Craft Venture: Tags

Brenda from Phydeaux and my brand new shop, Phydelle, back this week to talk about management and marketing of your online business. Last week, we talked about the importance of communication. This week, we’ll talk about using tags in your product listings.

I’ve been listing items this weekend for my brand new Etsy shop. My new shop is a little similar to my current shop:  hand knit and crocheted accessories. But for Blythe and Pullip dolls, which is a whole new world of shopping categories and tags that I needed to learn about.

Which leads to this week’s brief discussion about tag use. There seems to be two main camps of thought about how to use tags:  use the most relevant tags to bring search specific shoppers to your shop or use the widest variation of tags to bring lots of people to your shop.

Although different venues may have different guidelines about how to use your tags, I’m rather confident that all venues want you to use tags relevant to the item being described. According to Merriam-Webster, relevant means “having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand.” In other words, your tags are specifically related to your item.

Tags help shoppers search for items within a venue, and may also help shoppers search for items via the internet (Google, for instance). Tags are of immense interest on the internet, with many books, magazine and internet articles, and tools available to help you learn more about effective tag use.

I am, by no means, a tag expert; however, I do have a few tips and tricks about relevant tag use that may help you with your online business:

• -Your first tag is nearly always a high level category name (e.g., jewelry, clothes, accessory), followed by subcategories specific to your item.
• -Think like a shopper! Include main colors, texture, and other descriptions that shoppers might look for. For instance, if I was searching for a man’s navy wool knit scarf for a birthday present, I’m not going to search by “birthday present.” I will search for “men’s,” “navy,” “wool,” “knit,” “scarf.” I might also add “dark blue” and “indigo.”
• -Colors really are important to use. If you’re struggling to describe your particular color, check out wikipedia and “shades of (that color).” Not that scientific, but you’ll see a table of the colors plus their names in the color family you’re trying to describe. Invaluable!
• -Is your item organic? Say so! Vegan (no animal products at all, including silk)? Say so! But don’t use those tags if you’re not certain that they accurately describe your item.
• -I always use my shop name as a tag. I have rather unique shop names; however, if someone’s looking for a phydeaux scarf in turquoise, they can search for it anywhere on Etsy.
• -If your item has spelling variants, use them! Perhaps the best known is “jewellery,” used by many other countries instead of “jewelry.”
• -Last, but not least, spell your tags correctly. I want to cry for sellers when I see misspelled tags, particularly when it’s their shop name (it does happen…).
  

I’d love to hear more tips and tricks with tags! Please share with us in the comments!

Image credits:  1. Saddle up gift tag set, by Teri’s Treasure; 2.  Three rosette gift tags, by The Moody Magpie