Honest thoughts on the new Etsy star seller program and what it means for you

as you all know back in july of this year etsy did it again and dropped a bomb on us and i know you've been waiting for a video from me about this as you may also know around that time i was newly pregnant and experiencing the joys of being tired and pretty sick so i honestly couldn't make the time to record this video for you back then but i have moved along from that stage and i'm feeling much better now and finally was able to sit down actually i'm standing to make this video so that we can look at it together and share my honest thoughts if i had to sum up my feelings though in one sentence it would be etsy i still love you but man sometimes you do you think that frustrates me all right let's dive into the details bonjour my name is deb and i'm the founder of tesco a membership community for makers and handmade shop owners just like your fabulous self you can learn more about our wonderful community to the hq via the link below this video but for now let's jump straight into today's conversation about the etsy star cellar program let's start with a summary of the etsy star seller program basically etsy developed the program to reward shops that consistently offer an excellent customer experience based around four main criteria that we'll go over together in a minute to determine whether shop is a star seller or not if you meet the etsy criteria in those four arias not only you get a special style seller badge for shoppers to see and you also have more chances to be featured by etsy two bows on the platform these star solar badges started to show up on sale listings in september and since the announcement of the star seller program in july there have been already updates based on feedback from sellers and i'm sure it will continue to change so let's talk a bit about the good and the bad of the starcellular program as it stands now first the good as you may guess this part is going to be rather short the first thing i want to mention is that i do see when looking at what has happened since the program was initially announced in july that etsy is at least listening to sellers feedback not perfectly i agree but at least they are trying and they are making changes so i guess one good thing is that they are trying to fix issues that currently exist with this program it's not a strong good point i know but i had to mention it anyway and this is very etsy i think it's kind of like they get all excited about a new program in this case the star seller and they launch it into the world and then they get the etsy community feedback and then they go oh yeah yeah good point yeah we didn't think of that oops let us see if we can fix it so the program isn't perfect but they know it and seem to at least want to try and improve it okay second from a customer standpoint i can see how it makes complete sense as in etsy is trying to put themselves in a customer's shoes and think of ways they can make it easier for customers to have a good shopping experience on the platform and avoid sellers who maybe don't deliver a great shopping experience to their customers and as a customer yes it's reassuring to know that this shop is responsive has great reviews and ships items on time and look if it was that easy i'd be all for it but it's clearly not a perfect system because it has the potential to also make shoppers avoid many many good sellers who do offer a great customer service but don't qualify for the program so let's shift gears here and talk about what's not so great about this program as it stands today i'll dive into genuine concerns and questions you might have and as we do that we'll also quickly explain what the criteria to qualify are first keep in mind as we talk about each criteria that you are being assessed on the first of every month for eligibility and etsy does this by looking back at the three last month of your shop's performance so it's not something you qualify for once and for all and then call it a day it's he looks at your past three months every month to decide whether you qualify that month or not with that out of the way let's start with on-time shipping and tracking to be a staff seller 95 or more of your orders must ship within your stated processing time and with tracking or shipping label purchase from etsy if you're inside the us tracking or an etsy shipping label is required on all orders there are exceptions though for outside u.s if you're selling canada the uk australia or europe then using tracking or shipping label purchase on etsy is only required if your order is above a certain amount which is 10 pounds or 15 canadian or australian dollars for orders under that amount you can manually mark as complete by the ship by date instead so what's wrong with this criteria currently this is definitely a problem for local sales because when orders are picked up rather than shipped out you get penalized because it's considered by etsy to not be shipping on time because there is no way for them to track that there's no shipping label or tracking system ezia said though that they are currently working on an option for sellers to tag the order as pickup so that this can count towards star seller moving forward so here's to hoping that they fix this asap using trackable shipping is also an issue because many customers don't actually want to pay extra to buy a more expensive trucking option if sellers are forced into having tracking on every order it forces them to totally re-evaluate their shipping options and raise prices to accommodate for the policy this raises a genuine concern is the badge going to compensate for the higher price needed for trackable shipping and a negative effect on conversion rate that higher prices may bring as in would having the star cellular badge be such a strong positive signal to customers that they'd be willing to pay more from a shop who is a star seller i'm honestly not sure next issue i'm seeing is how this kind of doesn't work with what etsy wants to see in terms of free shipping because at the same time etsy wants you to use the more expensive trackable shipping they are also encouraging sellers to offer a free shipping warranty on orders over 35 by giving priority search result placement for items that ship for free most of you probably know what i'm referring to but if you're like what are you talking about deb i have an article about the itsy free shipping program that explained this in great detail and i'll link to it below so if your postal service provides great free shipping service nationally and or internationally so it's really reliable it's fast it's wonderful but it doesn't include tracking and your customers are happy with that and they don't care if they don't have tracking you're now between a rock and a hard place suddenly you have a really low shipping score with the star cellular program and you have to choose the lesser of three evils one absorb the higher cost of using trackable shipping for your free shipping and hope that the increased sales from having the star solar badge will compensate for the higher free shipping cost to you i do not like this at all and would highly discourage you to do so because your profit margins should never have to take a hit to offer free shipping two get rid of free shipping and only offer shipping options that include tracking at checkout and so losing the seo benefits that etsy gives you for offering free shipping or three set higher prices that allow you to offer free shipping at the higher trackable price and also qualify to be a star seller hoping that the lower sales you might experience due to setting the higher price will be offset by the increased business from having a star cellular rating and priority in search because you ship for free okay next issue with this criteria is that the star selling shipping requirements are definitely a problem in many non-us countries for example how is it sea going to rate shops in countries where the seller has no ability to purchase etsy labels or where it's not possible for lctc if the shipper is tracking sellers in smaller countries end up being penalized here with this star solar system because they have fewer shipping options that meet the style solar criteria when compared to sellers in other countries and what if you can't or don't want to use etsy labels star solid shipping policies are also a problem if you can't get the labels or you don't want to use labels for whatever reason for example you might somehow still get better rates through your own account with your post office than with the etsy labels i've seen a few conversations from sellers from various countries uh where for them to get the etsy labels they would need to upgrade to a more expensive account with their local post which in turns makes the hc label rates not that attractive in the end or you might prefer to support your local post office one uk seller puts this beautifully in her comment on the etsy forum where she says in the uk we are losing small local post offices which are a lifeline for many people and those that they employ many other small sellers prefer to bury our shipping of the counter at a local post office to help support them i already use etsy for all my overseas shipping but it is highly unfair to try to make us bow all of our shipping through you when this doesn't always suit us for whatever reason alright next question you might have is what if there are career delays fortunately this is not a problem as long as you have valid tracking or etsy shipping labels and ship during your processing window so you're responsible for shipping on time not for delivering on time that's on the possible service so is all of this a way to push for etsy labels the etsy star seller checklist in the etsy handbook pushes it for sure inside the us the reason given for not having an exception and needing tracking or entity label on all orders is that there are low cost shipping and label solution to help sellers ship their orders that don't always exist in markets outside the u.s which is why the tracking exception does not apply to u.s sellers which really kind of reads like in the us you can get shipping labels and good rates without etsy labels so just do that thank you this is also pushing etsy labels outside the us of course as mentioned previously you might have gone to your local post office until now but this program definitely entices you to purchase from etsy and to stay in the etsy ecosystem instead okay the next criteria etsy uses to determine whether a shop qualifies to be a star seller is response rate the star seller rules state that 95 percent or more of initial biomessages must be responded to within 24 hours i'll admit at first i had a heart attack when i read this i might even have gotten quite mad in front of my computer because who on earth would want anyone to be available seven days a week way to promote work-life balance but i read a bit more and realized messages from etsy staff do not count toward your message response rate so if etsy contacts you for whatever reason you can take your time replying and don't need to do so in under 24 hours spam has been addressed it was an issue initially but now spam messages will not be counted as part of start seller if you mark them as spam so make sure to mark them as spam and my favorite auto reply counts as a response which is good but also kind of pointless because everyone will do it then to get the star cellular so they might just have made this like a compulsory option and call it a day but anywho it's good news for you because you can simply set up an auto reply and not worry if you can't get to your messages over for example the weekend because how dare you not work seven days a week right okay outside of setting up an auto reply etsy gave two tips to stay on top of your response rate the first is to use saved replies to save time when messaging a buyer and reply quickly the second is to download the etsy app so you can respond to messages when you are away from your computer i like neither of those options personally but you do you because they're about replying quickly and slightly more easily but they're not about looking after your mental and physical health and allowing for normal expected time off each week needing to have the app on at all time to reply to a message even on a day off is not healthy at all in my books and like any other human being or business in this world you're entitled to days off and weekends and no customer in their right mind should expect an answer on a sunday morning these customers are not customers you want anything to do with so these options to me only make etsy sellers who are already working too much and working their butt off stress more about how available they need to be so my advice here when it comes to your response rate is to simply set up an auto reply and forget about it okay you may also be wondering what if i am the one that contacted the boys first so for example to check what text they want to have on a personalizable item and it's his response in this situation is that they only count messages that were initiated by the buyers so that would not count against you which is great okay the next criteria has got to do with five star rating ouch this one stabs where it already hurts this criteria is about having 95 percent or more of your reviews be five star ratings but the fact is some people give four stars even when given a stellar written review to go with it which is super frustrating you know the one the review says amazing service best product ever couldn't recommend this shop highly enough but then they only give you four stars and you're like well could you just give me five stars then and etsy i'm guessing has heard a lot of feedback to this point and here's what they had to say about it they say we understand and hear the frustration around four versus five star reviews and this is something we're taking back to further explore with the team however for now five star ratings are still needed to qualify for star seller so here again here's to hoping that this criteria is being tweaked and changes soon because as it stands now it's definitely not ideal okay the next criteria to qualify for the star slope program is actually kind of two in one and they are your order value and order amount so to get the etsy star seller bad you need to have at least 10 orders over the last three month and a minimum sales amount of u.s 300 or equivalent in your currency so for example in australia the minimum is 350 australian dollars so do check how much it is where you have your shop set up i'm honestly not sure how i feel about this one on the one hand they have to set a minimum number of orders so that your average star rating isn't just coming from one or two orders they need to see that you provide consistent great service and customer experience but it does make it easier for people with products that have a medium average price to reach the minimum dollar amount of sales for example if you sell products for around 30 dollars you'll get to exactly 300 bucks in 10 sales win-win but if you're above or below it definitely gets a bit awkward for low price items the minimum sales amount requirement can be a real issue if you sell stickers or low price files you will have to sell a lot of items to reach the minimum sales dollar requirement for high priced item the issue will be the 10 order minimum that can be a lot if you sell very high priced products the good thing though and i think what you really need to keep in mind if you're worried about this is that in each of these situations your competition has the same problem as you do so this kind of levels the playing field it's as hard for them to get to those numbers as it is for you okay now that we've looked at concerns in relation to the specific criteria laid out in the star solo program i want to also address other concerns that many etsy sellers have raised the first is cancelling and refunding many sellers are worried about the effect of cancelled orders if they are applied to the order and sales amount of the current month and etsy addressed that saying cancelled orders are not counted towards your minimum threshold for orders or sales and they're also not counted towards your customer service metrics so that's good however if you refund an order without can selling it then this will still count towards all your metrics we encourage you to use the streamline process for cancelling and refunding orders together if you wish to both cancel and refund an order so be careful when cancelling and refunding orders so that you don't get stung here let's talk now about search ranking technically search ranking is not affected by the program if you qualify and become a star seller you will not get priority in search results and reversely if you don't qualify you're not going to be penalized in search results but in actuality it kind of does change things a little doesn't it because a shop's conversion rate is a big part of the etsy seo algorithm and having the star seller badge is likely to increase a shop's conversion rate because it sends positive signals to potential customers and therefore indirectly impacts search ranking so what i'm saying is that even if it doesn't count as an actual seo algorithm factor if more and more shoppers gravitate to sellers with the starcella rating all of the shops with badges will gradually float to the top of the search listings because they will benefit from a boost in their conversion rate so tam will tell us here if this is what ends up happening or if etsy decides to give priority in search based on the star solar program for now i'm just parking this in the let's wait and see category but i am a little tiny little bit worried next up is a vacation mode this is another one i don't like very much etsy calculates all the starches requirements as you know on a rolling 90-day window so if you take two weeks off with no sales coming in during that time and etsy looks at the 90-day rolling average if you were just qualifying when you left to go on holiday you will most likely have lost your star slow badge while you were on vacation as you won't get sales in that time which would put you under the threshold when you get back but here again how is that encouraging people to take a break and have a balanced lifestyle vacation mode is already scary for so many sellers should i put my shop on vacation mode is a question i get asked all the time and already hot topic because sellers worry they'll lose views and search rankings when they come back and that it might take some time to build back up by not encouraging a healthy balance or forcing sellers to stretch out processing time instead of putting their shop on vacation mode etsy is already putting in sellers in a stressful headspace when they're thinking about you know just taking a well-deserved break and so the starcellular requirement here doesn't help with that and let's be honest if you take two weeks off you don't just forget how to provide good customer service when you come back i understand it's different if you take two years off your shop and that they had to kind of draw the line somewhere but surely there's a better way now i guess you could try and get around this by stretching your processing times like crazy instead of pausing your shop but is an item shipped three weeks after the order is placed going to get you a five star review the fact is that many customers too many don't read processing times properly and that get upset if the order isn't shipped immediately after the order so i don't really have a better solution here but i really think this puts a lot of small businesses in a lose-lose situation now let's quickly talk about digital products shipping and tracking criteria are not counted for digital products so if you sell both physical and digital products in your shop the criteria is only counted for physical items which makes sense the starcellular program did raise though some justifiable concerns among sellers who sell custom digital files here's one seller's example for those who offer custom digital items like me that is they are not an instant digital download since they take time to prepare that would mean being penalized with a zero percent score because in reality there is nothing physical to send nor a tracking number in this case it's he recommends and in this case i agree that you should set up a placeholder or thank you here's what happens next message to be delivered as a pdf download for example straight away to go around that problem so we've looked at its criteria and talked about what is kind of problematic with each now i also want to share my general thoughts about the star super program in general starting with how etsy announced it they said today we're introducing star cellar a way for etsy to reward shops that consistently offer an excellent customer experience in the areas we know are important to both rewarding sellers this wedding made me mad it's subtle but i think it matters many sellers work incredibly hard to offer stellar customer service and will not be granted a badge for all the reasons we mentioned previously in this video so this choice of words was kind of infuriating to me because some of them are as deserving as those getting the badge so a different choice of words would honestly have made such a big difference here and it would have helped in at least making it feel like it was a bonus but okay if you don't qualify where this feels a little personal and although you don't get punished in any way for not qualifying it does feel like not getting a badge is a bit of a punishment in itself because not getting the benefits of the badge when others are kind of is a negative impact isn't it another bad choice of word that says a lot at least in my opinion is etsy's response to the seller's question in the etsy forum the seller was essentially saying that she will not be able to qualify due to the lack of shipping options in her country the details of are kind of irrelevant but what's important is this reply that it's you brought back star cellar is an aspirational program meant to celebrate the very best in customer service only a select group of sellers will likely earn the badge when we launch two buyers later this year okay so that's upsetting celebrate the best in customer service ouch select group of sellers i get that it's not meant to be something that everybody has or what's the point of having a badge at all but the very maddening part is that it's not a fair baseline it's like you could only qualify if you had green eyes the program doesn't celebrate the best in customer service it celebrates the best in customer service amongst sellers who can qualify some simply can't and it's not because they don't provide excellent customer service so then saying to people who weren't given a fair chance to qualify that they haven't earned the badge well that's not fair by any means and completely disregards the hard work sellers put into their shop and customer service so all in all not super great news but i have hope the program is in its infant stage and will become more fair as etsy works on sorting out issues mostly related to making qualifying actually accessible for more hardworking sellers remember also you can only control what you can control so take some time to be mad and swear at etsy a little but get back to what you can control instead of wasting too much energy on it or work towards developing other sources of income like your own website if you've really had enough and want to break up with etsy i'll leave you with wise words from one of our teaset hq members it's good advice if you're frustrated because you don't qualify for the star city program she said i'm not going to worry about it if you have a nice shop with good photos good products good descriptions and all of that the customer is going to make their own decision whether to purchase if they want what you're selling they're going to buy it regardless of a stinking badge and i couldn't agree more now if all of this talk has left you a bit frustrated and needing some positive motivation click the link below and watch my video about 10 actionable tips to make more sales on etsy it should be also showing up on the screen somewhere around my face right now but i'll drop the link below for you too thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe to support my work and until next time au revoir wakey wakey are the birds really loud they really aren't they are the uae ue the europe the urea the european union the europe i need to stop saying the europe i'm from there what's wrong with me personalizable personalizable per customizable you know you know the ones item you want to know what to write on it and so you're the first one actually start again there

Channel: Deborah Engelmajer

Views: 1,855

Keywords: etsy badge, etsy new program, etsy seller, etsy seller badge, etsy seller tips, etsy seo, etsy shop for beginners, etsy shop tips 2021, etsy star seller, etsy star seller badge, etsy star seller program, etsy star seller what you need to know, how to become a etsy star seller, how to get more sales on etsy, how to sell on etsy successfully, how to start an etsy shop, star seller, star seller badge, star seller etsy, star seller program, tizzit, what is etsy star seller

Id: aDazNwV8Ufs

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021