Congratulations! you have been on Etsy for a while and now have your own website/handmade online store. Here are the first things you should do to get your website working for you:
1. Update URL
If you are keeping your Etsy store, which is recommended as a great source of traffic, make sure to add your new website URL to the about section of your Etsy store.
2. Update Social
Update your social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) to direct traffic to your Website instead of your Etsy store.
3. Update printed marketing material
Do you have a business card or send printed material with your packages? Make sure to update it to your own website address so that return customers or/and their “word of mounth”, can easily purchase from you.
4. Email Sign up
Make sure your Website has a signup form for your Newsletter (inline, popup, slider, etc.). You can use Mailchimp, Maillite, etc.
5. Email Welcome
Create a Welcome email or, even better, a chain of 3 welcome emails for the people that sign up to your newsletter.
6. SEO
You might be familiar with SEO (search engine optimization) from Etsy. If you are looking to get traffic from search engines (primarily google), it’s a good idea to start working on SEO for your website, sooner than later. For ranking, Google takes into account activity and longevity so be patient. If you have a WordPress site, a popular SEO plugin (that has a good free version) is SEO by Yoast. You should work on SEO terms for all your pages, including product pages and category pages (if you have any). A blog is a good way to keep the site active, even if you just do it once a month.
7. Google Analytics
Connect your site to Google Analytics. If you aren’t familiar with Google Analytics, its a free tool from google that gives you information on your site visitors (where they came from, what pages they visited, where they are from geographically, what browser they use, etc.). As they say, “knowledge is power”.
Be patient, things do not happen overnight. That said, having your own handmade online store is one of the best investments for building a real handmade business for the long run, creating your brand and controlling your business.
