Meet the Maker: Making the most of online selling

How to get customers to your online shop

Free options:

• Search engines (SEO)
• Internal search within a member organization (Crafts Council Directory, Etsy, Folksy)
• Social media (content is key here)
• Referrals – endorsements
• Curated features – showcases with other organisations
• Press – editorial

Paid options:

• Paid search results – can work, but do your research
• Paid social advertising – can work, but do your research
• Magazine adverts – editorial is better; its about having new worthy features
• Platform based adverts (boosted rankings) – member organisations offer this

Using Folksy as a case study, a third of visitors come from social and a third from search engines.

We recommend writing content and listings that search engines will easily find, using SEO principles.

SEO and best practice for digital content

• On your website – make it clear the work is for sale and hand made.
• Write titles that match what people are looking for – change them up each time to be Google friendly and do not repeat the same titles.
• Use detailed descriptions full of keywords – state the obvious and what the user is actually looking for.
• Keep it simple and concise; limit to 140-200 characters as first paragraph
• Links into your shop – links are vital within your website as well as to your shop.
• Use a range of tags on your listings, particularly applicable with member sites (Crafts Council Directory, Folksy, Etsy)

Remember you need alt text descriptions for your images, as Google can search text not images. Google algorithms remember successful results when a user engages with an image or product.

Useful resources for finding the most effective keywords:

• WMS (Whats My Serp) – this is a free resource indicating what people search for
• Keywords everywhere – no longer free (1 credit = 1 keyword; $10 = 100 keywords)
• Ubersuggest
• KW Finder – five free searches a day
• Google Trends

Shipping

• High shipping costs are one of the reasons people cancel a sale. Up to 40% will cancel a shopping cart when paying for shipping
• People tend to pay more for the item if there is free shipping
• You could consider offering free postage on additional items
• Consider the implications to shipping overseas before offering this; especially as USA have increased their shipping costs.

About Camilla Westergaard:

Camilla Westergaard is content editor at Folksy. Her mother is a potter and she grew up with a ceramic studio in her house, surrounded by handmade objects, leading to a lifelong love of craft. When she's not stitching, printing and sketching, she can be found curating content across Folksy, interviewing designers and helping UK makers get their work seen across the world. Camilla Westergaard Instagram

For further support from Crafts Council email makerdev@craftscouncil.org.uk

Links to associated resources:

• Running a crowdfunding campaign with Heather Corcoran from Kickstarter (aired on 27 May 2020)
• Legal factors for your business with Briffa legal (aired 8 July 2020)
• Visibility vs Invisibility on Social Media with Karen Patel and Arati Devasher (aired 22 July 2020)
• How to work with retailers with Reiko Kaneko (aired 5 August 2020)