Etsy is a great marketplace that guarantees visibility, so it’s an excellent showcase but also a great place to get acquainted with e-commerce, learn how to manage online customer service in its various aspects and submit the product to an existing audience.
Etsy is a great way to be discovered, to familiarize with web marketing but you get to a point where you feel the need to grow and expand your business in order to achieve an increase in conversions and sales, to have their own mailing list and control over the brand.
Etsy Pros
With Etsy you can easily open a shop, it’s easy to use, and the graphics are beautiful and have many useful features for sellers and buyers. The costs are very low, you pay $ 0.20 for each advert that lasts 4 months, plus 3.5% of the sale price.
It can offer you a huge visibility as there are magazines, famous blogs and stores always looking for products to promote or resell and it is a link to bring traffic to your site, blog, Facebook page
In addition, Etsy is also a very active community that gives the opportunity to participate in teams and interact with other users, generating traffic and selling even without external promotion.
A last advantage of Etsy is the ease with which to export the data of your store in order to move to other platforms.
Etsy Cons
Etsy was born to give visibility to small artisans, to diffuse unique, rare, handmade products and with the heart but now there are many similar products because of the trends and styles dictated by the platform itself.
The competition is fierce and to be noticed you have to work hard on all aspects of the store such as SEO, positioning, and trends.
The store must always be maintained and it must be taken into account that it is not possible to personalize your store in addition to photos, banner, logo, and photo of the seller and you risk not being recognized as independent Etsy sellers, being this last one a recognized successful brand.
The presence of hobbyists who do not take care of the basic aspects creates unfair competition and lowers the perceived quality of the products on sale.
In addition, despite being banned, there are still dealers who offer very low prices ruining the image that distinguished Etsy from its birth.
So, sometimes, it can be demotivating not to get any results despite the hard work because of the comparison with professional stores. In addition, despite the low costs, if you create many listings and do not sell the risk is’ to have more outputs than revenue.
A further flaw can be found in the management of feedback as the review of the product can; be released only after a certain time established by Etsy to allow the purchaser to receive the product.
Furthermore, the evaluation system is inadequate and can be used incorrectly by buyers.
But when is it time to move on to other platforms?
Opening your own e-commerce site can be a wise decision in case Etsy was the launch pad to allow people to get to know you, your products and the way you make them.
An e-commerce site will allow you to be the owner of your brand and to customize the customer experience.
In case you would like to emigrate from a craft production to an industrial one, Etsy does not allow you to sell mass-produced items so the solution is to switch to your own e-commerce but even if your target is different from that of Etsy, as for example a certain niche or a luxury-oriented clientele.
Another limitation of Etsy is the prohibition of selling products created by third parties, excluding vintage items.
By creating an e-commerce site you also have the opportunity to devote itself to creating content with a blog that can increase traffic to the site. It is possible to illustrate various aspects of the products reaching new customers through the results of organic research and regularly publishing reviews. But also telling the story of their brand, how the idea was born, the story behind the product, your path.
Another aspect to consider is the creation of email marketing campaigns as communication with customers on Etsy is limited to messages directly connected to an order.
Email marketing can be useful for generating traffic and sales and for regularly informing customers about new blog articles, sales announcements, exclusive offers and new products.
However, it is possible to continue selling on Etsy and open your online store on an e-commerce platform such as Magento, an open source CMS.
It offers a better business model for the sellers with high volumes, you have to pay a hosting plan but you would not pay the percentages of your sales.
Magento or Shopify?
The choice between these two big e-commerce platforms depends on expectations.
Magento includes both the top-quality of customization and functionality support that allows people to incorporate advanced features like one-page checkout, shopping cart, product catalog, and multi-store management.
It also includes include many useful advanced e-commerce features, such as product comparisons, product tiers, discounts & coupons and multi-store management.
For the beginners, Magento is quite complicated because there are a lot of challenges in terms of managing multiple product categories, product pages, and checkout process.
Shopify is an intuitive platform, easy to use with beautiful graphics, with free themes and easy to edit and ready to use.
The costs associated with Shopify are mostly monthly, but there are a couple of initial costs. It offers three types of subscription: Shopify basic, Shopify, Advanced Shopify.
You can either pay monthly or subscribe to a 1-year or 2-year plan, where you can save 10% and 20% respectively on their monthly fees.
However, Shopify does not allow extensive customization, has a limit number of extra features, does not allow full control of the platform and is not optimized for SEO.
Magento, on the other hand, is absolutely customizable, even if certain skills are required to do so, with an unlimited number of extensions.
More details about Magento
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