How to Manage Underperforming Etsy Listings

Publication date: July 2, 2024

Reading time:  5 minutes

• • Optimize your listings to help boost sales, reduce costs, and manage inventory more effectively.

• • Identify your under-performing listings by using the stats section of your Etsy shop manager or the Listing Audit tool on eRank.

• • Understand whether the poor performance is due to a lack of visibility, clicks or conversions to guide your optimization strategy. Learn how eRank’s tools help you to identify these improvements and support you during the process.

Tracking the performance of both your best and lowest listings is crucial for the expansion of your small business. Optimize your product inventory by monitoring your sales, ensuring that your successful products thrive and preventing any underperforming items from holding you back. In this article, learn how to identify your lowest performing listings and the tools needed to master the process of optimizing these listings.

Step 1: Identify Underperforming Etsy Listings

The stats available to you in your Etsy Shop Manager along with eRank’s Listing Audit Tool helps you to pinpoint your underperforming listings.

Using Etsy Stats

1. • Navigate to the Stats Section: Head to your Etsy Shop Manager and open the stats section.

• • Select Time Frame: Select ALL TIME to review your entire shop’s performance history.

• • Filter Active Listings: Focus on active listings to evaluate current performance, removing sold out and out of stock listings from the list.

1. • Analyze Performance: Filter by views, favorites, orders, and revenue to pinpoint the low-performing listings.

Using eRank

• • Access Listing Audit Tool: Go to the Listing Audit Tool under the LISTING OPTIMIZATION section on the eRank menu. Ensure your Etsy shop is connected to eRank.

• • Customize Columns: Click COLUMNS to add relevant metrics such as visibility score, total views, and total sales.

• • Sort Listings: Sort the data to identify underperforming listings. Vintage sellers should sort by the original creation date to focus on older listings.

Watch this video for an overview of eRank’s Listing Audit tool to identify your low-performing Etsy listings:

Step 2: Improve Underperforming Listings

Once you’ve identified your lowest performing Etsy listings, it’s essential to determine why they aren’t meeting expectations. This typically boils down to three scenarios: insufficient views, clicks, or conversions.

Scenario 1: Listing with low views and visibility

Low views and/or visibility calls for a keyword strategy. Use the Health Check Tool to identify missing tags, one word tags, and any keywords with spelling issues. Opt for “superstar keywords” with high search volume and low competition. Use the Superstar Keywords section of the Listing Audit Report to incorporate keywords with optimum search volume and competition in your tags, title, and description. Learn more about superstar keywords here.

Scenario 2: Listing with decent views but low clicks

If a listing receives views but little or no clicks, review these three components of your listing: the title, the thumbnail, and the price.

• • Title Optimization: Ensure the title clearly describes your item and its uniqueness.

• • First Picture: Use an eye-catching first photo that accurately represents the item.

• • Price Strategy: Compare your prices with top listings using the SERP Analysis section of the Keyword Tool.

Scenario 3: Listing with decent visits but low sales

When your listing receives visits (clicks), but those visits do not result in sales, it is time to review these four listing areas: your photos, your description, your item’s processing time, and the assigned delivery option/cost.

• • Photo Utilization: Use all 10 listing photos to enhance conversion rates. Use the Listing Audit tool to identify the listings with less than 10 photos. The listing photo slots do not have to all be photos. This is a great place to stress important facts about your item such as care instructions, shipping information, and more.

• • Description Improvement: Keep descriptions short, informative, and engaging. Include necessary details like size, dimensions, and materials. If you need assistance, try eRank’s AI Listing Helper to generate and enhance your title, description and tags. To learn more about using the AI Listing Helper, check out our recent blog article.

• • Processing Times: Ensure your processing times are accurate. Also, compare your processing times with competitors to ensure competitiveness. Use the SERP Analysis tab of the Keyword Tool to see how your processing times compare to the average top 100 listings for the keywords that describe your listing.

• • Delivery Costs: Research your competitors’ delivery prices using the Rank Checker and adjust yours, if necessary.

Step 3: Track Listing Optimization Changes

By using eRank’s Changes feature, any changes that you make to your listing items during the optimization process are tracked, allowing you to gauge the impact of your efforts and measure your progress effectively.

• • Enable Tracking: Select CHANGES from the eRank menu under the LISTING OPTIMIZATION section. Click TRACK CHANGES for the listing that you are optimizing. Once this option is turned on, eRank takes daily snapshots of the item’s performance to monitor its progress so that you are able to see how your changes impact its performance over time. It is best to turn on this feature before you begin the optimization process.

• • Review Metrics: To review the metrics, click SHOW CHANGES in the Changes tool. This enables you to see the eRank’s daily snapshots and analyze how the metrics—such as views and favorites—evolved since your optimization. Look for noticeable patterns and trends, which indicate if the listing is improving.

• • Adjust Optimization Strategy: If no improvement is seen after a reasonable period, it is time to reassess your optimization strategy and consider additional adjustments such as changing keywords, improving your photos, or refining the description. It is always best to make changes slowly and implement only one change at a time in order to know which optimization strategy worked.

Systematically identifying and optimizing your low-performing Etsy listings enables you to enhance your Etsy shop’s performance. By using tools like Etsy’s Shop Manager Stats section and eRank’s Listing Audit, data is easily reviewed, allowing you to make informed decisions and improvements. Remember that success on Etsy is not a “set it and forget it” process. You need to continuously track and adjust your strategies in order to stay competitive and drive sales to your items.