GalleriaLinda
Administrator
Posts: 442
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« on: May 21, 2009, 08:57:59 pm » |
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I am going to jump around a bit during the Sellers’ Bootcamp, since we are all diligently working on our shops strategies.
What better place to start our marketing sessions than to discuss all the components that create our shop. Each component uniquely works together to draw a potential customer into your shop.
Did you realize that for a lot of potential customers, our shops become our only visible brand, or even more often, our product page becomes our only visible brand and is all the visitor sees?
Someone will click a link directly to a product through a twitter link, search engine, or forum link and NEVER see your whole shop with your announcement.
The importance of ambiance and “look” of your product and shop page is critical for that first impression. Will it draw them in or drive them away? iCraft gives us a beautiful backdrop for our products. It is up to us to use it to our advantage.
Here are some shop components that are important to that first impression. I have comments by each to get you thinking and to discuss in greater detail in the next few posts.
Shop name – hopefully your shop name is something easy to remember and easy to spell to make it easy for someone to find you online – someone who didn’t quite remember your shop name!
Avatar and Banner design – the design of your avatar and banner really sets the theme for your product backdrop. Is it casual, formal, professional, cute, cartoon, or whimsical? Any of those are great and can compliment your product designs.
Profile – filling in you’re your profile to the fullest helps to present you, the artist/crafter, as serious about your business. It is just good business practice.
Shop announcement – this is a great place for you to shine and to show us your personality. Tell us about your product, your materials, your skills, or your policies. Keep it concise.
Photos – there is always buzz about the ability to take quality photos. This is critical. A good photo will draw someone into your shop that otherwise would not visit. Keep practicing with the camera and photo editing software!
Secondary photos – please have more than one photo of your items. Even I get frustrated when there is only one! Minimally, you should have a front and back photo. Sexy side angles are always artsy and you can have fun staging your product.
How you order your product photos in your shop – Huh? Is this a component? Yup. iCraft gives us such freedom to reposition our product – use it! Put matching and complimentary colors together as sort of a cross-promoting effort. Put matching designs together. You get the picture!
Product titles – there will be more on this due to the opportunity for Search Engine Optimization. All I am going to say here is that let your titles tell us what the product is. No fancy “Dawn at Midnight” romantic names in the titles. They are useless there. More later on this!
Product descriptions – ah…you knew we would get to this. Maybe it is a challenge or maybe you just throw a couple of facts in the description and go with it. This is as much an art as your craft. We will learn all about this.
Number of products in shop – it is true! The more products, the more interest in your shop. More products makes you look busy, professional, and like an artist or crafter who really cares about her/his craft.
Pricing – yep, another component you would not expect. First impressions make eyes go to price. If the overall price impression is not good, people move on.
OK, pick one to ponder until we meet again and tell me others that I may have missed. Watch for more posts on each of these in detail!
Linda
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PillowThrowDecor
Posts: 1096
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« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2009, 10:18:15 pm » |
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Great article Linda. I read your comments on descriptions very closely.
I am trying to understand SEO and relevancy and all of that kind of stuff. Cutting the romantic verbage I understand... But can you tell me what parts of our shop pages and item pages Google is searching first?
I know that may be some info that comes from icraft tech department but I would love to learn where the Google EYES scan my pages first.
Thank you.. I appreciate your systematic approach to making the shop work. I don't mind if you want to use my shop as examples... you will have lots of opportunity to point out things that a person should not do... and bad photos. Hopefully I've got some good bits in there. Most importantly I'm not happy with my shop but I am not sure why.
Thanks for any help.
Cheers
Christine
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Fairy Cardmaker
Posts: 1115
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« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2009, 11:07:31 pm » |
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How you order your product photos in your shop – Huh? Is this a component? Yup. iCraft gives us such freedom to reposition our product – use it! Put matching and complimentary colors together as sort of a cross-promoting effort. Put matching designs together. You get the picture! I didn't know that!! How cool! Thanks! |
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StudioduSoleil
Posts: 43
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« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2009, 12:34:28 am » |
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Thank you for the great reminders and tips! I know my profile and announcements are weak. I think this is a starting place for something that I need to tweak this week.
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Fairy Cardmaker
Posts: 1115
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« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2009, 06:07:16 pm » |
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How do you reposition your product?
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GalleriaLinda
Administrator
Posts: 442
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« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2009, 07:04:31 pm » |
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EnsorcelledMinds - great question! You can reposition your products by editing them. This will do two things:
1) with thinking ahead and planning which ones you want placed next to each other, you create a potential cross-promoting environments.
You will edit one, make it live, the go to the one that you want next to it then edit that one and make it live.
For example, wouldn't I love to see those yellow and blue earrings next to the yellow neckace? They were not made to go together but many people don't like "matchy-matchy" sets and might love the theme of color in two different tiems.
2) Every time you edit your listing, it floats to the top of the iCraft search. That means when someone searches for your category, your item may be in the first 3-4 pages and not the 50th page. All for free! No relisting fees!
To do this, open a listing in your back office and edit something. You can simply just do a hard return somewhere and then put it back the way it was. You just need to click & do something - even if you put it back the way it was.
Let me know how it works for you!
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PillowThrowDecor
Posts: 1096
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« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2009, 10:11:19 am » |
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What an impressive blog you have. The contecnt is so informative and easy to understand.
I didn't know that I should be naming my picture files with key words??? Man alive have I got a lot of work to do!
I love your icraft promotion in the top left hand corner. Beautiful picture of you too!!!
I think you need to give us a lesson in blog design too. I love your 3 column format.
Christine
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GalleriaLinda
Administrator
Posts: 442
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« Reply #8 on: May 25, 2009, 10:20:19 am » |
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Well, you are very edifying! Thank you so much for the compliments.
The premise of the blog is for marketing to be explained in layman's terms. I wanted to speak to the artist to make it easy to understand and implement. Glad it worked! That will help me here too.
With the photo/icraft/marketing forum thing - I want to get people to click and come here. Maybe new buyers and maybe new sellers!
Do you have a blog? If so, I can do your photo in that setup for you to put on yours too and link to the sellers' bootcamp. Let me know if you want one!
Naming your photos (and even I don't do it all the time) will allow them to come up when people search google for photos. I figure that anything to put us in the search is good. Right?
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PillowThrowDecor
Posts: 1096
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« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2009, 10:38:06 am » |
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I would love for you to do me one!
I have a blog at http:/pillowthrowdecor.blogspot.com
It is a bit neglected I am afraid. I need to update it and want to get icraftgifts.com front and center and reorder things a bit. I had http:/polkadotpixels.com do some layout for me to get me started which was a great help because I had no clue what I was doing. I didn't know how to to the link thing... where you have a word highlighted, you click on it and it takes you somewhere. Just haven't got the hang of it. I think I've got this http:/ thing worked out ... I will need to check this message and see.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Tell me what you need.
Christine
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GalleriaLinda
Administrator
Posts: 442
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« Reply #10 on: May 25, 2009, 10:52:49 am » |
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Your blog is great!!! Very nice.
Try the iCraft widget too - I am so excited that it actually rotates your photos as you sit there and look at it.
Other venue widgets either don't change at all or they might change if you refresh the page.
iCraft rocks the widget world.
I sent a PM about the other (personal message through iCraft).
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