As always, you flooded the inbox last week with your shops.  We changed things up a bit this month and chose a vintage seller on Etsy for our August shop critique.  Earths Trove has a lovely collection of kitchen items and apparel.  Irie, the owner, has a number of sales under her belt but we’re hoping a few tweaks can really boost her earnings.  You can follow along with our critique of Earths Trove!

Things We Loved:

• Wonderful consistency of kitchenware photography
• Cohesive shop in the sense of the time-period of the vintage items
• Great titles that help with searches

Things We Would Tweak:

• ‘See something you like? Make me an OFFER!’ – This needs to be nixed.  While it works for a physical shop, Etsy is not a haggling website.  You’re telling people you don’t believe your objects are worth what you’re charging.  It also stands as a barrier because if someone does want to haggle, there’s the extra step where they have to contact you.
• These are vintage items with stories about where they’ve been so tell a story in your descriptions!
• A great way to tell a story with photos would be to show someone holding the pieces or putting them into context.  Perhaps a woman sitting at a table holding a coffee cup while reading the newspaper or a china hutch featuring the collection of plates.  Showing the work in someone’s hands or in their house makes it easier for your potential customer to see it in theirs.
• Be more specific about the size of your wares.  Since people can’t hold them up in real life, they need to feel comfortable with what they think they’re buying in order to click the ‘buy’ button.
• Take out the Facebook discount blurb from the start of every description.  At the end is just fine but putting it at the beginning seems desperate and throws off your buyers who just want to know the details of what they’re looking at.
• Speaking of the Facebook discount, we would strongly recommend nixing the Facebook discount picture from every listing AND from your featured items.  When people add you to their Shop Favorites, it’s those items that they see.  How will they remember what your shop actually sells if all they see are coupons?

We hope this critique helped Irie as well as you.  Tell us what light bulbs went on for you and what you might be tweaking in your own shop!  And, as always, thank you for entering the contest.  There will be another one next month.