Marketing Tip #1

I know many of you (including myself) are constantly looking for new ways to drive visitors to our shops. I'm sure alot of you already know what I'm about to share, but all this etsy selling stuff is still relatively new to me, so I'm always excited when I come across something new and helpful! In the spirit of building a community of successful sellers, I decided to share the results of my marketing efforts as I discover them in hopes that something I do will be able to help YOU! :)

First of all, a little bit about me. :) My background is in business/legal with a smattering of marketing and advertising as well as some graphic design. I random collection, I know. I tend to be the kind of person who jumps in head first to new ventures if only to learn something new. I guess that's about how my store came about in the first place, LOL. All of those things combined are making for a really fun experience diving into the seller world.

That being said, I track my analytics like a crazy person. I watch them daily via Google, Blogger, and StatCounter. Overkill? Maybe... But it helps me formulate my next move. ;)

I've also been watching the forums on etsy, and some of the team sites I'm a member of for new ideas. Many people seem to agree that renewing your listings is the number one thing to do to drive up the visitor count to your site, so I did a trial for 2 weeks to test it out. 

Turns out, it worked GREAT! I highly recommend it! Now, I'm sure it's not for everyone, but for someone like me, who doesn't list new items often (unlike maybe a jewelry shop or a bow shop) it really seemed to help catch the eye of new followers.

Technically speaking my results were as follows:

- On days that I did not renew, my numbers stayed about average
- On days that I renewed in the morning (before 10am) my numbers went up about 30-50%
- On days that I renewed in the evening (after 3pm, before 7pm) my numbers doubled!

Now, I haven't really figured out the days to a science yet, but so far it's looking like Thursdays are the strongest days for all traffic, with Tuesday in a close second. What's funny is that no matter what, the weekends are always lower than the rest of the week... which would not have been my guess pre-research.

So, it seems as though the evening time is the best time for attracting new traffic. Makes sense being as that's about the time people are getting home from work, etc. Now, I know renewing costs money, but at $.20 a pop I usually only do about 6-8 listings, keeping my cost under $2. No biggie, but it gets the products in front of the viewers.

I would love to hear how this works for others, if anyone decides to try it and track the results. As always, best wishes!! :):)