Etsy admin Jared has created some interesting (and pretty!) visualizations of front page featured items that sold during two weeks in September. This one shows the sold items separated by category:
Jared uploaded this image to Flickr, where he gives more details:
Art is number one seller on the front page of Etsy, followed closely by Jewelry. Accessories and Paper Goods are nearly even, with the fifth most popular category being Bath & Beauty.
The most multiple quantity purchases are in the Toys category. Supplies is found at no. 8. Supplies is currently the number one selling category on Etsy but is ranked low in this graph probably because Supplies are seldom featured on the front page.
Jared has also made a graph of front page featured items that sold in 24 hours sorted by price.
October 12th, 2007 at 11:05 am
it’s interesting that this is all about the front page. i’m confused by how he did this.
October 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am
nice clarification on the ranking of supplies
October 12th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Interesting to see the breakdown by category.
Does it seem like an abnormal percentage of Featured Sellers make clothing? It’s usually very nice clothing, but does the percentage of Fs spots devoted to this fit what buyers are interested in? I guess I could analyze this myself, with this information. OH wait - it’s just about the front page. Hmmm…. well, by my logic all the featured sellers should be selling stone bead strands (like me :) )… never mind!
October 12th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I would like to see rankingof itemsd by dollar amount sold.
Ms. Gemma makes a good point in a recent thread, one I think of also: while the Etsy tools count shows the most # of sales goes to supplies, that doesn’t necessarily correlate to dollar amounts being highest. Many supply sales tend to be around $3, while art print sales tend to be like $20 and jewelry like $40. Therefore someone who has sold 3,500 $20 prints has made way more money than someone who has sold 5,000 $3 bead sets.
October 12th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
this doesn’t really mean much. It’s visually neat and Jared is great as usual for doing this. but it’s such a small sampling of the site, under such specific and narrow parameters that it doesn’t really tell us anything.
First, items aren’t on the home page unless they’re part of a treasury list. The items people are choosing for treasury lists then greatly skews what’s even available for sale on the home page. On a purely visual level artwork is colorful and eye-catching, more so than say a photo of a bottle of lotion. so perhaps more people are choosing artwork as items in their treasury lists because it makes for an overall pretty picture. This means there may be significantly more artwork items chosen for the home page than bath and body items, hence the difference in selling rates.
Second, the difference in selling rates for the categories may have more to do with the number of items listed for those categories. For example, there are far more jewelry items listed than bath and body items, so it’s to be expected that more jewelry items are sold. And again, more items being available to choose from means more of those items are in treasury lists, which means those items are more likely to make it to the home page.
This makes for a pretty picture, but it tells me absolutely nothing about actual sales statistics for Etsy. Now what *would* have been interesting stats:
- when a seller has a featured item how many people visiting their store make purchases (featured item or other item)?
- what is the sell-through rate of a featured item as opposed to a non-featured item?
- how does the items sold from the home page compare to the items sold sitewide? (as per my comments above)
- when an item is featured on the home page do sales increase in the entire category of that item? (for example, do people become aware that Etsy sells bobbles and then views and sales of bobbles in general increase)
- what is the percentage of featured items sold out of the whole home page? (how many sell and how many go unsold?)
- within each category what are the prices of items sold and not sold?
again, pretty but lacking in substance.
October 12th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Pretty, but not very helpful.
Most artwork will never see the home page, therefore little to no chance to be seen and sold.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I agree with Dyno, this is almost worthless as a seller tool, it’s only real interest to me is how “samey” most front pages are, i.e. you see in Jared’s graphic there are multiples of the same items being featured in front pages over and over.
It’s a circle…
Admins choose the front page from among many treasuries.
Users see what front pages get chosen.
Users are able to discern what the “taste” and preferences of the admins are.
Users create treasuries catering to admin’s taste, to raise their chances of making the front page.
Admins choose the treasuries catering to their tastes, and put them on the front page.
All this graph really shows me is a clearer illustration of the taste and preferences of the admins who choose the front page. It has almost no relation to the gross sales on the whole site, which we can see in TM2.
I’d be much more interested in seeing a graph of sales on the whole site, broken down by category and by price range. Jared admits supplies is the #1 selling category, which we already knew, but I’d love to see the rest of the categories ranked.
October 12th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
after browsing the etsytools site i’m interested in the tie in between listing and sales. there is one period within the 24h graph where sales and listings go almost at equal rates.
what i would like to know is how many of those listed sales end up as Sold in the same time frame. it would then give an indication of how buyers are shopping
i’m sure there must be some way of tracking a buyer’s movements thru the site from browsing to purchase to find out exactly how they are behaving as a shopper within the site
does etsy have an experienced statistician on site yet?
October 12th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
I have wondered the same thing Amanda!
That one hour of the day when listings = sales, is it those just-listed items which are selling, or items that have been listed for days or weeks previously? It would be a mistake to assume those stats mean “any item you list in this hour has the best chance of selling”.
Personally I shop mostly from searches or from favorites, so the “freshness” of the listing doesn’t play a big role. But for people who shop in TM2 or categories, the freshness does play a role.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
“does etsy have an experienced statistician on site yet?”
No, they are busy writing their own laws of statistics.
Someone trained at some outside statistic school just won’t do.