Etsy's Weekend Deals - The Numbers

For those of you who don't know, every day Etsy sends out an email called "Etsy Finds" showcasing some number of items from sellers on Etsy. (You can sign up for this and other email lists here). On Fridays, the Etsy Finds email always focuses on "Weekend Deals," which may center around some particular theme (spa/relaxation, summer jewelery, etc) or a certain type of deal ( % Off, Free Shipping, BOGO, etc.)

Well last Friday, July 10th my Romper the Rhino made it into the Weekend Deals email. Here's a screenshot of part of the email, showing Romper and a few other lovely items from fellow Etsians.

So what kind of traffic did I get from being in this email? Lots. and Lots. We're talking a month's worth of views in a single day. It was amazing. I was sitting on Craftcult, refreshing the page and watching my item views and shop hearts go up and up. Yes, I really am that much of a dork, and to prove that point further, I'm now going to launch into a bunch of numbers because I love data.

First some background information for comparison purposes...

This is what my visits looked like for the month of June

So you can see that during the month of June I received a total of 954 visits and 2,289 pageviews. That averages out to 31.8 visits and 76.3 pageviews per day.

Now, here is what my views looked like from Friday, July 10th (the day the email went out) through Monday, July 13th (yesterday).

On Friday alone, I received 711 visits, a 2,136% increase over my average daily visits in June. And I received 2,411 pageviews, a 3,060% increase over my average daily pageviews, and 5% higher than the number of pageviews I received during the entire month of June.

Also interesting is that during these 4 days, the number of pages people viewed per visit was higher (3.32 versus 2.40) and my bounce rate was lower (40.98% versus 58.49%) than average. So not only did I get waayyy more visitors, but those visitors viewed more pages, and fewer of them left immediately.

As for shop hearts, between 12 noon on Friday and 11:59pm on Monday, I received 68 new shop hearts. Prior to then I had 108 hearts, so that 68 hearts amounts to a 63% increase in just 3.5 days. Considering it took me over four months to get the first 108, that's a big jump in hearts! Even better, out of those 68 hearts, 41 (60%) were from non-sellers. My experience has been that non-sellers are more likely to buy from my shop than sellers - only 2 of the 11 people I've sold to have been sellers.

So while I sold 2 toys and 1 pattern over the weekend, the big question is whether this will have any long term impact on traffic and sales in my shop. My suspicion is that it will, because there are now 68 more people who have my shop easily accessible in their favorites, so some of them are bound to come back. It also seems to me there's a bit of a snowball effect when it comes to awareness - the more people know about your shop, the more people will find out about it. And I now have A LOT more people who know about me.

It looks from the second graph I posted that my views haven't levelled off from their peak yet. While they have dropped significantly from Friday's crazy high level, they are still much higher than my average, and are still decreasing. Sunday I had 168 visits, which dropped to 130 visits on Monday, still 309% higher than my June daily average. I will keep an eye on my Google Analytics and post again after things level off and I can determine whether or not there's a long-term increase in traffic.

One final note (and this is the part you want to read!)...

If you want to get in the Etsy Finds Weekend Deals email on Fridays, search the Etsy forums for "weekend deals" and you'll find the threads where you can submit your items for inclusion. While every other day the Etsy Finds items are picked in some secretive mysterious way, on Fridays all items come from these threads. Make sure you have something that fits the theme (if applicable), and follow the rules in the initial post or you won't get picked. Excellent photos are also essential.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to post with any questions or comments!

The Importance of Lighting

I learned something new today, thanks to etsy seller BuyMyCrap. She started this thread about using Ott Lite bulbs for photographing items, and even let us know the bulbs were on sale at Home Depot for only $6.

Well, I don't have a Home Depot nearby - there are not many big box stores in Manhattan, at least not around where I live - but after reading over 20 pages and 200-something posts, I just had to find some of these bulbs.

So what's so special about them? They are "full spectrum" light bulbs. I can't explain the science behind it, but they're designed to simulate natural sunlight. Apparently they've been marketed to crafters for doing detail work and being able to accurately match colors at night. It just makes sense that they'd be good for photographing said crafts once they're done.

Thus I embarked on an expedition to find these bulbs (or something similar). There are several small hardware stores within walking distance of my apartment, so my plan was to check those, but I remembered that I needed to pick up rubbing alcohol, so I popped into Duane Reade on my way. And what the heck, they sell light bulbs, it's worth a look, right? Much to my surprise, not only did they sell GE brand full spectrum light bulbs, they actually had some in the store brand! And really, at $4.49 for a 4-pack, how could I not try them?

So I picked up a pack of 100W (the one drawback - incandescent bulbs... the real Ott Lites are fluorescents) and hurried home to try them out.

The one item that I've struggled the most with photographing accurately is my Perfect Loofah in Flamingo Pink. It's a really bright pink, but the pictures kept coming out rather salmon-colored.

Here's a Before/After collage of the pictures for my listing. This is the exact same loofah, taken in the same light box with different light bulbs. The pics on the left were taken using standard compact fluorescent light bulbs. The ones on the right were taken with my Duane Reade store brand full spectrum light bulbs.

Amazing difference, isn't it?