an increase of around 21% from the previous year. Not only that, but the number of users has also been increasing, year after year, to reach 96.3 million at the end of 2021. Therefore, Etsy is still a giant player in the eCommerce landscape.
But while there is a large market for the products, there is also fierce competition among sellers. With around 2 million active shops and about 10% of their top sellers in the jewelry industry, you are competing first and foremost for visibility. That can be achieved by implementing the changes we will discuss next.
1. Etsy Store Improvements
Let’s start answering “How to sell jewelry on Etsy” from understanding how Etsy works on the store level.
Shop announcement. Etsy has offered sellers several ways to differentiate themselves and stand out among the noise. One of those is the ability to create a jewelry shop announcement that will go on the front of your store right under the header. In there, you can update buyers on special offers and add links to your best sellers, promotions, and keywords. This is a section you should update regularly to benefit the most from it.
Create visual language. You can find plenty of recommendations for this in their seller handbook. So we won’t delve too deep into it. But this is particularly important for jewelry sellers as jewelry is all about making a statement through visuals. The color scheme, font in images and banners, and images themselves should be consistent throughout all the pages and follow your branding style.
- top banner – updated to current offering
- first product images – consistent, styled, recognizable
- promotional images – jewelry box, appraisal, offer, care instructions – as many as possible, styled
Store Sections. Each of your store’s sections can make a potential buyer spend more (or less) time on your store, which will influence the likelihood of them buying. So it’s important to title those sections in a manner that creates intrigue, as well as organize them properly. You may also attract new traffic to your store by adding relevant keywords.
- Specific sections titles: “Gold Earrings” over “Earrings”
- Focus buyers attention with Caps lock: Gold HOOP Earrings” vs “Gold Hoop Earrings”
- Sort sections by importance: normally, put sections with more items first.
- Add special sections, as “ON SALE”, “Best sellers”, “Ready to ship”
- Avoid having too many sections, as buyers can’t make the selection. 15 sections are too much.
- Avoid having multiple section with low count of products. It’s better to unify them, to display large variety, and increase the chances of showing the matching jewelry to your buyers.
Your About page is the one with the most potential for branding and SEO. Besides adding more keywords to it, this page is your opportunity to showcase relevant details, helpful information, values, and the story behind your products or ideas. Customers love reading about the people behind the brand. It creates rapport, trust, and loyalty. It’s important you dedicate it some time when you start selling jewelry on Etsy.
- keep it personal
- show the real picture of yourself
- add inspiration images
- video is great!
- add link to your website (no questions)
More observations and tricks:
- Enable the “Request custom order” option – it doesn’t you don’t have to fulfill every client’s wish, but it sets your store higher in Etsy search results.
- Vacation mode: Using it in your Etsy store is questionable. Even though it’s available and common, this option can hurt your SEO efforts beyond the break. Instead of it, consider setting longer shipping times. But make sure you can still answer buyers’ questions.
- Use Favorite items to boost your best-selling jewelry further, and to test new items.
2. Etsy Listings Improvements
Product listings are truly the bread and butter of Etsy. Researching on how to sell jewelry on Etsy should undoubtedly focus on listing optimization.
First, listings should be regularly optimized, perhaps even before the store itself. As a rule, regular updates, even small, in the listing increase its visibility because Etsy sees relevancy in newly updated listings.
Regular, frequent listing of new jewelry in the store also help out with traffic. Etsy wants to see constant activity in your jewelry store, both on the buyer and seller end. That is how they will start prioritizing your products over others. A good frequency for posting new listings is weekly. Make sure to list those items as new.
The listing format depends heavily on the jewelry you are selling. Generally, it is good to offer multiple variations of the jewelry to increase the chances of selling. Naturally, this will be less relevant to selling one-of-a-kind jewelry, estate jewelry, or loose diamonds.
An additional advantage of the variations is that, in many cases, they allow you to add lower-priced jewelry to the main one. This allows your jewelry to appear in more attractive price ranges.
The listing title must be informative and unique. Include the main search keyphrases in the title, and concentrate on the first 40 characters, as these are seen on the search results page before the buyer even enters the page. Our research shows that longer titles perform better, despite Etsy’s opposite statements.
The listing title should not be repeated in your item description. The description is a place to detail benefits and specific features. You should also make each description unique and avoid repeating the same content or expressions used for other listings.
When creating your jewelry description, avoid “wall of text” – long unreadable texts. Use separators such as special symbols, capital letters, and cut the text into easily readable chunks. A rule of thumb is that buyers won’t read more than 4 lines of text in one paragraph.
Jewelry Images. Pay special attention to the listing photo gallery. Make sure to use all 10 picture slots allotted and high-resolution photos. In addition to clean jewelry images, include lifestyle images to showcase an actual person wearing the jewelry. Must-haves are promotional images, seasonal images, and branded offer images. Videos are very much expected, especially when selling such a visual and personal product as jewelry.
Keywords (tags) are one of the most important components of the listing. Similarly, you should not use the same keywords for each item listing either. This is so you don’t compete against yourself and have more opportunities to direct new traffic your way. For each piece of jewelry, you could have selected the following:
- Tags – as many as possible, up to 13 with up to 20 characters each
- Manufacturing technique
- Product uniqueness (shape, positioning, use case)
- Any gemstones – name, cut type, shank type, etc.
Cross-selling. Lastly, you may also add links to your other jewelry items in the description. You may include jewelry from the same collection, with just a different cut or different gem color, or jewelry creating a set to the current product.
3. General Improvements for selling jewelry on Etsy
Selling jewelry on Etsy is not a one-push but a strategic move with a clear ongoing strategy and implementation. Make sure it naturally extends your business, and works in synergy with other sales channels.
Quick-sellers. To boost your Etsy store, prepare to sell some jewelry at the cost, or even below. The goal is to have quick-selling items and to effectively boost the traffic Etsy is ready to send to your store.
Offer free shipping and returns. Even though Etsy’s algorithm is quite tolerant of paid shipping, buyers always prefer to have the shipping and returns covered. Remember to offer paid shipping upgrades for those looking for better service.
Side note: Research shows that buyers are ready to pay an additional full price for the jewelry for improved shipping. This is something worth considering.
Side note 2: Extend your returns period to a maximum. Very few buyers return their jewelry after 2 weeks.
Run PPC (paid promotion). It’s hard to run an Etsy store without a running PPC campaign. Start with small amounts and be persistent. Paid advertising is a sales vehicle and a great analytical tool. This helps you understand how selling jewelry on Etsy looks like, from Etsy perspective – what keywords bring relevant traffic, what ends up as a waste of money.
In addition to the obvious sales generation, its benefits include quick product checks by buyers. This allows you to analyze the listing performance quickly without long waiting for significant organic traffic in the listing.
Define buyer segments. Many groups of individuals buy jewelry for different purposes. You’ll have the fashion icons who buy it regularly for themselves, those who purchase it as gifts for others, the influencers of the industry who promote it, and the collectors who rarely use the same jewelry items twice. Each of these buying trends should have its content marketing strategy.
Google Trends is another place where you can keep up with your target market’s interests and needs. There, you can find out the keywords they are searching for and discover interest patterns over time (by looking at keyword history).
Attractive discounts, bundles, and promotions will never go out of style. Combine them with special occasions and events, such as holidays or Black Friday sales, to gain the most traction in your store and maximize profits.
Continuous testing. One can conclude on how to sell jewelry on Etsy with one simple rule: “A/B test“. For any improvement you implement, always test it on the part of the listings and define the winning strategy based on the results, not by guesses and intuition.
This is one reason why it’s much more efficient to have at least 400 listings in your store. This will create enough space for testing and analysis.
Use Etsy community. Etsy is very community-oriented. Get involved in the communities to stay updated on Etsy’s development and upcoming changes. In addition, the community is a never-ending source of inspiration and business connections.
Technology advantage. Last and definitely not least, use the proper technology to empower your work on Etsy. Will posting 100 items to Etsy take 10 minutes or 10 days? Will you manage your jewelry inventory effectively or risk your store with overselling? Will you be able to fine-tune your listings effectively? Will you follow seasonal trends? All this and much more is defined if you have the proper jewelry software in play.
Conclusion: prepare for a long ride.
Attractive high-end jewelry customers can take some time, especially if you are just starting to sell jewelry on Etsy. However, the strategies mentioned above should speed up the process and give you a clear roadmap to follow. Take the time to identify your target market, learn about them, understand the trends in your industry, and optimize your marketing. Once you have these nailed down, your ideal clients will knock on your virtual doors in no time.
Selling jewelry on Etsy means improving constantly. Contact our jewelry eCommerce specialists to learn more about how to sell jewelry on Etsy more effectively.
