Lessons

Lesson Info

The Harm of Title Stuffing & Using "I" or "My"

Tyrell something is what that's called when we put a cz many key words as we possibly can into a listing it is an epidemic and it's everywhere and I am not throwing shame because I've done it I've tried it the reason that we do it online is because we we believe that it will get us more views so this was another one of those five extremists that are ruining your creative business in your store front um I have a very hard time with advice like stuff your keywords to get more views I have a very hard time when somebody tells cellar when the advice going around has sellers changing things that will actually disrupt and cost them the sale. So my public service announcement and this is very serious to me I mean I mean I have this conversation a lot is that views are not the new currency I under we all love some stats I mean, who doesn't love some stats? And so we're always looking at the views were getting but they're worth nothing at the end of the day if you're changing your listening to ...

get more views and you're costing yourself sales you're actually hurting your own bottom line views are never the end result to a good strong marketing campaign the sale is always the end result so you can when whenever you do that this strategy is I'm going to get more views no, we always want to be working for more sales. We always want to sustain ourselves and add profit to our business. So remember that a title is an invitation to keep breeding it should be keyword rich can be keyword rich without being stuffed and this is a surprising mistake that too many makers are making out there to further my point I want to show you this example this is the one I've always had for one of my products um you are a paying customer so none of you have any ties to this product so european customer when you look at the titles this is both for the same product and weaken just a b test right here do you want ah spirituals and energy yoga breaks that needed bracelet risk malas for meditation and pink opel et cetera or would you prefer a pink opel yoga bracelet? So who wants that other one with a lot of words? Okay, so what also? Which one smells desperate to you, right? Ok, one of them really smell desperate and the other one just looks like a product. So if this also confuses and that's why you want to really, really be careful because if you get that viewer there, if you get that buyer there you want to drive that still home and so that's that's what it always is you and millions are making this mistake, I mean, so I just wanted to be gone for good. I want everybody to respect there aren't enough to give it a name and really care about their product, so absolutely use keywords in tags and titles, but mix them throughout so as not to confuse the buyer. So all of these key words are key words for my product. I can call them all those things, so I'll call the pink opal a yoga bracelet, and then I'll call the awkward marine a meditation bracelet, and I can use all of the key words mix throughout my storefront. My customer won't even notice on using different words and mixing keywords altogether, and I'm still getting the same effect. I'll still have a strong search results. As for my shop in my customer, polly, I love this. I had to smile because you said so much in the title thiss was the shortest listing that I had, okay, you actually have some great descriptive keywords at the top and that's really good in the second sentence you said, I drilled, you said I drilled and then you went on to say what you did, and as a general rule, you will always interrupt and lose your customer at I when you say I so this using I or my in your cooperating is another surprising mistake again, this is everywhere. I used to do this all the time, too. I mean, I used to do this. My first listings will definitely say I made this bracelet, so remember that in the buying process what you say either encourages, encourages the sale or interrupts it. Your customer is trying the product on in their mind when they're reading there that they're handling it in the store. They're having their own moment with it, they're in their mental dressing room, so when your customer is trying them on, you want to join them in their mental work world, remember, this is for you, this is for you. Check out now because this is for you when you add I into the listing because is a flashing screen for their mental imagery, so you're they come in thinking, I love these hearings, these hearings are going to look great on me, and then you say I drilled and then they have a flashing screen now their picture and you somewhere drilling and working in your shop, and then it comes back to them. These these take these hearings home, and then you'll say I made them so in every way possible removed the I and my so that it stays in their world. This is a very also a very common mistake probably making more common than title stuffing s oh you want to be very careful of eyes in my eyes and I'm going to show you how to replace the eyes and minds and and very strong with the brand statement because you're still going to talk about yourself in the listing but you're just not going to say it taking them out of their world you're going to stay in there so as we work through the court class today we're going to remove every reference toe I and I'm gonna actually combine the nice details that you already have in your listening and I'll show you how to turn that into a powerful opening and then we're going we have a lot more we're going to cover so it's going to be fun I do like that you're listing was tightened concise I prefer that over wordy and long and confusing or anything like that. So these air surprising mistakes title stuffing the usage of I and my those were the two surprising mistakes I found in your listening and a lot of sellers right now can relate they relating? Yes ok, so we're going to also gonna add some details we're going to add to that list thing and I'm going to offer you a template that you can use going forward and that's going to make things easy next bronwyn can you please tell us what you make and where you can find where we can find you online? Sure I'm bronwyn mark and a small jewelry company named tireless hearts and you can find me at my etc shop tireless hearts and my facebook page nice nice okay and we're also going to find you right here and remember that each these listings has their web address on them so you can go find them check them out please send them a lot a lot of love um okay so just so everybody can follow along with how I critique a shop and what I look for and how you make sure it's flowing and copyrighting is working is working for my clients is that I'm when I get there I'm looking at the product image I'm looking at the title I'm looking at the price and I don't give myself a lot of time there I need to make my evaluation quickly I need to gather my first impression very quickly so imagine on the customer and I'm just happening upon this pendant and it's a great image I love the image she has a concise title and again I love that it short and sweet I prefer that too wordy but the price I can't find the correlation between the pendant the title and the price and the reason being is because I can get pendants in in the store for twenty dollars I want to be careful when I'm saying this because I know I've done my research and I know you have a great product and I know deserves a really good price but in my first impression I don't know why yet still remember that when your customer comes and they're making their first impression there are either going to be curious or they're going to click away that and that's actually a danger zone that's a danger zone for all of us and this title right now leaves me in the dark and while I don't like worthy titles I need more so in today's world people have a desperately sure attention span we have less than two seconds when they visit our website to give them a strong first impression. What used to be readers were skimmers we've known this and if you if you write a block you know this readers or skimmers so as bloggers were taught to use strong titles we are taught to use subheadings bullet points because readers or skimmers when they get there they have the they give you about two seconds to give them impression and they look at your block and what they're trying to do is figure out do I know what this body's talking about? Is it relevant for me and then they might give you more time and read your listening in today's world and with the rise of visual platforms I believe that skimmers are actually it's getting worse and skimmers are becoming scanners and men. This is actually great for you because people are going to be scanning images and the more imagery you can give them, the better that they understand it. So imagine where we used to skim and look for bullet point s and subheadings now we look for an image to sum it all up, tell me what I'm here for, and if you can't do that for me, I'm out of here. So that's something really need to remember and recognize online? So at a product listing your customers are either going toe scroll to no more or click away all together, you have two seconds to help them make that determination so it's always your job to help them make sense of the offer that you have and again, when I'm in bronwyn example, here I looked at the image of the title on price, and I needed to make a correlation quickly, but the title didn't give me enough to go on, so from research, and we're and I'm going tio again wrap all the way back around this, and I've written some coffee for you today that you can use as a suggestive, suggestive point I know your products are up, cycled and reclaimed, and they also come with a really cool story behind them. And I also love that you whenever I caught you because I have checked in on to this conference all week long and I saw you online and when you speak about your business you speak about it very simply and I know exactly what you're talking about there but this product listing um was what made me curious and we're going to talk about it again I've done heavy research and I figured it out and I'm going to help us explain it when you're in your writing because you do a great job and you're speaking and so we just need to get we just need to get this simplified but when I'm working with a client and I get to a listing or we get to any part of their business that that confuses the buyer in any way we need to stop right there and fix it because it's a red flag and so sometimes I do shop critiques like this like we do workshops like this all the time in my membership program and we have live examples on screen and when I do it with my clients what I do is I'm sharing my screen we're in a webinar setting and when it's their turn to come up as an example I give them a mike and I have a mic and we're both talking about what we're seeing on screen and it's my screen and it's their products so where were all there on the same page? So one in four of my clients, a good, strong one and four when we pull up their product, they start talking over the mike there voiceover ring what we're looking at on screen, so they're explaining what we should be able to gather from what we're looking for, and if you ever feel that you need that, you would need to stand over somebody's shoulder if I were going to pop into your site and check out your check out your products, you ever feel that you would need to stand over somebody's shoulder to explain what they're seeing, then you're copyrighting needs more attention because you're copyrighting should do it off the top, ok, so, um, when I'm getting here, I'm going to give you my first impression, but remember that I've done my research and I know the cool story and the making of this product, but when I got here, I couldn't find the information about the piece it went into, quote, I also know, I also understand the nature of the order, but we'll get again, we're going to come on back all around to it, so it goes into it has quotes and it's talking about the heart, this doesn't give me a strong description of what dependent is and because of the quotes that throws me off, I don't know what we're talking about where did the heart come from? At first I didn't even know that you had made it which you did make it so I'm going to show you how to clarify this listing but first I want to reiterate the eye when because you also used by your listening I have this quote for you I'd love for you to read it it was written by claude hopkins in the nineteen twenties this is like really cool really like I'm telling you the buying process has been around forever so the the sentence that I really care about and the one that I'm always looking at is remember the people you address our selfish as we all are that summarizes everything when you're shopping you're not thinking about who made this on what this means for them you are always thinking about what is this product and do I want it? I am selfish when I'm shopping as we all are, so we're always shopping for ourselves we're always inside our own inner world copy writing is a conversation about them that joins them in their mental dressing room I like to say if marketing is flirting because it really really is marketing is learning it's like do you like my product d like my product? You know it's flirting copyrighting is flattery and it's always about them so bronwyn used eyeing the listing, causing that flashing screen between her world and their world and then again, policies will go on a policy policy page and instead of the policies there we're going to take that out and learn how to end strong so ron win to somewhere is we're going to simplify claire of clarify and summarize your message and just to give you a glimpse when we do that we were going to angle the reclaim nature of the product and do we're going to write in a way that gives the product better justice and makes it clear for the customer and we'll eat? We're still going to add key details of that process, which normally I stripped those a little bit but for yours we're just going to make it a clean clear picture for the customer so thank you so much rebecca please tell us what you make and where we can find you online. I make a line of whimsical home decor pillows and my business is called a little bit doodle so I know this about you these are her custom pillows yeah, I say I'm making the world more huggable yes so I love it I love it I love it I actually chosen pillow because you're from san francisco and I'm from d c so it was like yeah, I love it it stands out it's so that's me of all of your listings because in this picture the photograph is copyrighting it is a form of copy running if you've ever stood in front of the white house or been to d c the theme monuments and the memorials and the white house it's all very impressive so if you when you take this this pillow and you put it in front of the white house and invokes that feeling I'm they're all I love that feeling because I really am impressed with the beauty of washington d c and you created that feeling without any writing at all so again I mentioned that readers are becoming skinner's skimmers and scanners they can scan this image and they get a very good picture of what you have there your customers are going to be searching geographically I love love love when when we have clients that were when I have clients that are working in geographically because it's so easy to find the people that are searching so because of that I would just add to the title washington d c because their washington d c and white house or what what accustom potential customer would be looking for I also want to take out I also want to clean that so it's so it's a little bit stronger my suggestion for the title is washington d c custom decorative pillow colon white house because it gets all the pictures and it starts that kind of conversation okay, so here we have your listing and we want to talk about I want to talk to you a little bit today about how custom how customize it is because that's going to be a really hard so I'm going to show you I'm going to show you why but and we're gonna I'm going to dive into it so I don't want to make it like I'm glass ing over that I loved who doesn't want to hug the white house that's catchy I love it who doesn't want to hug the way I love it on dh then down below your spacing you have to be very careful again you made this list you made this product and you took the time teo you took the time to design it and put it all together so be careful that your listings don't look like a poorly formatted email it sort of gives me a sense of craigslist I just want I just want I mean your products were so much more than that. So I just want you to give the extra time to do a proof read and make sure the space and comes out as you imagine it to be aw net zero wherever you're putting your product listing online on dh then down below we get really ambiguous so we need to talk about that you say things like this pill it comes in a large size with your favorite colors so close your eyes and picture large size favorite colors because it's really hard to d'oh you tell me your favorite colors and I will make it that's what you say that's another thing you say include the colors you want in the notes most modern colors are available now what you don't realize is that you are an expert this I mean I can't make a pillow like that I have no idea how you did that you have an extreme talent it's yours, it's very unique and the customer is going toe lack the same vision I could never recreate that even if I knew what color is my living room where I don't even know where to start with that and so that concerns me because these are awesome and people need to bring these home. I have a question though before you leave, so part of my problem is and maybe that's reflected in my listening is that I don't ever have any inventory it's a weird problem to have a guest so like every time I make something it sells immediately so I don't ever have lee actual things for sale in my etc stores so that's why they're all listed that way and that weird in that weird way I noticed so I so I guess you know I'm really looking forward to hearing like how to address that problem. Yeah, I do know this about you and I do swing about swing around, okay, great back on it later, but I do. I want I'd like to talk about it because the fact that you're selling out of your designs means you need more designs that's where the businesses to go or give patterns or do something that can be recreated because as a customer I would never be able to put those two fabric like that designed together. I'll never put that fabric behind the white house, and yet I love it so that your your business being that customizable actually it's holding it back so you want to look for either give patterns so people can make their own because they have that vision and they already know how to do that or I mean keep turned him out, you know, it gets some help get them out there because people want them and you have a unique talent for putting all of those colors in that idea together, I think that's going to come up again, we're not done so so there's a there's, a psychological effect called the ambiguity effect, and what that means is we will always choose what is known and predictable versus what is unknown and predictable so in other words, that fellow could be ugly it's not it's beautiful it could be ugly and people would choose the ugly pillow over the color combo that they need to choose or figure out for themselves they prefer what they can know and predict versus what they can't see and can envision the customer is always going to lack the vision especially when you have a base like that if you want to sell pattern to customer will not lack the vision because you'll be talking to more people like you with that designs that design sense but the customer is always been a lack the vision if you're making the product for them and they really want to trust the seller they really want to trust that you are that you will just deliver the most amazing touch to their home so remember that on what is unknown and unpredictable actually causes a discomfort for buyers because they feel like they should know something and they don't know it so if I really wanted that pillow I would feel extreme discomfort when I was shopping because I felt I would feel like gosh, I really want something like that for my home but I can't bring it home because I'll never know how to do that do you see what I'm saying? Ok, so we're going to talk about the customer experience and how to add convenience and easy choices and I think that will keep coming up throughout the day but it's definitely something that you want to start thinking about for your business because their ways that you can do it and really showcase your talent it's really really cool it really is cool rebecca so now that um you had a strong open with good photography and later I'm going to show you a few things that you can improve on and we can clear that up but that is another surprising the steak and and that is causing the ambiguity effect by not helping your customer by giving it to them and making it easy for them well we will continue to clear that up throughout the class so do we have those were the surprising mistakes that are costing you sell do you have any questions or comments about that? No way stuff lisa good stuff have some people that are already having really eye opening moments for example mary christine delia says the tip about customers trying things on even in their heads is great I do it but I never thought about it that way and she's joining us from oregon but I would love to take a few minutes for questions if that's cool going back to the beginning we were talking about sizes and the whole idea of not giving people too many options and so people were wondering like for example kathy brazil terry makes baby dresses in five different sizes would I give people the option to, you know, buy those different sizes when it's something that is like a clothing type item no that's worse so saying that she makes it in top let's say she makes it in tyler sizes and then big head sizes break those two listings up, but when they get to taller sizes, they are expecting those options they're expecting to t three t forty keep them there. That's a good idea, but don't do to t through twelve years old, break those up a little bit and give us examples on models or the actual clothing itself, showing it that size so we can start. We'll help us imagine on our child that's great, because also another person watching had talked about those of us that make wearable items that require size choice. How is it best to avoid analysis paralysis? So if you're sort of breaking them up in the eyes of who the person purchasing might be like male versus female, would you break those up? Absolutely. In fact, when you're saying that I was thinking, you know, sex, that gets difficult, because then the options, what you know, it makes you feel like that seller doesn't understand the right sizing, if if I had, you know, sex and I had to choose between small women and small, large I'd be kind of thinking like do they really know woman sizing do they really know men sizing? Is it going to be the size that I fit? All these hesitations and questions would come up in my mind so yes just break it down into the category that shopping do women do maybe the different categories like petite plus whatever you have to do with that but keep it keep be listing clear and then just do the sizing that goes with that clear listing ok that's great that's great and then a question is is there a magic number as far as how many options variations should be offered for a listing in a custom or personalized product? So this idea of we don't want toe, you know, give too many choices but within a let's see this far a list for a custom personalized product magic number so they're saying that they have a customer wise that that for me already that's sending red flags because if so we have a customer customizable product that then has a lot of extra options like it's a custom order plus extra oppen options your customer wants to show they want you to show them what you will create show them that and then if there have to be options make those clear so let's not put options with custom items let's create a listing that we can remake and then say this is these are your options, like what doesn't offend me is like, if you have a necklace in silver and gold still, rangel, I know what that means. You know what that means? Silver and gold, and then you show pictures with silver and gold, the silver and gold options that saves you a little product listening time that doesn't offend people no are looking at that was saying, thinking I'm just going to have to choose silver and gold easy, they understand that, but, um, silver and gold, silver twelve inch silver fourteen and silver sixteen gold twelve I mean that that happens too and that's the things that were really avoiding, I'm not telling you have to cut out all the options and you're listening, yes, but don't go overboard, ok, that helps you have super helpful, so going back to when we were talking about titles and using and the length of titles and in that conversation, a lot of people were wondering about about s ceo and etc and they were under the impression that you were title stuffing with those key words because then you would come up higher in the rankings because he is so oversaturated with say, in the jewelry category or whatever you're smiling for us about, you know what I feel like I feel like I work I worked very closely with kinds and I write about this all the time on my block and I feel like readers who really know me when it comes to titles almost imagine steam coming off of my head because first of all etc changes their algorithms all the time nobody can claim to know how etc search works I whenever I talk about this on my block, I always I always pull a quote from the current ceo of etc he had it he hasn't given it right recently I think it was about two thousand twelve where he said people can upload code at any time all day long on etc and the interviewer said, wait, they can upload code at any time and he said yes, we are very forgiving of like big mistakes that's he's always changing things and anybody who claims to understand their search is is not telling the truth because they're always changing it. They're always moving around so one of my clients recently who changed she had title stuffings she asked me we were doing an open critique she asked me to go in there and I said, you know me hire these lives is titled stuff, you know and she was like I said, I gave her a suggestion for a title, I cleaned it up, I put key words and I made it made sense she changed it came back in five minutes later and she said, oh my gosh, I'm on the first page of etc search results I can't believe it worked thank you so much so you can never claim to know how at sea search works and the idea that you do something to your listing that will actually cost you the sale to even fuss with at sea search has red flags going off everywhere steam coming off of my head don't do that market your business get your customers from other elsewhere if you know you really need to get your customers there but don't but don't do anything to your product listening that will cost you the sale please don't I love that you're breaking down some of these just assumptions or miss that was a lot of us have so thank you we have a lot of great questions coming in but I know we have some great content to get through as well, so we want to keep going on that. Okay, so do we have any questions from any of you? Please name is anitra terrell and my business is reflection design dot com thank you and you can find me also on etsy of reflection design with the cake and my question is I find in a lot of etc listings and I've done this in my own that you put links to matching products or complementary products that are also in your store, you know, is that it thumbs up, thumbs up. Okay, we'll talk about that's, a variable that you can add to your product, listening back to sum up. And what we're going to do is cover a basic of basic template and to cover the basics first, and then I'm going to talk about those variables, but that's, an up sell and it's a good idea. Okay, it's, a good idea. I want to say that with, like, with another great himself here, but if you do it one and it's clean, not like, you know, six would be careful with that, but we'll always be careful with variables, and we'll get to that later.