Online shoppers have more access to deals than ever before. So successful eCommerce platforms understand the importance of remaining competitive to appeal to the broadest range of buyers.
Brand Loyalty Benefits Platform Sellers
In recent times, Etsy has launched many initiatives to attract new buyers and sellers to their platform. Other shopping sites, including Amazon, have proven that huge sale events are always a great way to attract buyers.
Lately, Etsy has been experimenting with the use of Artificial Intelligence to help provide site users with improved user experiences. Signs of this move towards implementing AI include the use of trend guides and product suggestions throughout the site.
AI, in combination with a more aggressive television advertising campaign, is a strong indication Etsy is making moves to become an even more dominant eCommerce player.
Differentiating in the Marketplace
Etsy caters to a large community of handmade and vintage buyers and sellers. This is one of the most significant ways that it sets itself apart from other popular Internet marketplaces.
By championing a shopping day for this demographic, it would be a huge opportunity to strengthen Etsy’s brand. And would undoubtedly playing a significant role in their overall marketing strategy.
While the company hasn’t officially announced a “Prime Day” type of promotion, they frequently offer sitewide promotions. Additionally, the platform provides individual Etsy sellers the option to provide perks. These include expedited shipping on in-stock items, free standard shipping, and coupon codes.
To help support holiday shopping, Etsy often offers sitewide promotions. This encourages sales for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter, Patriotic holidays, and other special occasions.
Not surprisingly, these promotions help motivate shoppers to purchase the items they like from the individual shops on Etsy.
Another significant advantage of Etsy’s marketplace is that thousands of sellers promote their shops and products on social media. When all of this promotional work is aggregated, the efforts work collectively to build more traffic to the site, which benefits nearly everyone with an active shop.
Participation in Promotions is Optional for Sellers
If Etsy decides to implement a Prime-Day style promotion, sellers likely won’t have to participate. Currently, sitewide promotional events on Etsy don’t require every shopkeeper to participate.
Generally, Etsy provides sellers with information about special sales events, sales tips, and other promotions they can choose to join. Whether or not shopkeepers decide to participate is left entirely up to them.
While the results from individual sellers can vary, getting onboard with these special events and promotions, helps to incentivize buyers to make a purchase that they might not otherwise make.
Marketing Strategies Help Drive Growth
Publically traded on NASDAQ, Etsy has a lot at stake to their online buyers, sellers and shareholders in the company.
As part of their overall marketing campaigns, it’s essential to explore different ways to spur growth, sales, and revenue from their website.
By adding additional incentives for people to check out the site and buy from their hosted shops, they can boost the overall good feelings people get from frequenting the site.
In this type of win-win situation, all parties involved understand the satisfaction of achieving the goals they want from their involvement with the platform.
It will be interesting to see if the Etsy platform launches or initiates a sale similar to Amazon Prime Day in the foreseeable future. What do you think? Will we see an Etsy Prime Day in 2021?
8 replies on “Is Etsy Going to Make a Prime Day?”
In my opinion Etsy needs to stop with their off site ads that sellers who make a living on Etsy are forced to do. 12% off of the total order including shipping is far too much on top of the regular fees. And unfair. Etsy sellers are not Amazon sellers. The constant need to feel they have to compete with Amazon is ruining what Etsy used to be about. People who buy handmade and Vintage don’t mind spending on shipping for a one if a kind item. I wish Etsy would give more icentive to it’s sellers instead of money grabbing from us every time they get a chance. It’s getting harder to turn a profit unless we out price our items.
I agree with you
I agree with Lynn Weigel. Also, if I wanted to participate in “Prime Day”, I would sell on Amazon. Etsy is supposed to be a marketplace for handmade and vintage sellers, where buyers can find unique, one of a kind items that cannot be found on Amazon or in stores. If I want cheap, mass produced items from China, I will shop on Amazon. Biggest mistake Etsy ever made was going public 🙁
I completely agree with Save Yourself and Lynn Weigel. Etsy is going to price itself out of small businesses. It’s getting harder and harder to make any money on Etsy due to all of the fees! I have also noticed that so many of the sellers now are NOT small home based business but large corporate wholesale sellers. They have no place on the Etsy platform as far as I’m concerned. Since going public , Etsy is much more concerned about a profit for shareholders than the small, home based, unique business that was their original platform. Soooo disappointing 😞
Any site wide promotion is good in my opinion. It brings traffic, traffic = sales.
But I do agree that Etsy is missing an huge opportunity to differentiate themselves from Amazon. I think there is a market for truly handmade. Etsy used to be it. But Etsy continues to steer away from that. Maybe its time for a new player?
Hello everyone, I agree with all your comments, I did start in 2008 when it was only handmade and one of the kind, more and more it is difficult to sales, some people said there is more and more big shop.
The devil is always in the details. I would Welcome another type of site wide sale, since they do them anyway, called prime day, as long as it doesn’t cost any shop owner anything other than what they would decide to put on sale. Perhaps Etsy is really thinking of going toward an Etsy prime, similar to Amazon prime, where customer members who decide to join pay so much a year and everything they order ships for free. I cannot see Etsy doing it though unless It got some kind of contribution from the sellers toward the shipping. And there in lies the problem.
Also, something that is never talked about by etsy when discussing the free postage thing- buyers pay a subscription to Amazon that covers the free postage. Etsy seem to want sellers to take the brunt of any promotions.