Again, let me emphasize, I love the fact that Etsy is urging us to think about offering free shipping. It bugs me when someone thinks Etsy is "forcing" shops to offer free shipping ("pushing free shipping off on shop owners" is another term I've heard. Ugh, c'mon people!) or that it's "unfair" of Etsy to place shops with free shipping higher in the search ranking. We don't get mad when Amazon or other online stores do the same thing because it's convenient for us as shoppers. Why not make it as easy for your customers to find you and buy from you?
Anyway. Onward before I digress all the way back to the first post.
In the last post I ended by mentioning that I turned off Etsy's Free Shipping Guarantee for my shop.
There is one thing that bugs me about the Free Shipping Guarantee, and that's the lack of customizations available. I'll describe my problem:
My minimum purchase amount for free shipping varies depending on the time of year and whether I have special packaging (so things don't get melty). Right now I offer free shipping on all purchases over $15. That might go up or down in the future, but I love having the freedom to change it myself.
Etsy's Free Shipping Guarantee doesn't allow this. The minimum is set at $35 and you can't lower it. (When Etsy set up a survey about this before they implemented free shipping I even suggested a nifty slider bar. I'm so disappointed that it didn't happen.)
In my case, I have to offer free shipping using a sale or coupon. Etsy doesn't recognize this as a free shipping offer- only items that are already free to ship are eligible to be higher in the search rankings. And what's worse, I can't have the free shipping guarantee on and have my own coupon for free shipping at a lower minimum. The free shipping coupon doesn't apply to items with a free shipping guarantee.
In short, my free shipping offer is better than most offered on Etsy but I don't get the search ranking perk. Not placing high up in the search rankings for opting out of the guarantee is definitely not a punishment. But not placing in the search rankings because you have a better shipping guarantee than Etsy that just isn't accommodated by their setup kinda feels like an oversight at the very least.
I've asked people to explain and nobody has been able to help me understand the logic behind the locked $35 minimum. Is it because of Amazon's minimum? Then why lock it at $35? Are they worried that shop owners would expect a higher ranking in the search if their shipping has a lower minimum and that seems too complicated?
Maybe they just didn't like the slider bar idea.
(Pshhh, impossible! LOL!)
In any case, I really hope Etsy allows us to customize our free shipping offers in the future. Until then, I'm going to make it my goal to improve my SEO, photos, and marketing, including building my email list instead.
Have you already implemented free shipping, or are you making different improvements to drive traffic to your Etsy shop?
Pin this article:
0 comments:
Post a Comment