If your sales are slow, here are 18 strategies to jumpstart your business

Here's what you can do if your ecommerce sales are slow

This blog post may contain affiliate links. If you click on these links and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Please note that this blog is primarily for educational purposes and the content here is not intended to be a substitute for professional financial advice. Please review my disclaimer and terms here

BONUS! Find this helpful? To download this post as a PDF, click here!

The longer you work the Low Hanging System, the more you’ll notice that your sales volume fluctuates throughout the year.

Around major holidays, like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day, you’ll experience spikes. But during other times of the year, when there are fewer widespread gift-giving opportunities, your sales may slow.

There are numerous things you can do, however, to give your sales a boost during these “off” periods.

Below, you’ll find eighteen suggestions for what you can do if your sales volume is lower than you’d like.

Let’s take a look…

Look at the official “Why am I not getting sales?” post.

If you’re inside LHS, my all time best tips are right inside this post.  These are the core elements for boosting up your Low Hanging sales.

Those are all CORE LHS, and then everything else is for after you’ve got that established and you want to scale up.

Let’s go for the rest:

Add new listings

LHS is a numbers game. The more listings you have, the more opportunities people have to buy from you and the more likely it is for customers to find something they want from your store.

So if sales have been slow, add new listings. If you need some help coming up with new design ideas, here are some resources that can help:

10 Ways to make new designs even if you’re not creative (update)

10 Ways to make new designs even if you’re not creative

Not feeling especially creative? Here’s a list of strategies to come up with new design ideas

Creating new design ideas – A compilation of effective strategies

Put your designs on multiple products

You want to get the biggest bang for your buck with each design you create. To keep this process as “low hanging” as possible, I highly recommend adding each design you make to every product that you sell (as long as it makes sense to do so).

So if you create a new design, don’t just put it on a coffee mug. Put it on a travel mug, a shot glass, a pillowcase, and a face mask too (and any other products you sell).

Simplify your designs

I cannot stress this enough — SIMPLE SELLS. You don’t need to get overly fancy or ornate with your designs. In fact, you really shouldn’t do that.

You want to create designs that have mass appeal. You don’t want to give potential customers any reason to not buy your products. And every single new element you add to a design gives people another reason not to like it.

For example, what if someone hates the color blue? Or what if someone thinks your font style choices don’t go well together?

Designs with basic black text, one simple font, and no images hold the most widespread appeal. So if your designs are more ornate than this and your sales have been stagnant, try simplifying your designs.

Big, readable, black text on a white background is really all you need.

Put your designs on more platforms (Amazon, Etsy, AND eBay)

If you’re currently selling only on Amazon, you might want to branch out and open an Etsy shop and/or start selling on eBay. The more opportunities you give people to buy from you, the more sales you are going to make.

I know some people have said they can’t afford the fees on Etsy. But if you can find a way to budget for other aspects of your business, I highly recommend reallocating some of those funds into posting on Etsy. Some LHS members do better on Etsy than anywhere else.

(Each Etsy listing costs $.20, but you can get your first 40 listings for free when you sign up using this link.)

Watch or re-watch LHS product critiques

Inside the Low Hanging System dashboard, you can find over thirty product critiques. Watch and learn from these so you can get a better feel for the types of designs that sell really well.

Here’s what Joey, the first person I made critiques for, said:

“FYI, using Rachel’s suggestions, that mug has actually sold a few copies. Actually, it was like a switch. As soon as I made her recommended changes, I sold the first one.

I highly recommend that people watch those critiques. They were very helpful to me. I’ve gone on to make a bunch of mugs that sell.”

Use my free product mockups

Over the years, I’ve had my designers create a whole bunch of mockups for LHS members. Click any of the links below to download your free mockups pertaining to a variety of products and special events, holidays, and seasons.

(You can also find mockups inside your Low Hanging System dashboard in the Download Center.)

Adding your designs to these mockups and including them in your listings makes your listings more dynamic and engaging to customers, thus enabling you to attract more visitors and earn more sales.

Compact mirrors

Socks

Face masks

Necklaces and bracelets

T-shirts

Tumblers and wine glasses

Pillowcases

Travel mugs

Shot glasses

Christmas ornaments

Lifestyle (coffee mugs, shot glasses, pillowcases, travel mugs)

Valentine’s Day (coffee mugs, shot glasses, face masks, travel mugs)

Halloween (coffee mugs)

Father’s Day (coffee mugs)

Mother’s Day (coffee mugs)

Easter and Passover (coffee mugs)

Summer season and holidays (coffee mugs) 

Winter season and holidays (coffee mugs)

Other special events and seasons (coffee mugs)

Improve your SEO by re-optimizing your listings

If sales are slow, your listings may need a keyword makeover. Try digging in and doing keyword research to find new words and phrases to rank for. In addition to SpotNiches, you can use tools like…

Erank/trending

Erank is Etsy-specific, but you can use the keywords you find here on other platforms as well.

In the trending section of Erank, you can check out all kinds of keywords that are popular on Etsy. You can see a Trend Graph and Etsy Searches for each keyword as well.

The trend graph shows how a keyword’s popularity has changed over the last 15 months. This provides you with a sense of seasonality and whether a keyword is getting more or less popular.

Etsy Searches reveals the estimated number of searches for a particular keyword in a given month.

Here's what you can do if your ecommerce sales are slow

You can also use Erank to browse by category. The category that makes the most sense for me is Home & Living. And when I click that, I see keywords like…

Here's what you can do if your ecommerce sales are slow

As you scroll through the list, you’ll find lots of keywords you can add to your listings.

Keywords Everywhere

This is another Etsy search volume tool, but you don’t need a subscription to use it. You choose how many credits you want, and it’s relatively inexpensive.

The amazing part about Keywords Everywhere is that it actually shows you the search trends while you are typing ideas into the Etsy Search Bar. See the example below…

Here's what you can do if your ecommerce sales are slow

Google Trends 

Google Trends is also a tool you can use to find new keywords for your listings.

When you enter a specific search term or topic into the search bar, such as “pitbull mug,” you’ll see a graph showing the interest over time in that particular keyword or keyword phrase.

Here's what you can do if your ecommerce sales are slow

If you continue scrolling, you’ll find a list of related topics and queries that may offer more good keyword ideas for your listings.

And if you create designs that aren’t evergreen, Google Trends actually shows you the specific month when people search for a particular niche. So Google Trends could actually help you plan your entire year of keyword research.

Google Trends also shows you if a specific trend or keyword phrase is still relevant. If you don’t see any activity on the graph during the month you are looking at, the chances are that a lot of people aren’t searching for that term.

Re-write your descriptions with keywords

In addition to looking for new keywords to add to your listings, you may want to revamp your listings’ descriptions, adding new keywords to those as well. You generally don’t want to “keyword stuff” your descriptions, though.

So make sure you’re adding keywords in a way that’s readable and makes sense to customers. And if your descriptions weren’t super readable beforehand, it’s definitely a good idea to do some editing.

Explore new niches

If the majority of your products pertain to only a few different niches, you might want to branch out and expand your inventory’s reach. Use the suggestions outlined above to find new keywords for your listings and see if any new niche ideas come up in the process. You can also explore trending topics for new niche ideas (more on that below).

Research trending topics for designs

Coming up with new design ideas is always a good strategy to give your sales a boost, especially if you go the extra mile to see what’s trending. To learn more about how to search for trending topics and turn them into winning design ideas, check out this blog post I made last year.

Submit a request to have me critique one of your products

After going through other people’s product critiques, if you’d like me to critique one of your products, you can submit a request and I’d be happy to look over your item and offer as much advice as I can. You can learn more information about my product critiques here.

Run promotions for “weird” holidays

As previously mentioned, sellers often experience sales spikes around major holidays. Unfortunately, major holidays don’t happen every day or even every month.

But lesser-known, “weird” holidays still occur year-round, and they can be cause for celebration, gift-giving, and promotions. To learn more about all of the offbeat holidays happening throughout the year, check out my Weird Holiday Guide.

Run a sale on Etsy or offer free shipping

Etsy sales and coupons

You can run sales or offer coupons on Etsy whenever you want. But it’s an especially good idea to create special offers whenever a holiday is coming up. You can have a store-wide sale or you can create discounts for specific items in your shop.

Additionally, after a holiday has passed, if certain items in your shop go out of season, I highly recommend running a 10%-15% off sale. You’d be surprised by the number of people who still want to buy seasonal items, like Christmas ornaments, after the season has gone by.

To learn, step by step, how to set up sales and coupons on Etsy,  check out this blog post.

Free shipping

If it’s possible for you to still make a profit on your POD items, then I suggest offering free shipping on your items all the time.

Or, if free shipping would make your profit margins too slim, you could boost your listing price by adding your base shipping cost to your listing’s original price and then offer free shipping.

Etsy has been pushing listings with free shipping to the first pages of the search results because free shipping entices customers to buy.

If you don’t want to offer free shipping all the time, you can also create a special offer for free standard shipping for a certain period of time or on select items. (The aforementioned blog post shows you how to set that up.)

Check your Etsy conversion rate 

Inside your Etsy Dashboard, you’ll find your shop’s analytics if you click where it says Stats.

Check your Etsy conversion rate. If it’s less than 2%, you should analyze how much traffic Etsy brings in versus how much traffic you bring in.

If your sales have been slow, I’d aim to bring in 20%-30% of your own traffic without relying too heavily on Etsy. The Etsy algorithm may fluctuate at any given time. But if you also bring in your own low-hanging organic traffic, your chances of getting sales will increase.

Social Media, Etsy Ads, and Direct/Other Traffic are what make up the kind of traffic you can bring in. To learn more about how to increase your traffic and sales using social media, take a look at this blog post. It offers a list of ways you can use Pinterest to increase your ecommerce sales.

Etsy ads are also super easy and simple. I would just be mindful of how much you are spending each day.

When you opt-in below, you gain instant access to the free Etsy Success Checklist my assistant created to help you keep track of what you should do when your Etsy sales are slow:


Run a “Detail Page Sales and Traffic” report on Amazon

Running a “Detail Page Sales and Traffic” report shows you which of your listings are capturing the most and least attention. Knowing this, you can take those under-performing listings and optimize them (add new keywords, revamp their descriptions, etc.).

Plus, you can create new listings in the same niches as your high-performing listings and hope they get similar results.

You need to have an Amazon Pro account to run this report. But as long as you have one, just follow the instructions detailed here and you’ll be good to go.

Get the “Buy Box” on Amazon

Having the ‘Buy Box” can be a great way to improve your Amazon sales. According to BigCommerce.com, “82% of Amazon sales go through the Buy Box, and the percentage is even higher for mobile purchases.”

Not all sellers are eligible to get the Buy Box, though. You need to have a professional account and good seller metrics.

To learn more about the Amazon Buy Box and how to get it, follow the instructions detailed in the attached document.

Create seasonal items 2-3 months ahead of time 

Preparation is key when it comes to ecommerce success. Whenever a major holiday is coming up (like Mother’s Day), you should create new designs and listings ahead of time (2-3 months beforehand). Doing so allows your listings to have enough time to be able to rank in the search engines. a

Sign up for Jumpstart

When you sign up for Jumpstart, you get 100 done-for-you designs, 5 boxes of mugs sent to Amazon on your behalf, weekly group coaching, access to SpotNiches (a fantastic keyword and niche-finding tool), and more. If you want to give your sales a boost, signing up for Jumpstart absolutely can help.

Click this link to learn more.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful! Do you have any additional advice you can share about what to do when your ecommerce sales are slow? Please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you! And if you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with your friends and followers. 

Here's what you can do if your ecommerce sales are slow

BONUS! Find this helpful? To download this post as a PDF, click here!

2 thoughts on “If your sales are slow, here are 18 strategies to jumpstart your business”

  1. I’M NOT ABLE TO DOWNLOAD. I KEEP GETTING A MESSAGE TO ENTER VALID EMAIL. I AM ENTERING THE EMAIL WE USE TO COMMUNICATE WITH LHS BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS. I IS KIND OF A WASTE OF TIME TO HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE FOR EACH BONUS WHEN WE ARE ALREADY PART OF THE SYSTEM, OR I’M DOING SOMETHING WRONG AS I AM HAVING TO CLICK ON EACH DOWNLOAD ONE AT A TIME AND REPEAT.

    1. Hey there, Sorry you’re having trouble. Please try clearing your cache or using a different web browser to access the page. Thanks!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

Want To Learn which Print on Demand Product and Bootcamp is right for you?

At the end of this quick quiz you’ll get my epic Print On Demand guide - 100% FREE.

BRAND NEW!
Get My AI-Powered Wedding Profits Guide, 100% FREE.

AI Wedding Profits Report by Rachel Rofé

Join Over 100,000 Subscribers And...

Get A Head Start On Your New Home-Based Business With My Three Free Reports.

Rachel Rofe's three free print on demand reports include your guide to finding untapped niches, 10 products that made over $1000 and the Etsy trends report.

Want To Have More Fun, More Freedom, & New Income Streams?

Join over 100,000 subscribers…

Get my 3 money-making guides on how 1000’s of my students are earning $10,000 to $100,000+ from home (a $97 value) – yours free.

Rachel Rofe's three free print on demand reports include your guide to finding untapped niches, 10 products that made over $1000 and the Etsy trends report.
Scroll to Top
Rachel Rofe's three free print on demand reports include your guide to finding untapped niches, 10 products that made over $1000 and the Etsy trends report.

Join Over 100,000 Subscribers And Get 3 Reports For FREE.

Discover how 1000’s of my students are earning $10,000 to $100,000+ creating simple products from home to sell on Etsy, Ebay, Amazon, and more.