We understand the benefits of selling your products on Etsy, and what that real estate can do to grow your business, allowing people to find you on a maker specific search tool. That doesn’t mean you can’t build your own platform alongside it though.
There are plenty of user friendly shop platforms, which allows you to build your website quickly, so you can get back to making your products. You might prefer Shopify, Squarespace, or BigCommerce. I recommend picking the one that you find easiest to manage through its backend, or that integrates with the software you already have in place.
Share the behind the scenes of your business and the process of making your products, or create step by step instructions of how to use, hang, or style your products. This helps people understand how they can fit the product into their lifestyle. When they have that in their mind, they should be more inclined to make the purchase.
Selling your products outside of Etsy, so that your customers get used to shopping with you, helps them build more trust with you. You become the business they bought from, more that that thing they found on Etsy once. You can also limit the fees you might be charged on those purchases.
Let people know when you’ll be at a local maker’s market, or are hosting a pop up shop. People can then save those to their calendar and share them on social media.
Whether its a popup, the announcement bar at the top of the site, or in the footer, you can grow your email marketing list through your website rather than just from your customers on Etsy. You can then provide these people with content around your products.
You’re in control of which plan you choose, so you might be charged more for your platform and less per transaction or vice versa.
When people are searching on search engines for products like yours, your website is more likely to rank over your individual Etsy ranking. You can also run Google Shopping ads, that link to your products on your site, and ads that link to your categories, or to specific products.
If you are ranking highly when people search for your type of product, or you are being referred to people who favourited similar products, you are being found more. Now hopefully that converts to sales, but you will get in front of more people. If your product is like no other, or too niche, this might not be the case, but it can be a major benefit to so many makers.
People who have shopped from Etsy before have a little extra trust with the platform. They understand the reviews and that Etsy has some rules that cover their purchase.
Etsy rules don’t allow for you to use their platform to promote your own website. But there are other ways to let people know. Include a card, or print in every order made through Etsy. This will let people know you have one, and while they might continue to shop through Etsy for now, if something happened one day where they couldn’t, they might remember, and you can keep some of your recurring customer base. Make that card or print beautiful enough to put on a corkboard and they might just keep it. On places like Instagram where you can have one link, or Facebook where you can nominate a website, put the link to your own one instead of your Etsy shop.
If you’d rather people purchased from your website, over Etsy, you can offer a difference price, or special promotions only on your website. If you choose not to have 2 shops for now, you can always use the other features on your website to supplement your Etsy shop, with the blog, and a newsletter, creating a hub for your content and your Etsy shop, all in one place.
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