Etsy :: The Storque :: Etsy News :: Survey Says: The Results Are In

Survey Says: The Results Are In


Story by bethela, TechUpdates Published on March 6, 2008 in Etsy News	Photo by eLko

The results are in! We had over 30,000 respondents to the survey, an overwhelming response. After careful data scrubbing to clean out multiple entries and comparing the survey data to our registration and site statistics to review how representative the sample was, we are excited to present the results to you.

We are particularly pleased that we had a significant number of buyers answer the survey; those who are buyers and do not sell on Etsy accounted for 46% of the total respondents.

For a summary of the results, download this file.

Some highlights about who we are:
Predominately female: You might have suspected this... 96% of our users are female.

Highly educated: Both buyers and sellers are a highly educated group, with 63% graduating from college and 17% still in college. Sellers, 58% graduated from college and 8% are still in college.

Young: Buyers, on average, are 32 years old and sellers are slightly older, averaging 35 years old.

Mainly from the U.S., but our international user base is growing: 82% of buyers and 86% of sellers are from the United States. This is a huge opportunity for us to continue embracing more people from more countries. We are working on tools to do this, such as currency conversion, guides about shipping internationally, and further down the line, language conversion. We have registered users from 172 countries and counting!

Some suggestions based on the results:
Keep blogging: Lots of buyers find out about Etsy through blogs. To be exact, 26% find out about Etsy on blogs and 17% find out about the handmade products they buy on blogs. The good news is 51% of the sellers who responded to the survey participate in blogging. Here are some more tips for sellers: Etsy Team Tips: Etsy Teams Blog Ring, Etsy Community Projects: Etsy Sellers Who Blog / Blog Love, Writing for an Online Audience: How-To, How-tos from the Seller Blogosphere: greenbeanbaby's 10 Steps to a Successful Shop, Shop Makeover Series: Pimp Your Shop for 2008, Tech Updates: New Storque Tools for Readers.

Use Etsy Mini: Almost all people who use Etsy mini (40% of total sellers) find it a valuable tool for promoting their shops. So if you haven’t already, add an Etsy mini to your blog. For instructions check out our tech update on the Etsy mini.

Tell a friend: The most frequent way buyers find out about Etsy is through a friend (33%). So keep spreading the word and use the "email this to a friend" link on item pages and at the bottom of Storque articles.

Update and actively use your social networking profile: 72% of buyers and 78% of sellers have a profile on at least one social networking site. These are huge numbers. This suggests that your Facebook page just may be a great marketing tool for you (see our Storque article about Facebook). You might want to think about trying out some more recently created social networking tools, like Twitter (see our Storque article about using Twitter). From recent anecdotal reports, Twitter is great for strengthening your relationship with current customers, fostering repeat sales.

Consider using category showcases: Buyers found Category Showcases an important feature and frequently use category pages, the second most likely way to search for items on Etsy (read an article about Category Showcases here).

Showcase the uniqueness of your items: Buyers shop on Etsy primarily to find unique items, because they value handmade goods and they want to support independent artists. Buyers, and 80% of all respondents, are also willing to pay more for high quality, well crafted items. (Learn more about the Art of Pricing and tell us Your Handmade Stories.)

More insights:
We also learned more about what features buyers and sellers are interested in. Features that scored high were wish lists (for both buyers and sellers), improved search and seller statistics. We are working this year to get these features out to you.

Advertising was another highly requested suggestion from sellers in the open comments of the survey. This survey helps inform our advertising plans, both for where we plan cooperating advertising as well as on online advertising. An example of this is our upcoming wedding series, where we will be advertising on targeted blogs and websites.

Again, thank you to all that participated in the survey and for all of your suggestions along the way. We plan to do this regularly and I am eager to see how things change as we grow and add new members and features.

Related Items

This article was reported by:

bethela
shop . profile . contact

TechUpdates
shop . profile . contact


	Tags		selling, Statistics, survey

All articles in Etsy News

Email to a friend | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this

34 comments Login to add your own!

March 6, 2008 at 3:15 p.m.

ecram1

Wow, great stats thanks! Very informative!

March 6, 2008 at 3:18 p.m.

divadea

Interesting. Thanks for sharing the results.

March 6, 2008 at 3:20 p.m.

juln

Thanks Bethela, and everyone who worked on and answered the survey, for the interesting info!

March 6, 2008 at 3:24 p.m.

LusciousNaturals

I'm surprised about the category showcase answer... I was under the impression sellers do not find them useful, almost at all.

March 6, 2008 at 3:31 p.m.

sushipot

Thank you for these SUPER stats! Very helpful.

March 6, 2008 at 3:36 p.m.

PamperingBeki

Really interesting! Thank you guys so much.

March 6, 2008 at 3:53 p.m.

hillarietasche

Woo great article! I'm going to do ALL of these things!

March 6, 2008 at 4:10 p.m.

curlyfrysc

Another suggestion...as a Mac user I would love to be able to take the next survey. For some reason I could not get past the first page.

March 6, 2008 at 4:20 p.m.

qwynwyn

Thanks for doing the survey and sharing the results. 30,000 respondents is a good high number. I look forward to reading the summary pdf.

March 6, 2008 at 4:25 p.m.

freshwaterpirate

thanks for the available pdf. very helpful

March 6, 2008 at 4:31 p.m.

staceyrebecca

lovely, thank you.

March 6, 2008 at 4:33 p.m.

DornickDesigns

Great information. I love Etsy & everything it does for humanity :)

March 6, 2008 at 4:49 p.m.

spugmeistress

thank you for sharing the results of the survey with us! i have one question though:

"82% of buyers and 86% of sellers are from the United States. "

is this information taken from the survey or from the actual data you already have about our locations from when we sign up? because if it's the former, then, as mentioned when it was being advertised, the survey is likely to be skewed towards US etsy users because of the prize draw associated with it. if it's the latter (which i hope it is, but am surprised at the numbers given) then the figures are very interesting to know.

March 6, 2008 at 5:04 p.m.

bethela

spugmeistress,

The information that is in the document (and listed in this article) is from the survey. That said, it is very close to the U.S. vs. international breakdown of registration data as well as our traffic data. Where we could, we looked to check data against existing information we have collected from other methods.

I expect this number to dramatically change this year as we get more well-known internationally.

Thanks for your question.

Beth

March 6, 2008 at 5:18 p.m.

esdesigns

The pdf file was nice- thanks!

March 6, 2008 at 5:52 p.m.

AnnMadeArt

As a new Etsy seller, I am very impressed by the coverage of the survey and plan to explore all of the suggestions in the article. Thank you.

March 6, 2008 at 6:03 p.m.

SNucciDesigns

I am new at ETSY and this information will help me and many others to improve our stores and sales.
Thanks to everyone who made this survey possible and continue with your great job!!!

March 6, 2008 at 6:17 p.m.

fearlessfreak

I am such a nerd-I loved reading all those stats! I think the thing most interesting to me is that lots of people are driven here by bloggers...I view any outside talk as another door to get inside etsy-

thanks for compiling all this info!

March 6, 2008 at 6:19 p.m.

stonesoupsupplies

Thanks for the info!

March 6, 2008 at 6:59 p.m.

pearlbythesea

Very interesting, I'm looking forward to taking a look at the pdf, I'm interested that the survey summary posted here didn't have any negative responses discussed however.

March 6, 2008 at 10:35 p.m.

lolageek

Question: You mention that sellers find links on social networking sites, etsy mini displayed on their blogs, etc. are useful ways to drive traffic to their etsy shops. But without detailed stats available to sellers including referring URLs, how can we really be sure where visitors are coming from?

March 7, 2008 at 3:04 a.m.