Google Analytics

Look I'm on the front page again! how cool is that!

This is one of those blog entries who would really interest only people who are on Etsy, but hell - I'm going to write it anyway cause I'm excited and also need to put things in order inside my brain.

Yesterday, after not doing it for a very long time, I went into the Etsy forum, It's a stressful place to hang out that usually makes me both loose a couple of hours before I even notice, and get me very angry about ususally very small things (like a person that makes another acount just ot put themselves in treasuries or expectations to lower shipping rates and so on) but it's still one of the best place to learn about what's new in Etsy and catch somw usful information and non usful gossip.

So the big piece of news I found was that now, I could finally link google analytics to my Etsy store. I've been using google analitics with all my other websites (yes, there are a lot of those...) and most of the time it's just a nice ego pat in the back to see how many people are seeing my sites, also, when views drop I know it's time to update the sites, it's also a good way to see if I was featured anywhere and other such interesting things.

I really wanted to have analytics on the Etsy store, mostly for that ego pet in the back - when nothing sales for a week and I get really worried, it would cheer me up to know that things are still working and people are still looking in my shop.
I honesly didn't expect and suprises.

Boy - what I wrong!

This is the interesting things I've learn from less then 24 hours of data (I installed it at about 4:00 AM last night, and the numbers I have so far are true to about 4:00 PM)

Big surprise number 1
I had 80 views so far, I didn't update my store today neither renew or list anything new, and still the store generated a really nice amount of views, much more then I expected. I always assumed that on non listing days I have about 0-20 views (seeing the view count change on the first few listed items). This is really good to know and makes me a little less stressed out about renewing or listing all the time. Right now I either list or renew an avrage of 5 items a day, knowing that on a no list day I still get visits, makes me want to rethink the whole "renewing" thing alltogether, or at least do it less. This will definitly save me some money.

Big surprise number 2
30 of the 80 views were direct. That means that people who visited my store knew where they were going cause their either RSS it or bookmark it or go and check it on their own accord. I think this is super cool, I really didn't expect this amount of direct traffic at all. I've been thinking and puting a lot of efort in preserving repete costumers and making sure people who buy from my store would feel comfortable to do so again, and it's really nice to see this is working (I know that at least one of those 30 people is my sister who will not buy from my store cause she can have anything she wants for free, but still...)

Big surprise number 3
I always assumed that my main and probably only useful marketing tool was flickr, I actually often encourage etsy people to use it to promote their stores and was sure this was the tool that divery most trafic to my Etsy store. My reasoning was this - I get a lot of views on flickr, so a certain % of those people go and check my store. Frickr indeed diverted some traffic to my store, but actually a lot less then I thought - only 4 hits came out of flickr. I have about 500 hits on flickr on avrage so 4 hits on the store out of 500 is a pretty crappy turn up, much less then I expected.
My blog however, generated 2 hits to theEtsy store, while only having about 10 hits for itself.

Why is this important?! because it means that even though less people read the blog then the people who see my flickr account, they are more likely to see my store (probably cause the blog have etsy mini with images on it, while in flickr, you have to move from the photo page, to my profile, to a link to the store) so even though it feels redundent to update a blog that only have about 20-30 readers a day in avrage - it's not! and I could and should aspire to emprove the blog to have more readers.

Big surprise number 4
And this one is a really big shock! my larger sorce of entries, as said, were direct hits, but second, with 18 hits was.... (drum roll...) google! can you believe it?! 18 people got into my store by searching things. This means that:
1) I'm really good at tagging and choosing words to use in my descriptions.
2) There is always room for emprovment and I should look more into what makes strong keywords (well, aside of XXX and sex).

What were people looking for that lead them ot my etsy store?!
the most common words were Etsy and Etsy.com after that were Blue bondage, perfect tea set, owl shaped mug, Illustration + humble, circa ceramics, paper menagerie, interesting historical events and a few other words.

At a first glance this seem really random, but then I figure out that at least one of the words in each of those searches was in the title of the listing (aside of etsy and etsy.com of course) - why is this important?! Because it means that titles as far as google search robots are concern, probably worth more then taggs. So, I am going to try and keep my titles as descriptive as possible.

Since if some wants a painting of an owl they will not searcg for "painting" or "art" but for "owl painting", I should include that topic rather then just the item in the title. Sometime I do list something as "a tea cup" but I should list it as "a handpainted tea cup with owls" or something like that. The more information, and the more exciting and relevant the title is, the better.

I've seen people on etsy go for interesting titles before, like "sunshine and stars necklace" to describe a necklace that has gold and silver in the pendent - I always thought it was sweet and goot marketing, but now I realize that they need ot have a more descriptive less fancyful title if they want to potimise their lisitngs for search angines. The thing is that a buyer who's looking for a necklace that's made of gold and silver will google "gold and silver necklace".

There are more things to analize I'm sure, but I think that even just those 4 facts are going to really change how I market my store and how I percive selling and making sales.

Thanks so much etsy for solving the analytics problem and making it possible for me ot use this tool.