I’m sure you have said these words before if you’ve had even just a few sales on Etsy. “Etsy buyers don’t read.’“
I know this is a really frustrating thing for a lot of Etsy sellers and so today I’m going talk about what you can do about that…and it might not be what you think it is.
The Truth
The real truth about getting buyers to read your listings and your listing description, is that you can’t change this behavior. But there is something you to do instead.
When you get a message from the buyer that’s already stated in your listing or you get a bad review or a message from a buyer who’s unhappy about something that they should have read in the listing already, I want you to ask yourself one question. And that question is “What can I do to make it easier for buyers to understand what they’re getting?”
In an ideal world this would not be a conversation. I personally am someone who reads something that I’m buying three times before I purchase it because I want to make sure that I understand everything that the seller is telling me. But not everyone is like that and we need to make it easier for everyone, including those people who skim the listing to figure out what they’re getting.
And I know this one can hurt your pride a little bit. And that it’s really tempting for your answer to this problem to be just wanting them to read the listing because all the information is in there. But we’ve already established that you have no control over that, so what’s the next best thing?
You may come up with some great solutions to making your listings even easier to purchase when you’re thinking along the lines of “What am I responsible for as a seller? How can I make this easier? How can I help them?”
So here are a few tips that you can use to make it easier for your buyers to understand what they’re getting even if they never read a single word of your listing description. All of these involve using the photos on Etsy to convey the information that you need buyers to see.
Using your Photos
The first thing I want you to consider is text based photos. If you have something that’s very commonly missed in your listing, try creating a text based JPEG that tells them this information. You can put that in your listing photos. Buyers are more likely to scroll through the photos and read the information that you’re needing them to see.
You can also use the video section on your Etsy listings to get some of this information across the buyers as well. Consider doing a slideshow of photos of some text added on top that’s really easy to read and digest within 15 seconds.
The next thing is to look at if any of your photos are causing your buyers to be confused. I’ve seen sellers who have a photo of two items in the listing, put in the listing description that the purchase price only includes one, then get mad at buyers when they didn’t read that part. But you’re going make everybody’s lives easier if you just change the photo.
This is also really common for those of you who get reviews about the size of an item being different than what was expected. You may have the dimensions in your listing description or in the photos already, but how can you make it even easier for your buyers to understand how big this item is? Can you take a lifestyle photo that has some common objects that give a better feel for the size of that item? Can you hold your item in one of the photos of buyers can see the size compared to your hands? There’s a lot of ways to show the buyers the size of the item in addition to specifically telling them the dimensions.
Do you have a listing or two that you wish buyers would read more thoroughly? Take 5 minutes right now to make a list of ways you can make it easier for your buyers to see what they’re getting and watch those 5 star reviews pile up!
-Sarah
