Curious Numbers

It's has been a week now since Etsy launched Google Analytics for sellers and though I imagine this data will be much more useful once there is a whole lot more of it, some interesting things have already begun to emerge. First interesting piece of information, is that since each store is part of a much larger whole, the GA data track what sites and search words led visitors to etsy in general and gives you that information if said visitor lands in your shop at anytime. This make the data a bit odd at times. For instance the search phrase, 'she rides a lion' eventually landed someone at my storefront. I also have tons of referring links that clearly landed in my store after visiting the actual linked store first. I have found myself checking these referring sites a lot and interestingly finding a lot of interesting places that I'm surprised I haven't visited already.

A few other odd things I've discovered, I've had visitors for 45 countries. Most unsurprisingly from the U.S. and Canada, but third is Italy, which I would not have guessed. In the last week, I've had 1266 visits and 658 absolute unique visitors. What that seems to say is that a lot of people have visited more than once and I average 180 visits a day. I don't have any idea if those numbers are good or not as I have no one else's numbers to compare with. A gigantic portion of those visits were either direct or through google search, next was from Twitter, then Tribe.com, which is odd since I haven't been there in like a year. I got a lot of hits this week from the feature on The Coveted and quite a few from my blog, though most of those were experiment related.

What this seems to be telling me about my blog, is that it is not in fact sending many people shopping. I can't say that I'm surprised. I figure that most of my readers are my contemporaries, my friends and a few family members. What is interesting though, is that after the major traffic senders most of the referring links are from blogs, tons of different blogs, mostly by other creative types. It seems that people tend to click through to etsy from blogs and then they spend a lot of time looking around.

After a month or so I think I'll take another comprehensive look at the number to see what they can tell me then. Feel free to share your numbers with me too. I've love to have something to compare mine with. You can email them to me if you don't want to post them, there's a contact me link just below the link exchange, but I won't be surprised if no one shares. I was a little apprehensive about it too. I mean what if my numbers are embarrassingly low or I've made people feel bad because they're high? Unfortunately I have no idea so there you go.

In other news, look at the great skirt I got in the mail yesterday. I got it from Damselinthisdress over a the etsy. I was coveting the short version of the skirt, but I really wanted a long one. I asked and she had a long version already made. Yay for me! I don't really have an occasion for the skirt, though I thought it looked pretty great with the hoodie I was wearing when it arrived. Imagine walking down the street like this. Then, I would feel accidentally cool.

Speaking of cool, thanks to all of you who commented yesterday. I clearly have self esteem issues and your words gave me quite a boost. I also want to thank everyone who took the time to click through to my store for the sake of my data tracking obsession. There was a clear correlation in my GA data and I appreciate the help. Have a great weekend!

Satisfaction Brought It Back

I am of course referring to the cat that curiosity was killing just a few days ago. That's right etsy unveiled its link to Google Analytics for shop owners. It took about a minute to set up and a couple of hours to go live for those of us with existing analytics accounts. Like so many things the data it revealed presented just as many questions as it answered. Many of the keywords made perfect sense, people searching for tatting or for me specifically, yet many were very perplexing. I could not for the life of me figure out why a search for "cupcake applique on a onesie" resulted in a visit to my store. After a visit to the etsy forums, I had a sort of answer. Apparently, since our stores are part of a much larger site Googles data is showing us information that brought people to etsy who then clicked through to our stores. They do not have access to the internal paths that might show how that leap was made and etsy is working on a way to link the two services more accurately, but they don't have the ability to make this external tool perfect for our needs.

I could complain, but following these bizarre links has been quite a game for me this weekend and really the numbers will prove to be just as important as the more specific data. I spent quite a lot of time checking out the links that brought people, albeit indirectly, to my store. Some of them had links to my store, but most did not. I got several hits from people visits from the Closed Thread blog, which puzzles me a bit and I even got visits from The Black Apples blog. I do wish I knew how they got from there to here, but I guess I cant know everything.

One glaring omission from my link data I just noticed this morning, is I got not one single visit to the store from my blog. I know I don't write on weekends, but it still seemed odd to me. So if you will please indulge me in an experiment. Click through to my store after you finish reading and let me know you did it, if it's not too much trouble. You can shop if you want, but mostly I just want to track the data in a less than scientific manner. I don't usually link to the store since there's a permanent link in the left column, but here's one for the experiment: http://totusmel.etsy.com

Thanks to anyone who plays for me. I am still working on a tatted mask and I have several pieces on a list to remake before I get around to making some new pieces. I do have the beginnings of a new mask floating around in my head right now, perhaps colored for Mardi Gras, but I'm not sure yet. I guess we'll see what emerges when I get the time.

Curiosity Is Killing This Cat

When I returned from my short trip I was greeted by a small burst of attention in my etsy store. I had a new chunk of people favoriting my store and a few more messages than usual and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why this happened. No front page I could find or blog mention or anything really that would explain it. This was the first time I really got antsy for the stats that are soon to be coming our way from etsy. I heard just a while ago that they are beta testing google analytics for sellers. I didn't really see the need for them for me as I don't advertise or anything, but I am an information junkie.

I've had google analytics on the blog for quite some time. It provides me absolutely no vital data. I don't really need to know how many visitors I have, where they come from and what browser they're using. I don't need to know what percentage of visits I get from each country or how many pages they visit or even what search terms landed them on my page, but I don't want to live without that information now that I know I can have it. I'm sure it will be the same with the stats for my etsy page. It won't really affect how I conduct myself, but I just have to know.

I am dying to find out where my customers come from and how they found me. I've had a fair amount of exposure though various channels online, but I rarely have any connection from those moments of exposure to sales. I have no idea if a blog interview or even my brief boing boing fame brought me any new customers. Sure, I get the occasional message telling me where they spied my work, but the rest is silence. I don't know when to expect this new information, but I'm sure as soon as I do I will have a brand new obsession.