Find the item! Let's test your shops

[Renate]

I know Tela and Laura have shops over at www.rubyplaza.com , I picked one of my favourite pendants and tried to find it in search.
www.rubyplaza.com/shop/telaformosajewelrydesigns
<nag mode on> Tela, you do not by chance consider a tute for this?</off>

I looked for "pendant, handmade", and got about 260 items, which I browsed quickly. No Tela, alas, but I recognized one of Laura's pieces! ;-)
www.rubyplaza.com/item/794595-RP-1010/Wire-Wrapped-Picture-Jasper-Pendant

So now I wonder what is their search searching? Only the subject line?

[Tela]

Great idea! The new shop is still slow, but I expect that. It seems like I get most of my hits from people browsing.

BTW- which one were you referring to for a tute?

[Renate]

Oops. Messed up the link.
www.rubyplaza.com/item/794664-211/Red-Gray-Petrified-Wood-Cool
It reminds me of an african mask. (And while we're at it, your Koroit Unisex pendant, and your "Blue Planet" earrings (just made the name up) would make gorgeous tute's, too. ;-P Oh, and the Bursting Azurite as well, though that would be way beyond my skills.)

Btw, meanwhile I did another search, this time for necklace, pendant, gemstone and got about 300 results, and 2 of your pieces came up on page 3 of 3.

But, to get back to my point, when you - as in "you all here" - put yourself into the shoes of someone looking for a piece of jewelry, how do you search? You don't go, "I want a gemstone necklace with a pendant wrapped in wire, and it should be in the price range from 50-99$". It would be more like "I want a necklace to go well with my style and my colours, and I don't want to spend more than necessary". But how do I translate that into search terms?

Really, I would like to hear your opinion how *you* would try to find your dream necklace and your dream earrings.

[laura]

Renate, this is more complicated at Ruby than you think...

Idea to test search is great, but not all searches are created equal. I haven't found any info on what their search "reads", but it seams that it looks at both title and description. But what I increasingly don't like is that ranking of the search results is determined by something called "click rank". This is recalculated daily and depends on how often and how many new items you add to the shop, and is limited at certain number. BUT you can also pay to manipulate this "click rank". They even have a "calculator" to see how the search results change.

E.g. my "click rank" is 0.10 usd (this is "free"). When in my admin backend I test keyword "copper jewelry", I see that with without paying for search my items will start showing on page 3 for this search. However, if I decide to pay 0.60usd per click and my total "click rank" becomes 0.70 (0.10 "free" + 0.60), 10 of my items may be shown on page 1, see this screenshot:



The max "free" rank I think is 0.15usd.

I have no idea what this means -> "There are other factors that affect your positioning, such as viewer interest in your items. "

This could be individual search results (e.g. if you have my items on wishlist or clicked on them before you may get more search results from me).
OR this could also be aggregate user behavior checking for "relevancy" (e.g. if I describe my item as "blue mouse" and it was displayed a million times for that search, but no one clicked, then it's probably not a blue mouse.. or maybe not the mouse worth showing). Knowing how other search engines work, this seems more likely.

Summing that up, it seems that as a customer you (most likely) do not get the "best match" results first, you get the paid results on Ruby..

We also get a table to see what our "click rank" is, and at the moment mine says: "You are here, with 43 shops at your rate of 10 cents, and 116 shops at higher rates"... So that's probably about 100k items that have a higher "rank". Not all of them are jewelry.. yet.
But as the site grows and attracts more sellers - invisibility will become a major problem if we refuse to pay for clicks..

Really, I would like to hear your opinion how *you* would try to find your dream necklace and your dream earrings.

^ This

[Tela]

I did a few searches and rarely came up. I think I would search> purple, hand crafted, pendant. I came up on that one. My problem is because I am a rock addict, I search for the stone I want. My search habits aren't helpful to me as example.

What Laura says is true. It's pretty convoluted over at Ruby. AND RP (nor any store) can explain the mindset of browsing. For example, I haven't added anything new in a few days, but my views are going up and I have 4 items in wishlists. It has to be from browsing because they aren't finding me from clicks and I am not as prominent in the galleries. All I can figure is someone sees something they like and follows my store. I'm not paying for clicks anytime soon, if ever. Either I sell or I don't. This is free for now and I got it because it is free. I'm not investing more unless I see a reason to. As it is, I just have time invested. I am heartened by the increasing views, though.

[Tela]

I just checked my click rate for yesterday. HOLEY MOLEY!!! 2.5% That is amazing!! The average is .81! That is by far the best I've done, yet. The good thing is, once they find my work, they keep looking, as evidenced by increasing views. Guess I'll be adding some new pieces today.

[Tela]

Here's my click stats from yesterday- the best yet and no new items for 2 days.

I had one on page 1 and three on page 2

Click # Item ID Search Page Other Details For Clicks on Sun Mar 04,
1 179 Jewelry 2 Keywords:necklace and pendant and gemstone
2 190 Jewelry 2 Keywords:necklace and pendant and gemstone
3 212 Jewelry 1 Catalog:Jewelry:Pendants, Price: 100-199
4 222 Jewelry 2 Keywords:earring*, Search Within, New This Week
5 221 Details aren't available because of browser privacy features


Laura, you have a better head for this- Is it your impression, too, that at RP the users are browsers?

[laura]

Great stats from yesterday... wasn't it Renate looking for you?

My CTR is f*ed up lately. Best was 1.7, but the "average" is down to 0.32 for recent days because of two days with zero clicks. And it was 0.87 yesterday.

As far as I understand this doesn't influence item rating in search (), it simply shows the ratio of how many times your items were displayed on screen and how many times they were clicked. It basically tells how good your SEO is and if your pics are inviting to click. BUT we don't know who is searching and what words they use, so conclusions about SEO are under big question mark here.

My best guess is that most clicks come from fellow sellers researching the marketplace and settling in. There's a large active topic on Etsy forums atm about "places to sell", and RP was mentioned several times. (that's where I've learned about them).

But the views are increasing...probably. Total 135 yesterday, and it's so far the highest number. And totals are very interesting: 9-10-61-85-55-26-13-107-26-135. These are for each day that the shop was open. Clicking on the number shows details, so for yesterday it was 104 unique visitors and out of them 100 were first time visitors to ruby plaza site. Some marketing campaign? Or maybe some sellers' community talking about "places to sell". On Friday - 107 unique and all of them first time visitors.

(there's a huge mess in my head atm, have to think)

[Tela]

That's a lot of hits yesterday, Laura. I don't get near those numbers I'll have to spend some more time there and check out my titles and such. I wonder if it being the Sun after the 1st, there were more ppl looking? My views were up quite a bit for no good reason.

BTW- yeah I think the search function also searches description.

[Tela]

Renate- I remember you really liked that petrified wood piece. I had no idea how it would turn out till it was done. Your response to it was very heartening

Here's the question, though, for that wrap, I did something similar to what is taught in the Arched Bail tutorial. telaformosa.blogspot.com/p/tutorials.html#ecwid:category=2068046&mode=product&product=8892227 Do you think you could make it from that? The technique is in the bail attachment.

The earrings.... maybe a freebie? It is pretty easy to make. I'd have to try it on some smooth things. Maybe the wires stay put because the balls are textured? I'll have to check it out.

As for the koroit pendant... I have been thinking about that one. But, it's really 2 wraps.

[Renate]

Tela, I'm afraid some of the clicks are mine, f.e. the keyword searches of #1 + 2, and very likely also #3. I've a spent quite a while on your and and Laura's site yesterday, and clicked several items.

Btw, I'm not at all happy with the floating pictures on rubyplaza.

Laura, your graph and explanations are impressive. Do you also have statistics which words people use when looking for a nice piece of jewelry?

[laura]

What is a floating picture? Zoom? You can click on them and they pop-up.

Graph is a screenshot from admin panel.. it took me some time to figure out what they are trying to do there and how we are supposed to be found. And it looks like a nice money making machine: wanna be seen? - pay per clicks. Or we don't show you at all..
It will be interesting when (if?) large resellers start joining in and paying for visibility in search. Even at this moment there are 116 shops that have higher "click rank", most of them are already using paid clicks.

We should be able to see keywords that led to our shops in the stats. Maybe Tela is luckier there - I have almost no data.. no clicks from search for specific keywords.
A couple of yours (I think) from yesterday:
-pendant and handmade
-necklace blue gemstone handmade

from earlier days - mainly from "new today" or categories, e.g.:
- Catalog:Jewelry:Necklaces, Keywords:aquamarine, Search Within, New This Week, Prev Catalog:3.4 (the only one so specific)
- Catalog:Jewelry:Earrings, New Today
- Catalog:Jewelry, New Today

[Renate]

Laura, with "floating" I mean the mouseover moving of the picture. It seems to slip away rather quickly whenever my mouse touches the area, accidently or intentionally, and it moves to fast for my taste. I'm sure one can get used to it, but so far I am not. Come to think of it, I have an issue with a lot of mouseovers, one of my pet peeves, so maybe you just ignore my complaints ;-).

I just tested "pendant and handmade and stone" on rubyplaza, got 51 items, of which 5 were cookonstrike and 1 tela formosa.

[laura]

hmmm... weird.. so probably Tela doesn't use one of those words?

I guess - "handmade"? Leaving out "handmade" displays 1500 items. And I start seeing Tela more.

I know it's missing from many of my descriptions/titles, because I copy/pasted everything from Etsy and over there handmade is default, there's no need to repeat it too much... or maybe there is. If people search for it.. (at the moment I guess I mainly have "handmade clasp" in text)

Now I'm questioning if all of the description is used by search or just the first couple of sentences - Tela, could you check your descriptions to see if you have all 3 words and where in the text are they?

Just tried that search myself and I even see my "mandala" beadwork pendant. And see some quite ugly items. Also see one ring and some earrings - where's a "pendant" in them?

[Tela]

I just checked that search string. Laura has a whole bunch. My one item has handmade as the next to the last word. So, search must search the entire description.

My problem is that I use handcrafted or hand crafted a lot, not handmade. And, I don't even use that a lot. Sometimes I use artisan crafted or artist designed.

I saw some real ugly ones, too. Made ours look awesome!!

[Tela]

try this one

pendant and hand and crafted and stone

[laura]

yeah, but you cannot tell customers how to search ;D well, you could, but then you have to find them first.. or they have to find you.
I bet handmade is The code-word to describe not-factory-made stuff.

Just checked the google adwords stats:


Of course, we don't know who is looking for those and the competition for these keywords is horrendous.

[Tela]

Yeah, I'm editing as we speak. I'm trying to include as many variations as I can. I tend to think hand crafted, not handmade or hand made or handcrafted. Have to change the way I think. DOH!

[Tela]

Shhhheeeewwwww! I just updated 55 listings with handcrafted, handmade and some wirewrapped keywords.

Thanks Renate for bringing this to my attention and to Laura who is a genius. ;D

[Renate]

Tela, you will like this search:
pendant and stone and hand
About 170 results, with 3 of Laura's pieces and about 22 of yours among the first 50 items!
Unfortunately most people do not apply the concept of short or part search words, in this case "hand", which would cover all variations.


Laura, try this search:
copper and wire
You will be pleased: your whole shop inventory makes an appearance ;D

[Tela]

I like this, too -- rare and handmade ;D

[laura]

Now how on earth do we make them use those super keywords?

I often think how would I search for jewelry if I wasn't making it. Would I even care if it's handmade? I'd probably type in stuff like "blue earrings", "small earrings", etc.. I probably wouldn't know the names of the techniques, most materials (polymer clay? wtf?) or even stones (apart from mainstream stuff like coral, agate, amethyst, etc). I'd use words like long/short, large/small, colors (more in the RGB style, not fancy names like the trendy "tangerine tango", or "periwinkle", or "aubergine")..

But there are so many people browsing.. And they are so different..

[Renate]

Yes, how would I search for a particular piece of jewelry?
I think the art of SEO is putting oneself into the shoes of the potential customer.

Ok, so I want a lovely necklace that suits my style. Hmpf. I cannot find a design based on a description in words. I need to see it!
Google image search is always a good option, in particular combined with the site name, or so I thought.
site:rubyplaza.com pendant stone hand
But what worked so beautifully on the RP search, didn't work at all on google image:
site:rubyplaza.com pendant stone hand
So now I'm really curious what you would have to do to have your items appear in google search. Note that there is one seller who is always on top.

PS: Hope I haven't written c**p, too tired.

[laura]

The items show up nicely in google product search, just tested a couple of hours ago - I have to do it on a regular basis for my etsy shop, because those items just "drop out" from the list sometimes.. so I'm using my name search to see if all listings are still there, tested telaformosa too - everything seems to be indexed.

www.google.com/shopping

P.S. I have no idea who uses google shopping.. I never knew it existed before opening Etsy shop.

[Tela]

Well, my stats certainly represent our searches from yesterday! ;D

My free points went down, but my overall click rate is up. Guess I need to add more product. After yesterday, I'm pretty sick of it.

I just had some fun actually making some jewelry. Shocker! I spend so little time on new jewelry these days.

[laura]

Falling down too
"You are here, with 22 shops at your rate of 8 cents, and 180 shops at higher rates".
This freshness based search system is totally unfair and makes no sense. It's not like we are selling milk or hot buns...

[laura]

Lovely.. now I'm here:
"You are here, with 14 shops at your rate of 4 cents, and 260 shops at higher rates"

I feel growing frustration with this marketplace.

Still no clicks from search, and ridiculous traffic numbers (totals for the recent days 14-30-73-12-13-32)

I wonder if there are any penalties for deleting and relisting items as new..

[Tela]

I'm in the same boat. Low numbers.

I doubt you will be penalized or they wouldn't have batch processing.

[laura]

But that's basically cheating (encouraged by the stupid search system).
Just curious. Ain't gonna do that anyway, no time and absolutely no enthusiasm.

Batch processing is for existing listings, and to trick the search you'd have to delete and list the same thing with new id number..