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Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I've seen a few different people saying they have seen a decrease in etsy traffic/sales and I am experiencing this too. It is a new account but I used to get a lot more sales/views on the exact same items this time last year. and the items I sell are/have always been popular items so its nothing to do with that, if anything they are more popular now.

Is it anything to do with how you now pay for your listings to appear on google shopping? I know they used to be on there without paying as I used to see my listings on there last year when I was selling. But now when I check my stats it says no traffic is coming from google but all my sales were pretty much from google so I dont know what to do. I do now pay for etsy 'ads' and just the other day started paying for google ads too through etsy. They never used to have 2 options it was just etsy ads so I'm thinking maybe now I need to invest more into the google ads. If anyone has any experience with this that would be great as I have no idea how much I should be investing as right now I'm paying the very minimum.

Thanks!

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

It could be a number of factors.. increased competition, spring break, holidays over, summer approaching or just a slower ETSY.

ETSY isn't eBay or Amazon but I don't see ETSY slowing down at the moment.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

all of my traffic comes from google. have you actually searched for your own products to make sure they are all showing up in Google Shopping?

and google shopping is no longer free anywhere you sell. that changed a long time ago.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I haven't noticed a decrease in traffic but I had a sharp decline in sales last week. Looking at their forums Et.sy changed their checkout system and it put a lot of users off buying items.

They basically made it so you had to pay for your whole cart rather than being able to pay for individual sellers. Turns out A lot of buyers were using their shopping cart as like a wish list, so Et.sy's change meant they had to start putting listings away, I think maybe into like a save for later like on amazon's shopping cart but it seems a lot of users didn't like this so just didn't purchase last week.

Where my Mon-Thur is usually busy and the end of the week + weekend is quiet, this change flipped my sales behaviour for last week. Dead start to the week and then busy weekend. I assume its users giving in to Et.sy's will lol.

I may have to test out their google shopping though. I don't pay for any advertising with Et.sy and looks like one of my items is on page 4 of google shopping. Wonder what throwing a little money at it will do.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

Yes they are showing up now but I didn't check before I started paying for the google shopping ads, but before I started paying for them I checked through etsy and it said no listing views/sales were coming from google whereas all my sales used to pretty much come through google. However today my etsy shop has had significantly more views/favourites than yesterday so I'm assuming its down to the google ads.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I never knew about the checkout change, seems like a strange thing for them to do as I'm sure they know a lot of customers add things to their cart but only want to check out one seller. Today my views/favs/sales have increased so I think it might have been due to the fact I paid for the google ads. My listings are now top of the first page on google shopping so hopefully it starts to pick up now.

You should definitely try the ads and you will be able to tell within a few days if it makes a difference. You can then adjust the budget however you please. My budget is literally only a few £ a day and I've seen a difference. Worth a try!

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

Not sure what product you are selling, so it might be a seasonal thing?

If anything I have noticed increase in sales this month.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

yo, if a checkout change makes people NOT buy your items, you are doing something wrong.

I shop a ton online myself and never have I NOT bought anything because of a checkout process. Heh, what a terrible theory.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I haven't personally had a look at the new etsy checkout but consumers can massively be impacted by simple things such as a page taking a few seconds longer to load than normal.

I know on my etsy I have 100s of things added to my cart and they now don't allow you to buy from a single seller so I've heard, so this would mean going back on to your cart and manually deleting all the products from sellers you dont want which could take some time.

People have very very short attention spans these days, a lot of buying online is done on impulse. Even I sometimes buy things then regret buying them half an hour later. So making the checkout process take even just a few minutes longer or more inconvenient for customers can definitely turn them off to buying the product, so no its not a terrible theory at all.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I shop online almost exclusively. And I can confirm that when ebay f***s up my shopping cart so bad I can't pay for anything, it means I don't buy stuff. I'd say it's not that terrible a theory when there is proof in the Et.sy forums that people are put off purchasing.

This is what put a few people off buying and even made them complain in the forums, its unwanted effort really and as we all know it can be quite easy to put someone off impulse buying. My attitude would be "I can't be arsed with deleting all that now. I'll just do it later" and then as I always do I'll get distracted by something else bright and shiny and probably actually do it a month or two later.

It would seem like the right thing to do to put it back to the way it was if they are loosing sales, but I imagine they would just stick it out and force shoppers to deal with it. Et.sy needs it users to move with the times rather than indulge their ocd. My other half is in programming (or something along those lines) he said something about it being a huge benefit to remove those lists. It's clutter that takes up Et.sy's space, so getting people to delete those lists is probably great in the log run, just seems people don't like change.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

My etsy has finally picked up and is making roughly the same as it was last year so hopefully I can keep it going and not get shut down again!

Just curious how many etsy stealth accounts do you have running at the moment? and how long have they been going? I want to open a second account to sell different things but worried about linking the 2 and getting them both shut down.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I have 1 that's been going for 2 years. Make a ton of money.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

Is this a stealth etsy yeah? Hopefully mine keeps going!

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

Depends on the products, tbh. I have a few new stores (2 months or less) and have sold 600+ items on them. You just have to check out what's going on in your category and adjust.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I don't even run stealth Etsy- I own my own little side business and do artisan ****. Make bank and keep it truckin.

Only place where I lurk in the shadows with stealth is eBay.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

Give it time Haidukken.. Stealth for everything.. :p

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

Yes stealth etsy. Over 7000 sales in 2 years. But I think they changed policy where you have to add a social to activate direct checkout? I find that if you don't have DC with etsy you don't get as many sales.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

I will say I just compared my Et*y sales for the past few months. It does look like a slight decline in sales. But I also sell supplies and et*y is messing with this new supply website they are building. And they always mess with traffic so who knows. It could be a multitude of reasons.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

Hey man, thats rude!
I'll keep my baby trucking as long as possible and HOPEFULLY I never need a stealth Etsy account. If I do need one, clearly I've ****ed up along the way.

:spy:

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

It seems that Etsy posted a larger loss than forecast and are trying to make more money. One of the ways they are doing that, they have now stopped paying for Google product ads and that affects traffic.

The other thing is, in December Etsy admin said in an interview something about distributing sales among so many sellers. Many well established shops have seen decline in views and sales. When you check the search results in one of the very popular categories I sell in, results being shown include small shops with very few sales, which is drastically different from search results a few months ago. Seems to me they are trying to prevent a bunch of small wanna be sellers from closing shop.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

This has officially been going on for years ( about distributing the sales among shops). How people have not been noticing about this? And {lucky few} new shops usually get "pampered" by appearing in first page of popular search without any sales history/good reviews.

Re: Decrease in Etsy traffic?
 

It has never been about luck, but about knowing how to get your shop going. The conspiracy theory about shop rotation has been going on for years, yes. But now is the first time I actually notice evidence of that.

I see most of the established shops paying for ads now, and I see way too many shops appear on the first search pages that have very poor sales. A few months ago they would have never made it to the first pages of search. This change seems to have happened sometime in December