You log in to Etsy.

You check your dashboard.

No favorites, no messages and barely any views. You begin to lose hope of ever making a sale.

Why aren't shoppers finding their way to your store? When will your items start getting favorites? Are your products so bad?

It can be tricky finding ways to get those sales rolling in, but how are you supposed to make sales when you aren't even getting any views?

You can't just carry on doing what you're doing, waiting for something to happen. You can't keep wasting money on adverts or on continually relisting, because they may never work.

If your traffic has taken a nose dive, or if it never got off the ground to start with then you need to rethink your plan.

When your Etsy store isn't gaining any views, don't just keep going, change your approach, but don't get stuck on overthinking things either.

Go back a few stages and check your basics first.

It's all about these three things:

Search Engine Optimization

The Social Shopping Experience

Conversation

Use Quick Edit for SEO

You've heard something about titles and tags being important, but not sure where to begin.

Search Engine Optimization aka SEO aka Titles & Tags (plus the first few words of your description) are vital for getting found.

You need to enter the mind of a shopper. What would you type into the Etsy search bar if you wanted to find your item?

As a seller, it's hard to think of keyword phrases in terms that the general public (those who don't know anything about your niche) would use.

Take my niche, wire wrapping, as an example. A few years ago the term 'wire wrapped' was only ever used by wire wrapping artists, people searching for a unique piece of silver handmade jewelry would never have come across that term before and so would never use it to search for an item.

It was a useless keyword term for getting real customers. Great for getting views from competitors, but not so great for getting regular folk in to the store.

So you need to think like a person outside your niche.

And once you have found your keyword phrase, use Etsy's new Quick Edit to add it to both your title and tags. It also greatly helps to add it into the first sentence of your product description.

Use the Updates Feature to Improve the Customer Experience

Etsy recently reported that almost 60% of their overall traffic now comes from their app.

That is a huge number of people viewing everything from their mobile devices.

It shouldn't be ignored.

And one of the latest changes rolled out by Etsy in light of that statistic was the removal of the old home page, replaced with a type of social feed.

The new search experience, where shoppers can view everything, including updates, from the stores they've interacted with.

It's literally like a mini Facebook within Etsy. Filled with products and pictures from favorite sellers, linked directly to a product page for Etsy shoppers to view.

Even if you have just a handful of followers, posting out regular updates is a good way of creating possible avenues for future shoppers to enter your store by.

Stop Looking at the Numbers for a Moment and Connect with People. Comment in the Forums.

Join a few groups and have a chat with your fellow Etsyans (Hi there!).

As the social, curious and ever eager to help beings we are, conversation is key in getting people interested.

You may be answering a person's questions about Etsy. You could be playing forum games. You might even be asking the questions. Whatever action you take in the forums, it will usually get you noticed.

How about you? What things do you do to gain more traffic on Etsy?

#EtsyViews