This week we took the first step in building a bigger online presence; creating a shop at Etsy. It can be quite overwhelming. All kinds of information, resources and help is made available to the first timer, but it's still easy to feel that everything has to be perfect straight out of the gate! There's quite a bit of information that a seller can, and should, pass on to a potential customer. After all, shopping online comes with a different set of challenges than in person. An interested person cannot simply pick up an item to judge for themselves how heavy or light it will be. Everyone's monitors display colour differently. What looks fire engine red to me, might look plum to you, and so on. So in my opinion, it's the seller's job to relay as much information as accurately as they can. And in turn, what we're trying to do. Weight, length, width can all be relayed to an interested person. Photographs with rulers or even scale displays tells a buyer a lot. The golden rule of describing a product is to think like a customer.
Great advice!
I've tried to do that with our listings. So far, I've included what makes each piece special for us; inspiration perhaps, or why those beaded buffalos have that red line, for example. Your shop is both your online store and you. It only makes sense to convey as much information as possible and be as accesible as you can. It would drive me crazy to be a customer only to find no info on what I want to buy AND have a seller not check their shop messages. That just seems to project a I-don't-care-attitude!
So, I promise to think like a customer from this day forward. I promise that customer service and quality will be the cornerstone of our business.
After all, in today's cyber-market, it's a tougher place to sell what we love!
You can find us on Etsy at
CeeCee Native Crafts
