Etsy SVP Raina Moskowitz on educating sellers ‘to run a great business’

Etsy SVP Raina Moskowitz believes that investing in educating their sellers will reap the rewards for the whole marketplace.

This week, Raina Moskowitz has discussed how the marketplace is giving their new and established merchants a ‘how to guide’ on selling products, as reported originally by Glossy. She says that sellers need to understand ‘what it looks like to run a great business online’  in order to meet and stay on top of customer expectations. This starts from a first interaction when a customer sees a product’s image to determine whether that’s what they want to buy to the last mile fulfilment delivery service that offers shoppers tracking transparency.

“We’re doing more and more to educate our sellers on what it looks like to run a great business. So we focus on making sure that our sellers are clear on how to take a great picture of their item, or about telling the story of their company or item, something we know is really important and drives a lot of connections with customers. We really work to educate our sellers on how to create a great experience through the site experience, the mobile app experience, and through all the traditional marketing channels. In a world of fast and free shipping expectations, we are working really hard with our sellers, and across the platform, to ensure a consistent shipping experience.  So what we want to do is be more transparent and make sure that we manage the expectations of our customers so they can very clearly see when something will be delivered”

-Raina Moskowitz, senior vice president of people, services, and strategy of Etsy

While Etsy boasts a vast volume of products on its platform, Moskowitz says shoppers can sometimes find it challenging to locate an item they were searching for originally. Etsy is now working on tackling the difficulty of finding shoppers’ desired item by investing in their websites’ user experience.

“We want to make sure that when you come to Etsy, you find what you’re looking for. With 50 million items, you can be inspired; you can browse — there’s a thrill of a treasure hunt to find just what you’re looking for. But not everyone has that kind of time, so one of the ways that we’re investing is that when you search for something, we give you the most relevant items.”