Studying your Etsy competitors can save you time, effort, and money. eRank has tools that make it quick and easy to research and track your competition. These features are available on both the Basic and PRO subscription plans.
You’ll find them under the Competitor Research dropdown on the Main Menu.
Etsy Competitor Listings Report in eRank
The Competitor Listings report allows you to analyze any Etsy shop’s active listings. Just enter an Etsy shop name or use the “Select a shop” drop-down menu to choose one of the shops you’re tracking.
If the shop has over 100 active listings, you’ll see a total count and the data for the 100 that were updated most recently. For each listing, you will see its thumbnail, title, date created, last modified, count of views and favorites. You’ll see all its tags, current price, how many images it has, and processing time. You can sort the data by any column. Or use the filter to view only listings with a certain word, tag, or price. If you want to save or print the data, click the orange Export button to view all the options.
Note that Etsy keeps private the sales data for individual listings. Therefore, you won’t be able to tell what a shop’s top sellers are. But you can click on the headers to sort the listings by most views or by its favorites count, as we did for the screenshot above. Factoring in the creation dates, these can give you a sense of popularity.
Competitor Tags Report
This report is accessed the same way as the Competitor Listings report. (Main Menu > Competitor Research.) Choose the shop you want to look at in the same way, too. Then, eRank will generate a drill-down analysis of that shop’s tags. Here too, if the shop has more than 100 active listings, it will report on the 100 listings which were most recently updated. Right above the Filter box, you will see the percentage of listings in the sample, and a total count of that shop’s active listings. It also lists there a count of how many unique tags the seller is using.
This report displays the keyword data in the way you’re used to seeing in other eRank keyword tools. Clicking on any tag will move you to a Keyword Tool report for that tag. The Tag Occurrences data lets you know how many times this tag is used in this shop’s currently-active listings. (Or, if their active listings exceed 100, then in the 100 most recently updated). You can sort the data by any column, or filter by typing a word in the filter box. Mouse over the bars of the Search Trend graphs to view search volume by month. And you’ve got that handy feature where you can click on any of the stars to the left of the keyword to add them to your own Keyword Lists.
Competitor Sales Report
The third tool we’ll look at here analyzes competitor sales. At the top of the report is a new feature eRank has recently added, the Competitor Graph. It displays sales figures for the past seven days. In this interactive graph, you can choose which of the shops on your competitor list to view. Below, we chose to see one line (red) that averages all shops being followed, alongside data of four specific shops.
You can hover over any dot on the graph to see a pop-up showing sales for that day. In our example above, we see that for Friday, Oct 8, 2021, the average of all competitors was three sales. One shop had 73; another, 18; a third had five sales; the fourth had one. (But many of the rest had none.) You can add or remove competitors from view by clicking the check mark beside their shop name.
Scroll down the report and you will see all that data in table form, and more.
Ready, Set, Start Tracking!
In the top left of the table is where you can enter the name of a shop you’d like to start tracking. (Tip: to spot shops you’d like to track, use the Competitor Research > Top Sellers report. There, you can add a shop to your Tracked Competitors list by clicking the little eye icon beside the shop name.) Remove a shop from your list by clicking the x by their name.
In this table you can see the total sales for the past seven days and the day-to-day total sales each shop has had. Also, how many listings the shop has and how old it is. The table also includes a handy notes field. Use it to remind yourself why you’re following that shop. Or create your own categories. For instance, group them by type of shop, product line, style, or price range. This is especially helpful if you’re following several types of competitors. Clicking on the Notes header will sort them by whatever notes you’ve added if you want to view the data as groups.
How to use Etsy Competitor data
Here at eRank we don’t recommend that you try just copying a popular listing from a successful shop. Without that listing’s sales history, you won’t get the same result by simply copying its content. Instead, use these tools to find the top shops in your niche. This can give you an idea of whether your niche can become profitable for you. And use the data to find shops in your current peer group. That is, shops of similar size, age, country, etc. Having this is helpful when you’re experiencing a dip in sales. If it’s the same across the board for your peer shops, then the dip might just be seasonal with less shoppers about. Conversely, is your shop quiet when comparable shops are making sales? Then perhaps now is the time to up your social-media game or improve your photographs.
RESOURCES
This article is based on a video on eRank’s YouTube channel, “How to Track your Etsy competition with eRank for Etsy“
Want to ask the eRank team questions? We host live Q&A sessions every Thursday on Facebook. Join us!
eRank’s Beginner’s Guide touches on competitor research and a bit about the tools to use. If you’re new to eRank, that’s a great place to start.
Tools and features mentioned in this article, with links to detailed how-tos for using each one:
- Etsy Competitor Listings Report
- Competitor Tags Report
- Competitor Sales Report
- Keyword Tool
- Keyword Lists
