What to do when listing, How much to list
So now you know how to list items (one at a time, every 30 minutes plus) so as to get the best use out of the page views on the handmade archive. The next questions are;- How much stock in my shop? & what should I do to drive traffic to my shop?
First, I’m going to take the second question, and fill in a few blanks from last time.
You have just listed an item, We’ll take the code from that item and promote that new listing, so what do we need? The code which will be http://folksy.com/items/ and the five digit number for the item, we then take that code and post it on our facebook page, we twitter it, we stumble it, we flickr it, we post it to any groups we may be members of (groups/facebook). We also keep a record of this and every 5 to 10 days we re-promote the item.
The other question is how much stock to have in our shops? The survey told us that people have mixed views on how much stock to have in our shops. To recap
Items percentage
1 to 10 16.9%
11 to 20 28.8%
21 to 30 15.3%
31 to 40 16.9%
41 to 50 13.6%
50 or more 8.5%
We need to bear in mind that some people are still stocking their shops, but I think that most people get bored after looking through more than 5 pages (max 60 items). I believe that how much stock is a personal choice, but each page holds 12 items and 36 items for most people is plenty.
Tuesday 10 November 2009
Thursday 5 November 2009
Listings Part 2
So what did you conclude, bearing in mind how this section works?
Did you see what I saw, little clutches from one seller, where they have listed 3 or 4 items in a short time, a little gap and then some more from them, some big groups from the same seller, did you see the pages where two or three sellers appear to be filling the page.
How does this matter you ask yourself? Well sit one night and watch the buying page, just keep hitting the refresh button on your browser, and watch the items move down the page, as new items are added.
From the survey, question one asked about do you list more than one item at a time, only one person (me) said never.
So here’s my first tip;-
Draft everything in something like ‘word’, Spell check, if you have a pile of stuff to list do this with everything first, then when you have time, and are ready to list, list your first item.
Tip number 2,
Go to the buying page, and hit refresh every 5 minutes, and watch your item as it moves down the page, don’t list anything when it fall’s off, remember that customers can click the button at the bottom to see more, keep hitting refresh on the buying page, when most of the items listed above you have moved off that front page, Then, and only then list your next item.
Tip three
Keep following tip number two until you ether have listed all your items, or you have been at it for a couple of hours, if your doing this on a Sunday evening (32% list on Sundays), you’ll be listing faster than a if you list on a Tuesday or Friday (just 6% each day)
So what are you achieving? Most people will only look at one or two pages before they spot something they like and go visit a shop, if you fill one page with your items, you have lost the chance to be seen on most of the pages. So remember, you do have a choice, throw a whole load of items on in one go, or list then slowly, one item at a time.
The category headings work in the same way, so if there are 5 or six people listing jewellery at one time, if you spread your listing out, you’re not going to fill a page.
Keep your eyes peeled for part’s 3 and 4, as I’ve more to tell
Woody
Did you see what I saw, little clutches from one seller, where they have listed 3 or 4 items in a short time, a little gap and then some more from them, some big groups from the same seller, did you see the pages where two or three sellers appear to be filling the page.
How does this matter you ask yourself? Well sit one night and watch the buying page, just keep hitting the refresh button on your browser, and watch the items move down the page, as new items are added.
From the survey, question one asked about do you list more than one item at a time, only one person (me) said never.
So here’s my first tip;-
Draft everything in something like ‘word’, Spell check, if you have a pile of stuff to list do this with everything first, then when you have time, and are ready to list, list your first item.
Tip number 2,
Go to the buying page, and hit refresh every 5 minutes, and watch your item as it moves down the page, don’t list anything when it fall’s off, remember that customers can click the button at the bottom to see more, keep hitting refresh on the buying page, when most of the items listed above you have moved off that front page, Then, and only then list your next item.
Tip three
Keep following tip number two until you ether have listed all your items, or you have been at it for a couple of hours, if your doing this on a Sunday evening (32% list on Sundays), you’ll be listing faster than a if you list on a Tuesday or Friday (just 6% each day)
So what are you achieving? Most people will only look at one or two pages before they spot something they like and go visit a shop, if you fill one page with your items, you have lost the chance to be seen on most of the pages. So remember, you do have a choice, throw a whole load of items on in one go, or list then slowly, one item at a time.
The category headings work in the same way, so if there are 5 or six people listing jewellery at one time, if you spread your listing out, you’re not going to fill a page.
Keep your eyes peeled for part’s 3 and 4, as I’ve more to tell
Woody
Wednesday 4 November 2009
Thoughts on listing items. Part 1
Having sat for a good few day’s looking over the survey results, thinking about how folksy works, and looking at current listing (how thing are being listed now) I’ve decided to break this down into stages, I’ll try and put up a post every few days (if nothing else than to keep each part short).
Before I write about the survey work, I though I would prepare the ground with some thoughts and observations.
When we list an item, what is our aim;-
Are we just trying to stock our shops?
Are we hoping to tempt buyers into looking at items, and then to visit our shops.
Are we aiming to use our skills to market the items.
What I would suggest to everyone is to take a look at the items from the ‘Buyers’ point of view.
You are visiting Folksy for the very first time, looking to buy some great handmade items. You have been told (either by a friend or Google), about folksy.com, the first page you come to is the ‘Home’ page with some great looking things, and you see five large tabs, the second one says buying, so you click on it, bingo, you see a page that has some nice featured items at the top, a column with ‘explore’ and some categories underneath, a featured seller on the right, a search box above, and if you scroll down the page, amongst other things you see a big section of ‘Handmade Goods’
In part one this is the section I will be paying most attention to, get used to what you see, and how you see it, go play with the pages on this, at the bottom of the section is a tab ‘See more handmade goods’, use this feature (buyer may not use this feature, but if they do, think about what they will see as you scroll through the pages.
Explanation? this section contains every item listed in folksy, in order from the last item listed moving down to (at the time of writing, page 1593) to the items that are just about to expire.
Take a good look at how many groups of items from one seller you see on a page, at one point I did actually see a page and a half all from one seller (18 items per page). Can you draw any conclusion from looking at this section, looking only at the seller alone (not what being listed)?
In part two, I’ll explain my conclusions and see if you agree.
Before I write about the survey work, I though I would prepare the ground with some thoughts and observations.
When we list an item, what is our aim;-
Are we just trying to stock our shops?
Are we hoping to tempt buyers into looking at items, and then to visit our shops.
Are we aiming to use our skills to market the items.
What I would suggest to everyone is to take a look at the items from the ‘Buyers’ point of view.
You are visiting Folksy for the very first time, looking to buy some great handmade items. You have been told (either by a friend or Google), about folksy.com, the first page you come to is the ‘Home’ page with some great looking things, and you see five large tabs, the second one says buying, so you click on it, bingo, you see a page that has some nice featured items at the top, a column with ‘explore’ and some categories underneath, a featured seller on the right, a search box above, and if you scroll down the page, amongst other things you see a big section of ‘Handmade Goods’
In part one this is the section I will be paying most attention to, get used to what you see, and how you see it, go play with the pages on this, at the bottom of the section is a tab ‘See more handmade goods’, use this feature (buyer may not use this feature, but if they do, think about what they will see as you scroll through the pages.
Explanation? this section contains every item listed in folksy, in order from the last item listed moving down to (at the time of writing, page 1593) to the items that are just about to expire.
Take a good look at how many groups of items from one seller you see on a page, at one point I did actually see a page and a half all from one seller (18 items per page). Can you draw any conclusion from looking at this section, looking only at the seller alone (not what being listed)?
In part two, I’ll explain my conclusions and see if you agree.
Monday 2 November 2009
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