Start Your Etsy Shop Part 2: Set up Your Storefront
Welcome back to the Start Your Etsy Shop series where I’m walking you through the process of opening your very own shop. Today’s segment is going to cover the utility side of things: adding shop announcements, uploading a cover photo, and making sure all the necessary information is in place for buyers.
If you missed it, be sure to check out Part 1 in the series where I answer common questions you may have before you take the leap. Today’s post assumes you’ve chosen a name and have registered through Etsy. If you haven’t registered and would like 40 free listings to get you going, you can sign up through my link here.
Before you start, you’ll need to navigate to edit mode for your shop. You can find this by clicking the pencil icon under “Sales Channels” on the bottom left of your Etsy Shop Manager dashboard.
Announcements, Policies, and FAQs
Upload a cover photo
We’re going to tackle these updates from the top down, starting with your shop cover photo. If you’re in Canva, they have a nice selection of Etsy Shop Banner templates or you can start from scratch with their blank template. They have the size listed at 1200x300 px. This is good to use only if you have Canva premium and can export the image at 2x resolution. Otherwise, an easy workaround is just doubling the dimensions and using a 2400x600 px canvas.
The most important thing to keep in mind about your shop banner is that it needs to work on mobile too. I made the mistake of designing a skinny banner at the bottom of my first one and it was practically invisible on mobile. You can feature a few of your best photos along with your shop name or simply use the area to advertise your latest sale.
Add your logo and title
Next up is adding your brand logo if you haven’t done so already. A good rule of thumb is to use a photo of you under the shop owner section and a brand logo in the section next to your shop name. The Etsy logo size is 500x500 pixels.
Your shop name should already be in place but below that you’ll notice there’s a title area that allows for 55 characters. This is not a lot of room so try to capture what makes your shop unique and what you sell in very few words. Not only will this help for SEO purposes, but it will also make it really easy for buyers to decide whether you have what they’re looking for.
What is an Etsy shop announcement?
Next, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the “Announcement” section. An Etsy shop announcement is a customizable text area where you can communicate to potential buyers who you are, recent updates, and sales. This is an important section to pay attention to because it shows that your shop is active and up to date.
Personally, I don’t understand why they have this at the bottom of the page rather than on the top where people will see it more, but here we are.
If you need a quick template of what to write here, you can follow this easy example that I’m currently using in my shop.
Welcome to my shop! I create invitation templates and printables for modern weddings. Save 30% on 3+ items with code "LOVELYDEAL"
It’s a greeting paired with a quick synopsis of what I do followed by my latest promo code. Easy peasy.
About section
About You
Below the Announcements section is the “About” section. Here you’ll find a bunch of customizable areas including space for video and photos related to your shop, an about section, and links to other places people can interact with your brand. Definitely add the links for your social channels and website if you have them.
The about section gives you more text space than the other areas of your shop, so you can use it as an opportunity to dive into more detail for buyers to get to know your brand. Remember that just because it’s an “about” section doesn’t mean it has to be all about you. It’s good for buyers to have a connection to you, but also important that you sell them on why your shop is right for THEM. How do your products enrich their life? Think about that and weave it into the copy here.
Shop Members
You can also add your photo, role, and a quick bio about yourself under the “Shop Members” section. I included a simple blurb about my background, qualifications (in my case, my experience as a designer) and why I opened my shop.
Photo & Video
The photo and video section is optional, but as everyone knows “a picture is worth 1000 words.” This is a great area to show a snapshot of your process and how the products are made. One of the reasons people choose to buy on Etsy is because they want to support handmade sellers over giant retail corporations so this is a great area to drive that concept home. You could also show a quick video of yourself holding or interacting with the products in real life.
What are Etsy shop policies?
Etsy shop policies are basically what you see on the back of receipts when you shop at a retailer “no returns after 30 days, must have receipt, etc.” Here Etsy allows you to specify what your policies are for payment, returns and exchanges, and cancellations. The nice thing is they make it really easy to toggle things on and off without much effort. If you’re in the EU you need to add a privacy policy, otherwise it can get put on your low priority list. For more information on how to write a privacy policy, you can go here.
If you’re a digital seller like me, your options will likely look exactly the same but it’s totally up to you. I do not accept returns or exchanges because once a file is sent, the customer can download it on their machine despite it being “exchanged” or “refunded.” This seems like an easy path to getting scammed as a seller. If you do this it’s very important to make that clear in your descriptions and also do a good job of showing the customer exactly what they’re going to get once they click “buy.”
FAQs
Lastly, we have the FAQ section at the bottom. As a type A person, I love this section. It’s the perfect place to go above and beyond explaining things to potential customers so they don’t have a doubt in the world about purchasing from you. Since my shop is a digital download shop I listed a bunch of potential questions related to digital downloads. I want to make it clear how the customer gets the file, what they use to edit it, and how the process works. This will help educate the less technically savvy audience out there!
Just a reminder to be careful that you don’t contradict your FAQ section with any of the other policies in place in your shop. For example, if you write about returns, make sure it matches exactly with what you’ve selected in the policies section.
Whew, that was a lot of official business. The good news is that once this is setup, there’s not much ongoing tweaking required. I can’t wait to share the next step in the process with you!
