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.
Showing posts with label listings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label listings. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Survey Results
Listing Items
I’m just going to list the highlight of the survey results here, we need to remember that the results are only from people who bothered to do the survey, and some people did not answer every question.
1. Many people list more than one item at a time (30.5% always, 67.8 sometimes) (97.1%).
Only one person never lists more than one item at a time
2. Only one person would say ‘NO’ if they were offered advice on the best method of listing, But some (27.2%) don’t know, or would look at it, before rejecting it
3. 65.9% of people use a careful calculation to decide the price of there items.
13.6% guess (6)
13.6% Base it on others prices (6)
6.8% just cover costs
4. 32% of people list on Sunday, the most popular day, followed by 16 on Monday, 6% on Tuesday, 12% on Wednesday, 14% on Thursday, just 6% on Friday and 14% on Saturday (9 people skipped this question).
5. The Evening is the most popular time to list (55.9%), with the Afternoon being 32.2% and the morning at 20.3%
6. 72.9% have been given no comments about their prices, with 20.3% who have had comments, while 6.8% can’t remember
7. 44.1% of people list after they have made something, with 45.8% after they have a good photo, and 5.1% (3) after a sale, of the ‘Other’ comments, when the person has ‘Time’ is the overwhelming factor.
8. 83.1% of people have no limit to how much stock they will list in there shop, with 13.6% (8) setting a limit and 3.4% don’t know.
9. Stock in shops
1 to 10 is 16.9%
11 to 20 is 28.8%
21 to 30 is 15.3%
31 to 40 is 16.9%
41 to 50 is 13.6%
50 or more is 8.5%
10. Of the 59 people who have completed the survey, only 48 wanted to be sent the results
My Conclusions
Some careful though will go into my comments, but some things are clear from the start, Sunday is the day when most people list, and with most people listing more than one item at a time, items will fly down the ‘Buying’ page, as everyone list new things, I do know that I have had sales on Sundays, but without some way of tracking traffic to the site (Google Analytics) it is hard say if this is peak or not for visitors.
I have some strong suggestions but wish to keep this post short (every post seems to be long), so I’ll post some comments latter.
Woody
I’m just going to list the highlight of the survey results here, we need to remember that the results are only from people who bothered to do the survey, and some people did not answer every question.
1. Many people list more than one item at a time (30.5% always, 67.8 sometimes) (97.1%).
Only one person never lists more than one item at a time
2. Only one person would say ‘NO’ if they were offered advice on the best method of listing, But some (27.2%) don’t know, or would look at it, before rejecting it
3. 65.9% of people use a careful calculation to decide the price of there items.
13.6% guess (6)
13.6% Base it on others prices (6)
6.8% just cover costs
4. 32% of people list on Sunday, the most popular day, followed by 16 on Monday, 6% on Tuesday, 12% on Wednesday, 14% on Thursday, just 6% on Friday and 14% on Saturday (9 people skipped this question).
5. The Evening is the most popular time to list (55.9%), with the Afternoon being 32.2% and the morning at 20.3%
6. 72.9% have been given no comments about their prices, with 20.3% who have had comments, while 6.8% can’t remember
7. 44.1% of people list after they have made something, with 45.8% after they have a good photo, and 5.1% (3) after a sale, of the ‘Other’ comments, when the person has ‘Time’ is the overwhelming factor.
8. 83.1% of people have no limit to how much stock they will list in there shop, with 13.6% (8) setting a limit and 3.4% don’t know.
9. Stock in shops
1 to 10 is 16.9%
11 to 20 is 28.8%
21 to 30 is 15.3%
31 to 40 is 16.9%
41 to 50 is 13.6%
50 or more is 8.5%
10. Of the 59 people who have completed the survey, only 48 wanted to be sent the results
My Conclusions
Some careful though will go into my comments, but some things are clear from the start, Sunday is the day when most people list, and with most people listing more than one item at a time, items will fly down the ‘Buying’ page, as everyone list new things, I do know that I have had sales on Sundays, but without some way of tracking traffic to the site (Google Analytics) it is hard say if this is peak or not for visitors.
I have some strong suggestions but wish to keep this post short (every post seems to be long), so I’ll post some comments latter.
Woody
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