So you're having a SALE?

Well, you're not alone! It might be a coupon code, or items marked down in your shop, but it's going to be most successful if you let potential buyers know about it.

A wander through our list of Chat Team members shows how some are putting their Etsy avatars to work as tiny 75x75-pixel billboards, advertising their sales throughout the site.

Since avatars go with us everywhere - shops, chat, forums, teams, convos - it makes sense to use them well. The sellers above have incorporated a Sale message in their avatars; some add a graphic to item photos, and Etsy offers free ready-made avatars, avatar layers, and Sale banners, here.

Avatars (left to right) from StoliGal, SimpliMandi, ampeefyed, thejewelrydream, and item photo from Cabin.

Shape up #2 - Customer service is always in season

We've all had some wonderful experiences shopping online, but also some that turned out to be not so great. And while the product is certainly a big part of what makes one purchase rock, and another sink like a stone, customer service is something that can make or break a sale, however fabulous the item.

This article from the Seller Handbook lists the writers' Top 10 Customer Service Strategies, and they have some great advice. It's part of a bigger series Service Tips for Sellers with info on everything from communication and complaints to shipping and selling vintage.

In Chat recently there was a discussion about how something as basic as replying to convos is an effective sales and service strategy that can pay off - Team member jmaeson answered an out-of-the-blue convo that lead to a custom order for 60 items!

Please share your customer service stories, good and bad, in the comments.


Images from KatyBitsandPieces and WinsomeTreasures, thanks!

Hey Chat Team!

Jupita posted this a week ago today asking all team members to brainstorm and come up with some fun ideas for promoting The Etsy Chatters Team.

So far we have a few great ideas, but before we put this to vote, I want to make sure everyone's been heard....so in essence, speak now or forever hold your peace ;-)

Here are the ideas so far:

• Sampler Group Boxes: where we create sampler style boxes with (choose a #) chatter's shops per box (example, 4 shops per box, which means one item from each shop per box). Each "group" member supplies that many items for the boxes. They send each of the participants of their "group" an item. Each member creates a box and lists it in their shop, each box being listed at the same price as the others.

• Halloween/Fall Challenge: where team member shops come up with a really great item to list in their shop that is Halloween/Fall themed....let's say by October 1st. From there we post a list of the items, with a description, photo and link to the item/shop, and have a vote on our blog where readers can choose their favorite. Good way to motivate shops to be creative, and gets some exposure for the Team and each shop. (This could be changed or also done for Winter/Christmas, etc.)

• Sampler Box/Theme Basket Blog Giveaway: For example, participating team shops would send their items to a Team Lead (Misty @ Heathenshearth or Jupita, to be determined later) and they compile a couple of bags/baskets from the items, take photos of the baskets, and post on the blog. Then have members, followers, etc post comments on the blog and we chose winners (dependant on how many bags/baskets we make up) using random. org.

• Etsy Chatters Team Sale: We can plan a weekend sale (maybe for August or September) and all team members who want to participate could decide what sort of sale they want to run (i.e. free shipping, 10% store-wide, 25% off orders over $50, etc etc the possibilities are endless) and use code "Etsy Chatters Team" for sale prices. After we get a list of who is participating and what their sale is, we can put together a blog post listing them in alphabetical order (or maybe even sorted by craft). Everyone can put it in their shop announcement with a link back to the blog post. We can all separately promote the Team sale using blogger, twitter, facebook, etc...whatever you use.

• Etsy Chatters Team-wide Chat-a-thon / Sell-a-thon: - Select one weekend (Friday evening to Sunday night, Etsy time) when every participating shop would have a promotion of some sort - BOGO, free shipping, gift with purchase, percent off, gift wrapping - whatever works best for the individual shop. - We promote the heck out of the weekend, with threads on the forums, posts on team members' individual blogs, Tweets and Ning messages flying across the internet, Treasuries made to highlight the team and participating shops, and (something no other team ever does), maintaining a chat room about the fun, all weekend long. - Participating shops, and other Team members, each 'adopt' an hour or more during the weekend to be responsible for Etsy-based promotion during their designated time. I'll have opened a chat room and Etsy forum threads, but as we know, chat rooms can die if they're not active, and forum threads fall off the main page if they don't get attention, so there needs to be a conversation going on there too, in both the Teams and Promotions categories. The forum and our Team blog would be another way to list all the participating shops, with their links.

Let's get some more ideas rolling! I will be checking this periodically and Jupita and I will post a poll on the blog in the next couple days!