I took a screen shot of the virtual lab. I have been to the labs for meetings with my quiltsy team and team etsybaby and for the Team etsyBABY virtual baby shower. This was my first ‘lecture’ through the virtual lab. I’m interested to hear what I need to improve upon in my listings!

The talk was given by Danielle and Sean on Thursday 5/28/09.

TITLES:

• Be accurate and specific.
  • Put the subcategory in your title (i.e. if you made a necklace…jewelry is the main category, necklace is the subcategory…put necklace in the title)
• Titles should be Short and Sweet…but not too short.
  • put a little whimsy/peronality in the title but don’ let it be too long
  • Three or four words is good
• Think about how the title will look in the different views
  • Gallery
  • List
• When thinking about Google…put the important information in the FRONT!

Helpful link:

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/seller-how-to-optimizing-your-etsy-shop-for-search-engines-3835/

DESCRIPTIONS:

• Put the most important information up front to get buyers to click on it
• in google you see the first 160 characters in the description
• Buyers LOVE TO SEE
• descriptions broken up into short paragraphs or bullet points
• relevant info is scanned quickly and it’s easy to read
• DIMENSIONS
• lower in the description
• metric conversion is good
• Put what people are searching for in the beginning of the description
• TELL your story!
• Great to be found through search but how are you going to make them add that to their cart?
• emphasize HANDMADE
• tell the story BEHIND the item
• let them know you are a real person and they are buying directly from YOU
• link to other areas on etsy in your description
• EXAMPLES
• a matching piece of jewelry
• your profile for a person to learn more about you

TAGGING

• First tag is the main category: HANDMADE, VINTAGE (20 yrs +), SUPPLY
• Next tag: Main Category
• Subtags:
• use a better, more descriptive…not just yellow: butter yellow or Mustard yellow
• Where will item be used?
• Size: Small, medium, large, xl
• Style: Gothic, modern, feminine, sophisticated
• Motif: Owl, polk-a-dot, nature, landscape (www.thesaurus.com)
• Use ‘International’ if you ship international
• Add your shop name as a tag in just a few items in your shop
• TIPS:
• look through your descriptions
• key words haven’t used
• keyword tools out there (google and yahooo…can see what people are searching)

HELPFUL LINK:

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/guidelines-tips-tagging-on-etsy-281/

RANDOM QUESTIONS: (these are the questions people in the forum had)

• Order of tags important? FIRST TAG is important, after that it’s not that important YET, but it’s good practice to put most important tags first
• Using all 14 tags is good for relevancy and searches.
• Tags, titles, descriptions, materials (order of relevancy importance) tags are weighted the highest!
• TITLES: not too short, not too long. Keep it accurate and interesting.
• FREE SHIPPING: Depends on the buyer your are looking for…free shipping not necessarily high on a search. Definitely a bonus for the buyer, but don’t put it up top
• Something that can be made in any color scheme…custom/personalize would be a good tag.

Miscellaneous info on the SHOP LOCAL: one of the big challenges is that we have high quality address data we have. Once they have that figured out they will warn us and then we can update our info. Once implemented, set it up so people can sort items so that items from sellers closest to them will show up first…neat!

check out www.etsyhacks.com for more tips/shortcuts

I stayed tuned for about 45 minutes….whatever happened after that I don’t have notes for…

SUMMARY posted in the STORQUE: http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/seller-workshop-recap-tags-titles-descriptions-and-most-rele-4090/?utm_source=etsy_success&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=etsy_success_060409/