In this post we’ll look at how to get more favourites on your items and increase your shop followers (a shop follower is someone who favourites your whole shop).
Folksy Shop Activity – Favourites & Follows
On Folksy we now have a ‘Shop Activity’ page for sellers. This is a stream of information you can access from your dashboard which shows shop activity, and is in addition to the ‘Shop Views’ page where you can track views of your shop and items. The more activity here, the healthier your shop sales figures are likely to be as favourites and follows show you have desirable products.
The Shop Activity page currently shows:
- Item favourites
- New shop followers
- Item added to the curated and promoted Gift Guides by our team
- Item added to Folksy Favourites by our team
You can find your own shop activity page here www.folksy.com/profile/events
If you have no activity from the past 30 days, read our Craft Seller Advice blog posts for tips on marketing your work and improving your photography.
Weekly Folksy shop activity email
To ensure that you are all kept up to date with activity in your shop, we will now be sending a weekly digest of the last 7 days of activity in your shop. The email will come from robot@folksy.com and we recommend adding that email address to your contacts so your email provider knows it’s not spam.
What if I haven’t an email?
The email will only be sent if you have had activity in your shop within the last 7 days. The email will be sent out every Monday morning. (NB. The first email was at 6pm on 3rd November 2015.)
How do I favourite an item?
As you can see above, anyone can add an item or a shop to their favourites by clicking the links on the item page. They can also favourite an item by clicking the heart that appears in the corner of item images on the search results pages (it appears when you hover over an item).
Every shop also has a heart in the banner at the top of the page that users can click to add that shop to their favourites. Favouriting a shop allows users to see new work listed by that seller.
Who follows my shop?
You can see all the people who follow your shop here – followers are people who have added your shop to their favourites.
Why are ‘favourites’ and ‘follows’ useful for increasing sales?
You can be featured on the Folksy Home Page
When an item gets ‘favourited’ it also gets featured on our signed-in ‘Folksy Home Page’ (as shown above), enabling it to be seen by more people. We have thousands of visitors to the home page every day!
Bookmarking for later
A buyer can use the heart on your shop listing as a way of saving an item they like for later. Although a sale is not guaranteed just because of a like, it’s a good indicator that your item is desirable. The buyer may just not have time or funds to buy and will hopefully come back later.
Increase views to new listings
If a buyer follows your shop activity, they can also see all the latest items you have listed in their Favourites Shops New Items feed.
Useful for press & bloggers
Journalists and bloggers can use hearts to save items to feature really quickly as they can scan through and add items to their favourites directly from a Folksy search. We do this with our favourites feed, adding items that we might feature on our Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter feeds.
How do I boost shop activity?
- Read our tips on SEO. You need to understand the techniques needed to drive traffic to your shop using external and internal search engine optimisation. People can’t favourite items or shops they can’t find. Linking to your Folksy shop from your social media channels will also help.
- Improve your shop photography We always say this but it’s because it really makes a difference. We only add items with good photographs to the Folksy Favourites and Folksy Gift Guides.
- Call to Action When promoting your work on social media, remind people to add your shop to their favourites with a simple ‘Don’t forget to add my shop to your favourites, so you can see all my latest work.’
- Newsletters Send a newsletter reminding people to add your shop to their favourites, or perhaps create a permanent call to action at the end of every newsletter.
- Communication Ask buyers to add you to their favourites to keep up with new listings more easily, perhaps in your thank you note. This is great way to help with repeat custom.
- Image Call to Action Overlay text on your final image asking your fans to ‘Add me to your favourites’ to ensure they can find your shop easily again. Use a programme like canva.com or picmonkey.com to create your graphics.
- Encourage friends and family to favourite your work They may not be able to buy any more themselves but they can help get your shop on the front page more often – and it only takes a minute!
You’ll be pleased to know we are also working on a Folksy Favourites digest for buyers so they can keep up to date with your latest work more easily.
Picture credit: Textile Love Sculpture in main image by Thimbleville
