Despite being a community for all things hand-made and customized, Etsy is ultimately a marketplace, meaning that you’ll be one of the stores on the webpage competing for the consumer’s interest. So, how do you ensure that a paying customer stays on your page for that extra second?
One of the sure-fire ways to boost engagement on your page is to understand what your competitors are doing well and what they seem to be lacking in comparison to yours. While it may seem the morally wrong thing to be spying on someone else’s store, it’s a fairly common practice in e-commerce. In fact, a lot of the bigger e-commerce corporations keep tabs on their rivals as a part of their business strategy to maximize their market share.
How can I track my Etsy competitors?
Given the various tools available at your disposal, it’s not all that hard to spy on your rivals. There are plenty of tracking tools that you can make use of to accomplish the same like Etsy Hunt and ShopiScope. But Selleyway is a tool that stands out for us.
Seller Way
Seller Way is a one-of-a-kind tracking tool that also serves as a market research guide that helps you look for trending keywords and tags to boost your customer engagement. You can ensure that your listings show up first on the results page by making use of the Keyword analyzer tool.
Moreover, keeping tabs on your competitors has never been this easy, thanks to the Competitor Data Analyzer tool which provides a detailed report comprising of their sales, and search engine optimization efforts. Armed with this information, you can use the Audit Shop feature to better design your store and make better use of the same SEO tools that your rivals seem to be making use of. If you’re confused about using any of the tools, then make use of the guides to lead you through the whole process.
While a free version is available, the premium versions provide a much larger range of business tools. The Plus package is inclusive of all the other above-mentioned tools and costs $19.99 per month, but you can avail of it for $ 8.33 per month if you subscribe to the annual pack.
What to look for?
You now might have a decent idea of how certain tools can help you track the stores of your rivals, but what are you exactly looking for? What are some of the facets of a business that you should be focusing your interest on?
- Sales Volume
Sales volume in simple terms refers to the number of units of a product a company sells in a specific period of time. This time varies and could either be an hour, day, month, or quarter. Knowing the sales volume of a rival store helps you understand how successful they are. If they seem to be moving a lot of products, it means that they’re doing well for themselves and you might have a learn or two about how they run their store.
- What listings are performing well?
Not all products fly off the shelves of a store, some might and others might not. The listings are a clear indicator of the same. Knowing the most popular listing of a rival online store can help you better understand the psyche of a customer and plan your marketing efforts accordingly. This can change on any given day, so you’ll need to keep track of these pages on a daily basis to see how they’re doing.
- Listing info like tags or keywords
A listing is considered incomplete unless there are keywords or tags to go along with it. The right keyword can amplify the reach of your post. So, take a closer look at your competitor’s listings and the kind of keywords they seem to be making use of. You can also go ahead and use a keyword analyzer to provide you with an array of trending keywords. But, don’t try to overpopulate your listing with too many tags as it could sometimes prove to be counterproductive.
- How many listings do they have
This is a no-brainer, the more products a company has listed, the more number of times its store appears on the screen. While more listings might seem like the answer to boosting sales, it might not be the most practical option for a niche business like yours as opposed to a large conglomerate of organizations. So, the key is to find a nice balance that works for you.
