Etsy vs Shopify... Which is Better?

are you trying to decide between etsy or shopify for your online store well you're in luck because in this video we're going to go over the pros and the cons of both the etsy and shopify platforms so you can decide what's best for your business so a lot of times people start off on etsy if they have a handmade business and then after they are kind of more established with their online store they then look at actually then transitioning to a platform like shopify to have a dedicated site however there are pros and cons of each which i wanted to go over in this video so first off etsy is an online marketplace where you can sell a variety of items that are either handmade vintage print on demand or our materials it's kind of like going to a craft fair and setting up all of your products in your own little booth so you have the traffic from the craft fair that is coming in and they're going to be stopping at many different booths and hopefully yours as well shopify is a dedicated online site so you can sell anything that you want because it's your specific site and it's kind of like if you were to open a brick and mortar store downtown on your square and then you were responsible for actually driving the traffic to your store to actually get sales so you can already see there a little bit of the pros and cons but let's go into each individually and break it down so let's start off first with etsy so in terms of pros for etsy is that there's already a built-in customer base people are used to actually going to the etsy platform when they're searching for products because they're looking for something that's unique or handmade so you've got people that are already going to be shopping directly on the platform also etsy has a great search engine and search functionality so if your product is something that is unique and something that people are looking for you can guarantee that you're going to get some traffic whenever you first opened up your etsy store just based off the search functionality so it's really helpful to get some traffic to your site very quickly after you've launched because people are using that search engine and going through and finding your products the final pro with etsy is that it is easy to set up everything is all fitting within the etsy framework so it's really easy to quickly add in a couple images and add in your listings to set up your products and start selling your products on the etsy platform okay so let's go ahead and go into the cons now so a big con with etsy is that you are limited in terms of what products you can sell again the categories are handmade vintage print on demand or material so if your product doesn't fall into any of those categories you're really not able to sell then on the etsy platform because you're not one of those categories also with etsy you aren't going to have a lot of problems with your competition being right side by side with you so as i mentioned as a pro of people actually being able to look in the search functionality to find your products the con is that your products are going to show up directly side by side to your competitors which means that sometimes people may just pick the cheaper option and racing to the bottom on price is never a good idea so it is a little bit of a con there that your competitors are right there beside you and can be directly compared to your products and your price also in terms of a con for etsy it's that it's just harder to build a brand people are coming to the etsy platform so it's their branding throughout not yours you do have some branding elements that you can customize like a header banner and a logo as well as your product images but you're really limited overall in terms of your branding that you can use throughout to establish that customer base and finally and probably in my opinion the biggest con is that you can't actually be beginning an email list so you're getting people to hopefully purchase from your store but you're not able to actually do anything with that customer information you can't collect email addresses and then market to them later on to hopefully get repeat purchases and you're kind of just stagnant you're hoping that they come back to your store or leave your review but you don't really have any information based on the customer that you can then reach out to them and go and try and build that brand with them so it's really limiting there for actually growing your store and scaling up okay so now let's go ahead and pivot and talk about the shopify pros and cons so one of the big pros with shopify is that it is your own site you control all of the messaging and the branding for it so you're really able to build that brand with your customers or any potential customers that come to your site also there's no competition because it is just your site so there's no other products being displayed on the site that people can compare side by side of one competitor versus another it is just your products you also have the functionality to actually build an email list so again the importance then of getting that email address of people saying hey yeah i want to hear more from you so collecting that information and then being able to reach out with them again and again to hopefully get repeat orders from them and that's what makes it really scalable so as your store grows and you're changing out different products or maybe you have a large inventory it really is going to work best whenever you have your own dedicated site so that it really grows with you as your store grows and expands also in terms of a big pro for shopify is that there are additional apps so that you can add in additional functionality like site reviews you can add in a loyalty program wish list pop-ups to grab those email addresses there are so many different options in the shopify app store of different ways where you can build in additional functionality for your shopify store that you just can't do with other platforms like etsy okay so now let's go ahead and talk about the cons so a pro is that it's your own dedicated site however con is that it does take longer to set up than etsy does because there's just a lot more to set up the benefit is that you have a lot more to customize but the downside is that it's going to take a little longer to do that another big con is that you are not going to be featured through a search functionality like etsy has and you solely are responsible for sending all of the traffic to your site so if you're not getting sales or traffic to your site well that's because you're not sending it correctly so it is a lot additional work then to make sure that you are marketing your store and sending that traffic and sales to your site so now that i've gone over the pros and cons i have three questions for you to try and figure out which platform might be best for you first off how much time do you have to spend on your business if you don't have a lot of time to actually spend on your business right now i would actually think of doing a platform like etsy because it's going to be faster to set up you can really test out products and see which ones are working best for people and you don't have to worry about all the time spent in terms of actually sending people to your site because again you have that online search functionality through the etsy marketplace if you have a little bit more time you may want to actually consider setting up your shopify store and then focusing on then having it from one dedicated site from the very beginning and then scaling it up from there and again you have that additional time of the setup and sending people to your site my second question for you is how much money do you actually have to spend to promote your business so again etsy does have some promotion capabilities of you can run ads on the etsy platform however a lot of that traffic can be coming through their search functionality so if you don't have a lot of money to spend in terms of beginning cost and advertising you may want to consider doing the etsy platform just because it's not going to be solely on you to send that traffic and sales to your store if you have a little bit of money that you can invest from the beginning then i would recommend doing shopify because then you can actually be running facebook ads to your store and getting that traffic to your site there where you can actually start scaling a lot quicker i do not recommend doing facebook ads to an etsy store because then they can quickly leave because again your competitors are right there on the site so if you do have a little bit of money that you can play with in the beginning i do recommend doing some paid advertising for your store and doing that specifically with the shopify platform my last question for you are what are your growth plan and your goals for your business are you wanting to get five orders a day or 500 orders a day if you're doing a smaller volume of orders then i would think of actually using the etsy platform because they are going to take a percentage of these sales based on however many sales you're doing as well as listing cost but also it's just going to be a little bit easier to manage a smaller amount of orders on the etsy platform because there's not a ton of bulk editing tools however with shopify if you're doing a large quantity of orders then you may want to do the shopify platform because that actually will let you do more bulk fulfillment as well as tie in with a warehouse or order fulfillment company and it also has that scalability again to where if you're just starting out and you're maybe only doing 50 orders a day but you want to scale to 500 that is really kind of baked into the shopify framework so that it's really easy to scale as your business grows if you're interested in learning more about how to start and grow your online shopify store we have an online course right here called ecom in a weekend which is all about how to launch and grow your shopify store in just a weekend and we also have some additional videos up here all about growth strategies for 2021 of how to grow your shopify store thanks so much for watching if you haven't yet make sure to hit that subscribe button below and i hope to see in the next one

Channel: Curious Themes - Shopify Experts

Views: 1,283

Keywords: #curiousthemestutorials, #shopify, #shopifytutorials, etsy vs shopify, selling on etsy, shopify vs etsy, etsy or shopify, etsy vs shopify 2021, etsy vs shopify 2020, etsy 2021, sell on etsy, etsy vs shopify fees, shopify vs etsy 2021, selling on etsy 2021, selling on etsy vs shopify, selling on etsy and shopify

Id: nc6XLPjomkg

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021