How to Improve Your Etsy Listing Photos
In the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a hard look at how I can make small tweaks to improve my Etsy shop overall. As a digital download seller, standing out in a saturated sea of listings can be difficult. In this post I’m going to use a recent listing as a case study and walk through the improvements I made to increase clicks to my product listings.
Before I dive in, let’s cover the basics of what I believe makes for a great digital download listing image.
A realistic mockup
If you’re selling a digital download, it’s important to help the buyer imagine that product existing in their life. Mockups are just that extra something-something to help them envision using and enjoying your product. If you use Canva, you can choose “Edit Photo” and use their smart mockups tool to easily put designs into devices, computer screens, paper, and more.
A simple look and feel
Say more with less. When a user does a search on the Etsy app, all the listings can tend to look a bit cluttered. Err on the side of simplicity and strive for clean and simple photos. This doens’t mean you can’t show everything, just be mindful. For example: choose a background color or surface that isn’t too distracting and make sure there aren’t a ton of unnecessary objects taking the focus away from your product.
Anticipation of Every Question
How did I improve my Etsy listing photos?
I’m going to use my Airbnb Guidebook listing as an example for this. I was so excited when I listed it because I loved the design and how the information was presented alongside the product mockups. However, when I did a test in incognito mode searching for my product I hate to admit that my eyes glazed over my listing. What?! My precious listing that I tried so hard on?! How did this happen?
The problem was that I was on-trend to a fault. The neutral and muted aesthetic is super trendy right now and my lovely beige and white listing photo blended right in. I looked at the rest of the competitor listings and realized I could stand out more by using my brand color, a deep navy blue. Win! But not so fast.
My color change was effective at making my listing pop but I realized there was still one problem: when searching on mobile all my pretty text was not readable. Now I know it’s not going to be possible to make everything totally legible on mobile with all the screen sizes that exist but there are a few straightforward tweaks that can be made.
Instead of having the left panel with all the detail, I simplified the photo of my next listing to have just the product photo with a simple band of text on a color background at the top. Be sure that there’s enough contrast between the background color and text so it’s legible. While pretty to look at, I’ve realized that handwriting or calligraphy-style fonts don’t work well in this area. Instead, I opt for a bold sans serif font.
The other thing I added was what I’m calling a “feature sticker.” It’s basically a circle with text inside of it, but it’s all about how you think of it! This area reminds me of a “bonus” or “extra” type feel that I can use to call out something high value about the product. So in this case I decided to mention that the template is fully editable in Canva.
Ahh. So much better. Now don’t get me wrong, none of these are inherently wrong, it’s just a good exercise to keep in mind as you refine your approach to listing new products. Etsy is very competitive and having a knack for design and presentation can really help! I’m really happy with the tweaks I made and hope this inspires you to take a hard look at your listing photos. Don’t forget to make sure they’re setup as reusable templates to save yourself time down the line.
