Traffic Direction

As a shopkeeper on Etsy.com, one limitation that I find issue with is that we may not have working links within our shops, unless they direct traffic to other Etsy pages.

Most shopkeepers have some sort of personal website or blog that can be an excellent selling tool. We use these sites to provide more information to our customers than is plausible within our shops. Instructional videos, photographs and stories about our working days and creative inspiration, details on special promotions, and interesting anecdotes that provide a sense of who we are as artists, business people and crafters; these are integral to our message as sellers.

Currently, we may include urls to these adjunct sites within our Esty shop, but they may not be working links, and that creates, in my opinion, a massive limitation. For starters, our customers need to take the time to copy and paste the link in order to view the adjunct pages, and in this age where time passes in nanoseconds, that is simply a cumbersome task many people will not make.

Should a viewer make the effort, the chance are high that they will not open another tab to view the page. They'll copy and past the url in the one they are currently in. When this happens - guess what? Elvis has just left the building.... Will I see him again, and get a chance to sell him my goods?

I'm not holding my breath for a policy change within Etsy that allows us to provide working links to our outside selling tools. But I find it essential that I provide a forum where my clients can develop a relationship with my company. So, this morning I came up with an idea that may or may not prove useful.

I've created an illustration that provides the url to my blog and added it to each of my listings as an adjunct photo. For my product line, 5 photos are not necessary. They are one of a kind items which really only need one or two shots. I can add in another photo that shows a model wearing the items, or even two photos, but I certainly feel a little "advertisement" for my blog is a worthwhile use for one of those photo slots.

Now, each time a customer views an item, they see a second photo to click on. When they do so, they get a crisp, clear direction to proceed. It should be interesting to watch my stats to see how my blog views change due to this.

There are problems, of course. The person must actually type in the url - they cannot even copy/paste from the illustration. It would be SO nice if they could click a hotlink that opens the page in a new tab.... But one has to work with what they have!
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Esty Sellers - Scroll to the lower portion of this page to get links to helpful marketing/selling tool/informational sites sites.

Esty Shoppers - Scroll to the lower portion of this page to get links to blogs from Etsy sellers!
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