After selling on Etsy for 7 years, I launched my own website (duh, you’re reading on it right now). Admittedly, it was initially hard for me to start directing traffic to the new site. I had sold through my Etsy shop for so long, it was familiar, and in some sort of way, addicting. But I knew that it was more important to switch focus to my own site in order to grow my brand further.
While there are a lot of tips that can be found through our dear friend Google on how to drive traffic to a site, it’s a bit different when you already have an established Etsy shop. And it can make this task more difficult still, when that shop remains active and thriving. How do you start getting your customers who are familiar with your Etsy shop to starting making purchases from your new site? I have been working on this for about six months now and wanted to share the things I found most effective for directing sales from one site to another.
Redirect Etsy customers – The easiest way to get customers to buy from your new site is to target existing customers. I started including a thank you card in all the orders I received on Etsy. It explains my Etsy journey over the years and invites them to visit my new site. Also, while it’s against Etsy rules to link to an outside shop from your Etsy shop, it definitely doesn’t hurt to add your new site’s link to your “message to buyers” e-mail they receive once they have placed an order with you.
Exclusive offerings – Exclusivity is a huge means of getting traffic where you want it to be, and can be offered in different ways.
Exclusive product example: When I launched my new gift wrap and washi tape I initially listed them only on this website, making sure that customers would order there.
Exclusive promotion example: I created a special promotional listing on Black Friday that was only available on my site (and also was offered exclusively to my newsletter subscribers so make sure you’re on our mailing list!).
Exclusive deal example: On the card I put in my Etsy orders, it not only gives them backstory on the launch of my new site, but it also gives them a coupon code that is only valid there.
Always link to your new site – Seems like a no-brainer but this was hard for me. I’m going to tell you why. The thing about Etsy is that it displays your sale count. It’s out there. There’s even sites that RANK YOU by it. I have also learned that people CHECK my sales counts… you know, to “see how I’m doing.” And part of me thought that those people would think my business was not doing well because of whatever my sale count was doing. There I said it. But then I was like, fuck those other people because they don’t know the half of it. So remember your priority… growing your business, building your brand, and not worrying about how other people think you’re doing.
Get to Pinning! – I was fortunate enough to have a skilled web designer (hi husband) who made sure that all my backlinks from my old blog forwarded to this blog. But having products within my blog site was something new for me. I knew I had to create new backlinks to give the e-commerce part of my site a stronger SEO. So wherever you like to promote your products… whether it’s Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.. get to it! There is absolutely no shame in a little self-promotion when it’s done right. The more backlinks that are out there, the better SEO your site will have and the easier people will find it!
I hope you find this helpful! Let me know if you have any questions. I’d love to hear some tips you have found helpful as well.
xo, JA
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Thank you for these tips. I haven’t had an active Etsy shop in a long time but when I picked up my business again, I was hoping that my giftshop would be enough but many of my customers are tourists and I needed a way for them to get more candles or melts when they aren’t on vacation and directing them to my website is perfect. I’m going to start making little thank you cards to drop in the bag when they purchase something in the store along with a couple business cards so they can share with friends.
I’ve had my own dotcom for over a year now and am sloooooowly getting it to the point where I actually like it. And recently, I’ve actually been seeing some steady sales on it. So I’m excited to make that merge to “this is my storefront” and “oh yeah, I guess I do sell on Etsy too if that’s more your jam”.
Love these tips! Especially the last one – Pinterest is so great to getting traffic to my site!