June 21, 2011

When I Take the Newsletter Plunge

When I take the newsletter plunge I want to do right.   Believe it or not email still reigns king compared to other forms of social media in generating sales.  Or at least that is what the statistic's show in the latest articles I've read, reigning in at 30%.  I am going to want people to sign up for my newsletter, right? Then I'm going to want an awesome Call to Action.  A what what?  In reading lots of marketing blogs I've learned what a call to action is.  It's a response you want users to complete. So an awesome call to action encourages users to act.  Let me show you an example of one call to action that recently sucked me in.


via handmadesuccess.com
 There are many techniques used in an effective call to action.  In the example here handmadesuccess.com identified my problem or my need and offered a solution as an added bonus for just subscribing to their newsletter! Did you notice the language they used? "Get Instant Access when you sign up for the Handmade Success newsletter."  Yep, I signed up!  In looking at their call to action I discovered other things that attracted me and caught my attention.  I identified color, I love these colors and I'm a sucker for pink.  Have you ever thought of color as another language?




via Kissmetrics



I also identified a little bit of whimsy.  When looking for some photo helps for this blog post I check Etsy first, of course.  When cruising at mad speed though pages on Etsy, this photo made me stop and go back for another look.

via Etsy here



It's full of whimsy, has all the right colors and quite colorful.  Come on, it's a picture of a cupcake, of course I went back for more! ;) Well, here's some food for thought when you're ready to take the newsletter plunge.

~vintageprecious

June 20, 2011

Missing Monday Ava Age 3

More info here
Little Ava age 3 was abducted by her father and another female.  They may be in the Northeastern area of the USA or Canada in a 1989 Ford Coachmen Motorhome with California plates 2PWF894.  Please help bring Ava home safe and share this with others.  We cry out for JUSTICE!
~vintageprecious

June 13, 2011

Have You Seen Carly Jean Lewis?

For more information HERE at www.missingkids.com

Carly Jean Lewis has been missing since June 2nd, 2011.  A beautiful young girl and only 16 years old. She is missing from Travers City, MI.  

June 06, 2011

Missing Monday

Reunite precious children safely home! View poster here for missing children Trinity Grant age 3 and her brother Larry Grant age 4. Missing Apr 15, 2011 from Dallas,GA.  Please take a moment to view share this poster, for more information on missing children visit http://www.missingkids.com/
~vintageprecious

June 04, 2011

Does Your Avatar Have Personality?

Once again while reading the Etsy forums in search of information treasure I came across this post  about if you should use a photo of yourself or one of your product as your avatar. Half of the responses were in favor of a photo of yourself the reason being Etsy is about people. The other half of the responses were in favor of a product photo to represent the shop. It really stood out, that many had said, they only clicked on product avatars. One person said it didn’t matter as long as the avatar was interesting. Yet another brought up that the Etsy admin have avatar’s with photo’s of themselves.

Having been ready for an avatar change, I was considering changing to a photo of myself. Especially since many of my Etsy teammates have such lovely photo’s of themselves and I noticed it is becoming a trend.

A big concern for me is the name of my Etsy Shop, VintagePrecious. If I changed to a photo of myself would many assume I sold vintage?  I named my shop VintagePrecious because my designs are inspired by vintage for precious little girls. I think it makes sense for Etsy admin to have photo's of themeselves because even though they have Etsy shops they represent Etsy. It would make sense, that if you are asking for help or advice in the forums from Etsy admin you are not talking to a shoe. One thing I’ve noticed about the Etsy admin photo's, is it gives Etsy even more personality.

Etsy must know this, I’m sure they did their research. So how do we give our shops personality & representation with our avatars? TAGSMITH on Etsy has had more success with his avatar now than when it was a photo of himself as you can see here in his avatar .  I think TAGSMITH nailed it! ;)  You don't see his face, but you do see his hands at work making his craft.

I want Lloyd Price to sing to my avatar, “Oh-oh-over and over I'll prove my love to you... 'Cause you've got personality.”  I’m off to brainstorm for a creative way to merge both personality and shop representation into my 75 x 75 pixels avatar!

June 02, 2011

A Discovery Of SEO Treasure Leads To Changes In My Etsy Shop

While treasure hunting in the Etsy forums, I made a discovery I had no idea about. This is where I hit the jackpot here .  Basically this has to do with duplicate content, having an Etsy shop with multiples of the same listings. One reason to have the same item listed more than once is for testing, to see what is working and what is not. Another reason is I’m very blessed to be on several awesome treasury teams and having more choices for treasuries makes it easier due to my product which is little girls dresses. Girls special occasion dresses are a bit of a narrow niche. Why not make more product you ask, well it’s me. I’m a perfectionist and it’s a lengthy process before I’m finally satisfied and ready to show the world. Not only is it a lengthy process, but very expensive in terms of supplies needed to produce my dresses. Once I'm more established I can invest much more into the product line.

Here is a quote from the link I posted by post author SEOWebDesign, “In February, duplicate content became a bigger issue with Google than ever before - Google stopped index Web pages that it considered duplications of other Web pages. Ecommerce Web sites were affected simply because so much information in each product listing is the same from one listing to another. This recent algorithm change is called Panda or Farmer.” [sic]  Some may not know but there are websites that copy and steal content from other websites for SEO purposes. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimizer. The goal is to be on the first page for Google searches related to your website. It’s easier to be seen on the first page than on page 108 where no one may ever find you, sigh.

There were some great suggestions from the Etsy post and a very huge thank you to SEOWebDesign! Sometimes your content is the same in all your listings that are not identical. A solution is to put a note with a link to your policy page and put the information there instead of duplicating it. All my items are custom and come with the same set of instructions and information, such as construction, what measurements are needed and how to take them. Another great suggestion was to update your listings, Etsy store announcement and policies regularly to keep them fresh. By doing this you are adding new and original content to your shop. Putting my creativity skills to the test, I made two different descriptions here (lovely dress 1) & here (lovely dress 2) .  There is still some work to do, what do you think?