Etsy: Less Views Can Mean More Sales!

I have discussed Bounce Rate before but I wanted to revisit it after talking about Etsy's search algorithm. Sometimes when you tighten up your relevancy you actually experience a drop in views, sometimes it is a significant drop in views. Don't panic!

A drop in views means very little unless you have a drop in sales accompanying it. If so, you might need to revisit relevancy in general. If your drop in views does not seem to change your sales rate then you have actually done well. You have dropped your bounce rate. Meaning, those who just click on a listing and leave within seconds because it isn't what they are looking for. Those people rarely buy anyhow. Sure, someone might buy because they randomly landed on one of your products, but the customer you actually want is one that sought out your product because that is what they were looking for.

The better your relevancy the better chance you have at connecting with a customer. So, before you start to panic after making a change, look at the big picture. Give it a little bit of time. If your sales are not dropping you are probably doing okay. You might want to revisit some of my articles on Bounce Rate by clicking on the tag cloud to the right.

Hope this helps a little. Let me know if you have any questions by leaving them in the comments or sending me an email to MarketMyShop@gmail.com

Tag Relevancy And Bounce Rate

I have been talking about better relevancy through picking keywords that shoppers use to find you. Today I would like to talk a little bit about "Bounce Rate" and how to lower it for you. Bounce Rate is a term that means simply if the searcher found what they were looking for by following your link or not. If they did find what they were looking for you had relevant terms that accurately described your product. If they didn't find what they were looking for and they left quickly, then your tags, title and description probably didn't accurately describe your product.

The lower the bounce rate there better off you are. Now there are factors that are unavoidable. Sometimes people are looking at a whole lot of things and your product just isn't what they are looking for. Sometimes a "bot" opens a page for indexing and leaves quickly enough and it gets counted as a bounce. There are some other factors that make it nearly impossible to have less than 10% bounce rate.

You want to make your tags, title, description and photos as relevant as possible. Not just to be seen and to increase views but to have a lower bounce rate. You can have 5000 views and no sales because you have optimized for a popular search term that doesn't quite match your item. Or you can have 100 views and 5 sales because you market exactly what you have to exactly who would buy it.

I strive for a bounce rate around 35% because I figure that means 65% of the people who find me will be ones looking for what I have to offer. Of course, my bounce rate fluctuates a lot. That is because I am always striving to do a better job at showing what I have in the best way I can. This is not an overnight process either. It can take a few weeks to see any noticeable differences. I check my Google Analytics stats about once a week.

Don't put too much weight on bounce rate, it is just a simple look at how well your SEO relevancy campaign is doing. A better way to judge that would be through sales. Lowering your bounce rate should increase your sales but it is not a guarantee. I will be talking more about Google Analtics next week. If you have any questions on Bounce Rate please leave me a comment and I will try to answer.