Some of you might know this from previous blogs we have been trading now since 2014 and have been on various platforms some great, some not so great for various reasons. Not on the high street rejected our application (twice), eBay banned our shop for life due to some odd quirk with an integration with our web host provider which you can read about our horror story on that one here. Then there's the positive ones such as our Etsy shop, which is thriving and has to date over 4000 sales and has over 1000 reviews most of which are 5 star and positive which makes us happy!
We are immensely proud of that, and will obviously continue to push our Etsy store as it's where all the magic happens 'automagically'. One thing that we can't ever seem to get right is our marketing efforts, where to put our products and all the technical elements that go with running a business in 2024. We are only a small business and we're fine with that, we don't want to take over the world. We do, however, want to get our products seen by the right people at the right time. Our book cushions continue to be a best seller at every event we go to! the feedback is always fantastic with quote such as 'Wow, you can't make all of this from scratch' - We do :) So, back to the original topic, how do we get more people to see our wonderful book cushions?
We cannot seem to drive the same customers and traffic to our own website that we see on Etsy (for obvious reasons, they are massive and have a huge Google SEO budget). SO one of our initiatives for 2024 is to be a little more confident in asking people for a review. Presently our online presence (outside of Etsy) looks like this:
TrustPilot
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/thenuttysquirrel.co.uk
This has a lonely 7 reviews! luckily they're all 5 star, but doesn't paint the same picture as our Etsy store.
Google
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+nutty+squirrel&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB954GB955&oq=the+nutty+sq&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgBEC4YgAQyBggCEEUYOTINCAMQLhivARjHARiABDINCAQQLhivARjHARiABDIGCAUQRRg8MgYIBhBFGDwyBggHEEUYQagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#
This one only has 6 reviews, one of which is my mother-in-law and some colleagues we did some work for in the early years (probably before we were even satisfied with the overall product quality)
Fast forward to May 2024, are customers satisfied with our products? Etsy reviews would seem to say so. Are we good at customer service? I think our customers would agree. We really need to get our heads round the modern age of automating some of this which will come at some point. But in the mean time, our plea to you if you are reading this is, please please please support local businesses writing a small review on your experience or product can make the difference. We are hugely grateful to anyone who takes the time to do so! As a thank you, anyone who reads this blog and leaves us a genuine review for a product, experience or interaction they've had with us. Whether out and about at the events we travel to each year or online via one of our other platforms then please drop us a message for one of our loyalty discount codes.
What's next, copy and paste all the Etsy reviews over? - No thanks, we would rather it happened genuinely and naturally whilst we stick with what we are good at making stuff but would like our trust pilot and google reviews to look a little less lonely, so we are setting ourselves a small but achievable target of getting them both to 50 reviews by the end of the calendar year. Wish us luck, and share where possible.
Thanks for reading, and supporting.
Sarah
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