Tis the season for celebrating the birth of Jesus and
shopping online. Also known as the best time of the year. I love scouring the
web for personal Christmas presents and this year I made a fabulous new
discovery – Etsy.
Granted, Etsy isn’t new. In fact you could say I’m a little
late to the party. These days, Etsy is practically synonymous with hand-made
and unique items. Friends have shops and Pinterest is full of those who create and
those who purchase pinning wonderful items tailored to your needs. Buzzfeed
posted about 2,347 gift giving articles this season featuring unique products
from the site for the book lovers in your life, nerds in your life, etc.
Etsy is everywhere.
I’ll start at the beginning for those of you living under a
rock.
Launched in 2005, Etsy is a website that invites users to
open shops and sell their handmade and vintage items and craft supplies. The
model is meant to replicate a typical craft fair and allow the sellers can list
their goods in personal storefronts. There is a flat listing fee of 20 cents
per items and requests a 3.5 percent commission from everything sold
(Crunchbase, 2014).
The name came from a desire to be whimsical and nonsensical
to grow the brand from nothing. Robert Kalin, one of the founders, chose Etsy
because it sounds like the Italian phrase ‘eh, si’ which sounds and means ‘oh, yes’ (Wikipedia).
In a world full of heavyweight sites like Pinterest, Google
and Facebook, Etsy was the little enging that could, continuing to surprise the
world with its rapid growth. In May 2012, just seven years after launching, the
site had 15 million users in more than 150 countries. There were 875,000 shops,
13 million items, almost 700,000 new users each month and almost three million
items sold per month (Adams, 2012).
Last November, 1,381,666 users joined the site, marking a
22.5 percent increase from the month before. More items were sold as well, with
7,430,698 purchased goods. Web and mobile page views surpassed two million for
the month (Traub, 2013).
Etsy publishes a Weather Report on the blog each month to
show trends and providing updates for sellers and visitors alike.
Let’s recap: Etsy is a site that invites the creative folk
to sell their goods to those who love the unique and unusual. It’s like an
online craft fair. Hearing that, how does an e-commerce site like Etsy track
analytics? On the macro level, Etsy clearly tracks sales, page views, signups
and more, but how does that help its moneymakers?
In 2009, as the site continued to grow, Etsy launched
analytics for the shops through Google Analytics (Engelhardt, 2009). The
partnership allowed the sellers to monitor their own metrics but worked with
Google to tailor the content to track the most important data for sellers.
Etsy realized the need for its sellers, but also the
challenges the seller might face if they were new to the world of web analytics
(which I’m sure a large majority were). In a blog post, Etsy described Google
Analytics as ‘the pulse of your shop…a higher pulse rate means more visitor,
and in general more visitors would correlate to more sales for your shop’
(TechUpdates, 2009).
Understanding the value, Etsy put forth a commendable effort
to make it relatable for the sellers through online labs and blog posts designed to aid
with questions and guide users to maximize the potential of Google Analytics.
On a basic level, Etsy provides Shop Stats to show the
traffic volume and traffic source for sellers. It provides views, favorites,
orders, revenue, traffic sources, sources from Etsy and keywords. The interface
resembles Google Analytics, but much simpler. It provides an additional
breakdown of how the metrics can assist a seller (Etsy, Shop Stars, 2014).
If users choose to pursue Google Analytics for a more
in-depth breakdown, a step-by-step guide is provided (Etsy, Web Analytics,
2014). I read through the steps,
and I think Etsy does a really wonderful job of making it easy to understand
for those who are unfamiliar with code.
Additionally, the various blog posts inform sellers about
the metrics they may find most beneficial as well as information about how to
find them and apply them to the individual’s shop. The site is dedicated to learning what the
sellers’ need and adapting the analytics to best help them.
Suggestions include discovering the search engine keyword
referrals and site search tracking from Etsy. The first provides sellers with
the ability to see what keywords lead potential consumers to the site and
includes organic and paid search results. The latter tracks ‘on Etsy’ six
different ways (Engelhardt, 2009). A 2011 post covered filters and how they can
assist the seller as well as providing cheat sheet coding to assist the curious
user (daniellexo).
Months after launching Google Analytics for sellers, Etsy
released another post about the benefits and how they expand upon Shop Stats
(kutty, 2009). The site seemed to push the use of GA to help sellers, which
ultimately helps Etsy.
It seems like Etsy is doing a decent job of tracking the
overall site stats and encouraging Google Analytics use among the sellers. It’s
dedicated to education and assisting them to make the implementation easier. It
recognizes the need and benefits and realizes Google offers more than its stats
alone.
So now the question: what could Etsy do better to assist
sellers in the tracking process?
In a word: simplicity. Yes, the site is very clear in how to
use Google Analytics. Yes, Etsy offers its own limited version of statistics to
help sellers who might be afraid of implementing GA. But isn’t there an easier
way?
Different developers create apps to work in conjunction with
GA to simplify it and provide the reports most essential to the individual. If
Etsy created a similar app, it could remove the learning curve associated with
Google and deliver the best metrics to the sellers.
The developers at Etsy most likely know what works best
compared to most sellers. By designing this app, they could assist themselves
by making it as easy as possible to interpret and improve a shop. If a user was
aware and didn’t need the assistance, Google Analytics would still be available
in its raw form.
Etsy continues to be our favorite online craft fair, and I’m
excited to see how the analytics evolve.
References
Adams, D. (2012). Etsy’s growth may surprise you: The facts
and stats. Bit Rebels. Retrieved from http://www.bitrebels.com/social/etsys-growth-may-surprise-you-the-facts-stats-infographic/
Crunchbase. (2014). Etsy. Retrieved from http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/etsy
daniellexo. (2011). Web analytics: Who’s found you through
the Taste Test. The Etsy Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.etsy.com/en/2011/web-analytics-whos-found-you-through-the-taste-test/
Engelhardt, L. (2009). Tech update: Etsy web analytics
enhancements. The Etsy Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.etsy.com/en/2009/tech-update-etsy-web-analytics-enhancements/
Etsy. (2014). Shop Stats. Help Home. Retrieved from https://www.etsy.com/help/article/541
Etsy. (2014). Web Analytics. Help Home. Retrieved from https://www.etsy.com/help/article/230
kutty. (2009). Etsy web analytics: Get it straight from
Google. The Etsy Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.etsy.com/en/2009/etsy-web-analytics-get-it-straight-from-google/
TechUpdates. (2009). Web analytics recap: Seller chat in the
online labs, The Etsy Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.etsy.com/en/2009/web-analytics-recap-seller-chat-in-the-virtual-labs/
Traub, M. (2013). Etsy statistics: November 2013 Weather
Report. Etsy News Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.etsy.com/news/2013/etsy-statistics-november-2013-weather-report/
Wikipedia. (2014). Etsy. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etsy
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