Prep For the Holidays EP 12: Prep Your Online Shops for the Holiday Rush

It's Week 12 of the Prep for the Holidays minisode series and it's time for us to prep all our online shop for the holiday rush. Whether you sell on Etsy, eBay, your own website or any other online platform, there a few things you'll want to make sure are in tip top shape before shoppers land!

We're going to talk about photography - especially for key products - SEO, titles and descriptions, telling the story of your business and products, emphasizing the "handmade" aspect of your business, shipping info and most importantly, double checking and testing to make sure users have a pleasant, frustration-free shopping experience!

This episode is brought to you by our Premium Subscriber Community on Patreon and Buzzsprout

You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.

Chapters

• 0:00 Preparing for Holiday Sales Online
• 7:39 Optimizing Website for Holiday Sales

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to episode number 12 in our Prep for the Holiday series. It's getting to the point where I'm starting to lose track of where we are, but yes, this is task number 12, week number 12 of Prep for the Holiday series. If you're new to the series, this is something that we started back in the summer as a way to help creatives, artists, makers and creative service providers get ready for the busy holiday selling season, and each week, we tackle a new task that is appropriate for where we are in the year to help us get ready, and today we are going to be talking about our websites. So, if you don't have a website, hold tight so. So yes, we're obviously going to be talking about people with their own websites, so with their own domain, on a platform like shopify or wordpress or squarespace, wix, whatever it is that you're using, but we're also going to be talking about etsy, shops, ebay, those types of platforms where you're selling in a marketplace, so essentially anywhere that you're selling online. If you're a creative service provider or a content creator, this also counts for you, content creators. You almost always have your own website, so, and you are probably the best prepared out of everyone for the holiday season so, but you might still get a tip or two here. But if you are a creative service provider, you may sell your products on other platforms like Gumroad or some of those other places where people can download digital products from.

Speaker 1: 1:39

So there's also things in this episode that apply to you as well. So the first thing that you're going to want to do a little bit of a double check on and have a look at with your listings is your photography. So for most of our customers, the photo is the first thing that they have that shows them what this item that they're interested in looks like. People are very visual when they shop online, so the better the photos you can provide them with, the better. So obviously you want to have your hero shot, which is where you feature the photo, where you feature your item in full. But you may also want to have some detail shots where you zoom in on specific parts of the item. You might want to show the item in use, so to give people an idea of how they might use this or where they may hang it in their home or display it in their home. So it's not just necessarily having the big one hero shot you want to think of other ways that you could use photography in order to convince this person that they need this item, and they need to have it now. You want your photos to be in focus. You want them to be well lit.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Now is a great time of year to take your photos before we head into the deeper, darker months of late fall and early winter, but in September we've still got some good natural light. This is particularly important. If you don't have lighting in your home that you can use. A couple other little tips for photography. If you're new to this, you don't want to use your room lighting so like if you've got a desk lamp or an overhead light. All of those can kind of distort the color of your products unless you know what you're doing with your camera and you may not always have as much control if you're using your phone to shoot. So if you are really challenged with light, you might want to look at getting a stand light or a ring light or a light box or something that can help you make sure that you have good, even lighting to take your photos with.

Speaker 1: 3:51

As I mentioned, you also want to make sure things are in focus. And another quick little tip, because I see this mistake probably more than any other mistake, and that is if you're going to be filming shooting something from an overhead position. I see this all the time. People put something down on the floor to shoot it because it's easier. That's actually a great way to shoot things is to put them on the floor to get a nice, even background. But if your flooring has any kind of geometric shaping to it so whether it's lines or you've put it on I've seen people put things on like welcome mats and things make sure that the lines are straight.

Speaker 1: 4:34

The last thing you want to do is have somebody looking at your item but the background is is off kilter. That can really distract from your product. So make sure all those little things are lined up and take the best pictures that you can. If you have a friend who is a photographer, hit them up. Ask them how much they would charge to help you get some really decent photos of at least your key items, like your best seller items, the ones that people buy over and over again. See if you can get some really good photos of those done, and if they're a good friend, they might even be willing to barter with you for something, so that's always an option too. But having somebody who is good at styling product and photographing product can be really helpful. So photography is the number one thing that you want to do.

Speaker 1: 5:22

You also want to make sure that your product descriptions are pretty self-explanatory, so that people know what they are going to get. You also want to make sure that your product descriptions work for SEO. This is a great time to be tweaking your site for SEO. Write some blog posts. I've talked about that in previous episodes. You haven't done that already. Now's a good time to write a few blog posts to help you with search engine traffic, which, if you have your own website, is what you really need. You don't have the benefit of a marketplace like Etsy or eBay that delivers the traffic to you.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Etsy has its own SEO, so with your Etsy product descriptions, you want to make sure that you are using words that people are going to be searching for, both your product titles and your product descriptions. With those things, you also want to make it so that a human can read it and understand what's going on. So that's where the balance, the very delicate dance with SEO is, is that you want to use the words and phrases that are going to get you found, but you also need to make sure that a human can read it and understand what you're talking about, and so it makes sense, and so it's inviting to them Very tricky balance to achieve. The more you do it, the easier it gets Some of the what's the word I'm looking for. Some of the platforms out there will also have their own AI tools now to help you with descriptions. Again, use that as a starting point.

Speaker 1: 6:53

You want to make sure that it still sounds like a human wrote it, and I think this is really important this year is to make sure that our websites and our Etsy shops and anything else where we are marketing ourselves sounds like we're a human. People are starting to understand what AI is now. They are also starting to realize that there's a lot of product out there that is actually manufactured and isn't handmade, and they're looking for handmade. They're looking for art created by a human being, and that is us. So it's really on us to make sure that on our websites and our Etsy shops and all those places where we sell, that we really emphasize that we are the human behind the work.

Speaker 1: 7:39

We are the person who drew the image. We are the person who crocheted the cute little item. We are the person who soldered the jewelry. We want them to know that it was our hands that made this item, or our knowledge that created the digital product that we're selling, and so on our websites. Make sure that you tell that story. When someone lands on your site, make sure that they know who you are, who the artist is, who the creator is. Tell them a little bit about your process. Shoot some videos of you making the thing and display that on your website. Display that in your Etsy listings. There's all kinds of stats about how Etsy listings with video get seen more in Etsy search. So you know, put a quick video clip in. It doesn't have to be a video of the product. It can be a video of you making the product or designing the product, whatever the case may be. So really work on your storytelling aspect on your website.

Speaker 1: 8:41

You also just want to make sure that your site is easy to navigate. Etsy does a pretty good. Etsy does a job at this. As a shopper on Etsy, I often find it very difficult to find what I'm looking for, but that is not something that we, as sellers, have a lot of control over. That is an Etsy situation. But on your own website you do have a lot of control over the shopping experience.

Speaker 1: 9:04

So make sure that your site is easy to navigate, make sure that it is loading properly. Test it out on multiple browsers on multiple devices. So the big three are Chrome, firefox and Safari. Make sure that your site renders well on each of those on desktop, on laptop, on mobile and on a tablet. I have a tablet over here that I'm pointing to because it can look great on one, but then when you look at it on another, it could look really terrible. Make sure that it's loading quickly and make sure it's easy to navigate. We can become kind of blind to the navigation when we are on our own site over and over again every day. So now is a great time to have a few friends. Ask them if they can take a look at it, ask them to give you any feedback or if there was any place where they couldn't quite figure out how to get to where they wanted to go.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Make sure that your shipping deadlines and your shipping information are on your site and that it's very easy for people to find them. This is one of the things I struggle with a lot, being in Canada and I know most of you who listen are Canadian is when I'm on a website I fall in love with something and then I can't figure out if they ship to Canada. I can't figure out if they're in the US or if they're overseas, and so you want to make it very clear where you're located, where you're shipping from and what your shipping policies are and what your shipping deadlines for the holiday season are. And if you have a free shipping threshold, make sure you mention that as well. If you're on Etsy, make sure that you talk about your shipping in all of your listings, so it's very clear. We all know people have a hard time reading, but you want to make sure it's there as much to cover yourself as to inform your potential customer. Again, etsy does not make it easy for people, particularly on mobile, to view an item description, but you want to make sure that you have it there. Anywhere and anywhere else you can reiterate your shipping policies on your Etsy shop. Make sure that you do that. You have the announcement section at the top of your shop where you can put your shipping deadlines for the holidays. There's also different fields you can fill in for your shop, and that's another thing.

Speaker 1: 11:19

If you're on Etsy, make sure you're filling in all the shop information. That is really important and it helps you get seen in Etsy search better. So you want to make sure you've got your shop policies filled in. You've got your shipping deadlines and shipping policies filled in. You make it clear who uh all the things that you need to have like in terms of who is involved in your shop. So if you have people helping you, uh, you are supposed to be listing those people. Now, if you have, if you have products that are made by a manufacturing partner, you are supposed to be listing that as well. So you don't have to specify who the partner is, or actually, I believe you do have to specify who the partner is. I know I used two production partners for printing my notebooks and notepads and I had to list their names, but you can hide the name. So you know you have a choice there where you can actually show who your manufacturing partner is or you can hide it, but you do have to let it, you know. So those are a few things that you want to make sure that you're doing so that when people land on your website, they are having a great shopping experience. You want to make it easy for them to find what they're looking for and to buy.

Speaker 1: 12:37

If you have time, there are a few other things that you can do, particularly on your own website. These are a little harder to do on third-party platform sites like marketplaces such as Etsy, but on your own website, what can you do to help increase the value of the sale? So could you put in a plugin that shows them some suggested items, like if you're buying this, you might also like this? If you have something in a particular pattern and the person is buying, let's say, the scrunchie, but you also sell a makeup bag with that fabric pattern, when they go put the scrunchie in their cart, is there anything that pops up and says you might also like this matching makeup bag, or something along those lines? So anything you can do to kind of make the experience better but also increase the sale. Those are the two things you want to be looking at now, and this is the time of year to do it. You want to make sure all that stuff is working before people start really shopping in earnest. And if you're on Etsy, I would even say work on your Etsy listings first, because people are already shopping for Christmas and the holiday season on Etsy. They're already searching, they're already starting to look. So I would probably start with Etsy first and then I would make sure my own website is up to snuff as well. So that's it for week 12 and task number 12 of prep for the holidays.

Speaker 1: 14:09

And, as always, if you enjoyed this, if you're watching on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up or subscribe if you haven't already. And if you are listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love it if you would drop us a review. You can leave reviews on Apple podcasts and on Spotify now. It would help so much. It gets us in front of more people and I think this series has been pretty valuable this season. I've had some good feedback from it and I've really enjoyed putting it together. We're not done yet. We still have more things to do, so I will be back next week with task number 13. That's it for now. See y'all soon.