i.materialise Etsy & Facebook shops (copy paste our strategy here)
A question we get often is, “why don”t you have a gallery of designs for sale on i.materialise?” Even though we do incidentally sell some designer”s designs on i.materialise we don”t really believe in having our own gallery. Even though being a destination site makes one more of a platform and is a way to get to more revenue quicker we believe that in the long run its better for designers to sell their designs on their own websites. We might not believe this for ever but we currently believe that in this crowded, info full world, you should grab every lumen of attention given you and convert this into sales. We like the idea of being able to showcase high quality work but don”t feel like in the long run you can guarantee the legitimacy and quality of the work in a gallery. At the same time if you should at one point become popular or produce high quality work we want you to be the center of attention. This will lead to higher conversion rates and more attention and revenue for you. Even though not having a galllery costs us thousands of Euros a month we continue with this strategy. Because we believe that you can at one point, through your work, find the limelight. If you do then we want the attention directed at you. If people come to a gallery and then look at all sorts of stuff their attention will go from your object to many objects and revenue for designers will diminsh. If people come to a general ecomerce gallery meant to showcase a lot of work we don”t believe that your work can be recognized sufficiently. Basically we believe that when someone finds you, they shoud in isolation be able to decide to buy your work. Brands turn to concept stores just for this reason. We want a temple for your work, a temple for your brand and we want people to be able to look at you and whatever it is you have to offer clearly. A lot of visitors to a lot of sites stay for one minute of less, we want this minute to be directed at you. At the same time we do realise that people want to buy things from us and that in smoe cases you won”t be ready for your own website yet. Thats why we”ve been experimenting with the i.materialise etsy and Facebook shops.
Etsy is great platform for handmade things. It takes a bit of time to optimize your behaviour, shop and articles for Etsy since Etsy is a world in and of itself. But, designers who do can understand and make for the Etsy platform would seem to be well for it. On Etsy descriptions are more elaborate, personal, story-like and wooly than other platforms. Images are lighter, brighter and more “white washed” in appearance. Getting noticed on Etsy is a question of appearing Treasuries (others collections of things) and interfacing with friends. We would suggest that any designer working with handmade things test Etsy. It is very difficult to find sucess on Etsy as a casual Etsy seller. If your product finds a natural audience there however Etsy is a very valuable, well run platform. Setting up your store is extemely easy and there are many options. Most knowledge, techniques and strategies that help one succeed on Etsy however, are Etsy specific.  Etsy asks for a $0.20 listing fee per object and asks for 3.5% per sale.  We would advise any designer working in 3D printing to test Etsy to see if it its their brand. But for most Etsy will be a rather “hit or miss” affair. You will either find a perfect natual audience for your products or sell nothing. You can see our i.materialise store here on Etsy.
There are a number of ways that you can order your own Facebook shop. We chose a Payvement Facebook Shop. The Shop was relatively easy to set up, although Etsy is easier. There is very little you can do to the overal styling to the shop. The shop does asks one for their information quite soon in the browsing process. The shop is a simple way to add shopping functionality to a Facebook page. It would represent a quick way to capitalize on sudden Facebook sucess or internet popularity. There is also the ability to travel quickly along the social graph with interesting announcements coupled with people”s intense Facebook activity. The store is free which is good but sometimes slow loading and the platform is not as mature and well developed as Etsy is. You can check out our Facebook shop here.  Â
We”re going to contine exploring the myriad of shop platforms and we”ll keep you up to date if we find some that might be interesting. If you have any questions about selling online or anything else please email joris (at) i.materialise.com
