Hey TPT sellers ready to seek growth in your business? You’re in the right place. Welcome to the Savvy Teacher Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle. And I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that will really make an impact on your sale. Let’s get started y’all.
Hey there teacher sellers. Today we are talking about the top three data points that you need to be tracking. If you want to succeed on Teachers Pay Teachers, you can find all three of these data points right in your TPT dashboard. And they are the numbers that will make or break your business. So listen up.
Coming in at number three, we have pageviews, I mean, duh, right? You can’t sell anything. If no one even knows it exists. It’s like planning the best lesson ever, and they call a snow day, or your students don’t show up to class. By keeping an eye on your views, you can get a better idea of how your products are performing, and whether they’re getting enough traffic.
If you’re not seeing a lot of views on a particular product, then it might be time to do some keyword research. And make sure you’re optimizing your listing to get found in search results. Be sure when you do this, that you’re using the right target keywords for the right searches, and that you’re using those in the title and the product description.
Now, when you’re looking at your page views and comparing them to the past, there’s something really important that you’ll want to keep in mind. Since August 2022, when TPT fixed that video previews bug that was resulting in greatly inflated page views on products that had a video preview, just about every seller is reporting pretty dramatically lower page views overall, even on products that didn’t have a video preview before.
Now, I have not gotten confirmation of this from TPT. But my educated guess is that this could be a side effect of fixing the bug, depending on what changes they had to make. They could have changed what counts as a page view. And if that’s the case, then this would certainly affect all products and not just the ones that have video previews attached.
The other possibility, of course, is that the lower page views are related to personalized search testing that’s going on on the site right now. But I think that that is probably less likely, since it isn’t rolled out to all shoppers yet. And when we all saw the decrease in pageviews, it was rolled out to a very small percentage of buyers. Either way, when you’re comparing pageviews keep that August date in mind. And know that lower pageviews starting in August might be the result of a data tracking change and not actually lower numbers of eyeballs on your products.
Now, moving on to number two conversion rate. This one is all about turning those views into sales. To keep the teacher analogy going. It’s like being a master of hooking your students on the topic and keeping them engaged, you want to do the same thing with your product listings. A good conversion rate means that your listing is doing its job of convincing shoppers to hit that Add to Cart button.
If your conversion rate is low, take a closer look at your product listing to see what you might be able to improve. Do your thumbnail images and your preview showcase the product effectively? Is your description telling enough about the product for teachers to want to purchase it and to know that it’s going to meet their needs? Is the price competitive? While we’d never want to undercut other people’s prices because that just devalues the site as a whole and all of our work will suffer. We do want to keep in mind that your price should not be vastly higher than similar products that are available to make sure your price is competitive.
Now, unlike pageviews, there is such a thing as too high when it comes to conversion rates. I used to recommend aiming for around 5 to 8% for individual products and slightly lower for your bundled products. However, as a result of those lower page views that I mentioned a few minutes ago, most sellers are seeing a higher average conversion rate at this point. While it would be amazing to think that we have just all suddenly made our previews and our thumbnails and descriptions so much better. The fact that our sales aren’t dramatically higher indicates that this conversion rate increase is probably a result of those lower pageviews instead of something magical that we’re doing. I know we all wish it was just us, right?
Currently, in February of 2023, I would recommend somewhere around 10 to 14% as your conversion rate goal. Now, bundles will still be just a little lower for most products. If you find that your conversion rate is too low, then you’ll want to improve the thumbnails, the preview and the description. On the other hand, if your conversion rate is really high, you might consider a price increase on that product. Check out what the competition is to make sure you’re not going to raise your price way above everyone else’s for similar products. But a high conversion rate does indicate that you have room to raise your price on this product.
Now, finally, the number one data point that every teacher seller should be using to make decisions is your earnings. Because that’s really what it’s all about at the end of the day. This is where you see the payoff for all of your hard work. And even if those other numbers look good, if your earnings are slipping, or they are stagnant, then you’re not making the progress that you want in your business.
So keep in mind that whatever happens with the other numbers, the bottom line you should be looking at is your earnings. By tracking your earnings, you can see which products are performing well, and which ones aren’t to help you make some informed decisions about what to create in the future, which products to market to your audience, and those sorts of decisions.
One really important thing to keep in mind is that these data points are not independent of each other. For example, if you increase the price of a product, you might see a decrease in conversion rate. But if you’re still making more money overall, this is a win. So get comfortable with the idea that one number might go down while another number goes up as a result of your changes. This is why I say to focus on that earnings amount as your bottom line to make sure your changes are really working.
Now on the other hand, if your conversion rate is really high, but you’re not making enough money, you’ll want to look at the other data points to see where the issue lies. Because a really high conversion rate isn’t going to help your bottom line if you’re only getting a few people to actually view the page. In that case, you’ll want to work on your SEO, run some ads, think of other ways to generate more traffic to the product. Because you can see that when people get to that product, they love it.
If you are seeing that you’re getting tons of traffic and they’re not converting, then you’ll want to work on those things. But the bottom line is to take a look at those earnings, you might need to raise your price, work on SEO or do some other things to generate traffic to the product.
Tracking all three of these data points, views conversion rate and earnings is really crucial if you want to grow your income on TPT. And I know that data is not always fun. That is certainly not the most exciting topic. But it really is so important to keep an eye on all three of them. And make those little adjustments as needed to optimize your store and increase your earnings to keep an eye on those numbers stay on top of your game and you will be a savvy teacher seller in no time.
Now here is your action step for today. Take a look at your TPT dashboard and see how you’re doing in these three areas. Specifically look at your top 10% in each area, that top 10% the products that are getting the most pageviews how are they converting? How much money are you making on them? Same thing for the top 10% highest conversion rates, those products that convert really well. Are you getting enough views on them? Are you making good money on those products? Or are they converting really well because maybe you need to raise some prices. Same thing for your earnings. Look at those top 10% earners and see what you can do to get more eyeballs on those or increase those conversion rates.
If you’re not happy with your numbers, then identify the areas that you can improve. Whether it’s tweaking your SEO, improving images and descriptions or even just a quick price raise. Keep tracking those numbers and making adjustments you will be well on your way to success on TPT. And eventually you will find that the data is actually pretty fun and exciting, because it can help give you actionable steps that really make a change in your business.
Thank you so much for listening today. If you want to learn more about how to interpret your TPT dashboard data and making the right changes to improve all of those numbers. Then I would love for you to join me in the Profit Booster Boot camp. The next live boot camp starts on March 11 and registration is open right now. So head to profitboosterbootcamp.com to get all the details I hope to see you in there.
And hey, if you’re listening to this later and you’ve missed the March boot camp, you can go to that same website to get on the waitlist and be the first to find out when the next boot camp is on the schedule. That site again is profitboosterbootcamp.com. See you there.
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you did, please share it with another teacher seller who would also find it helpful. For more resources on Growing Your TPT business. Head to Kristendoyle.co/TPT. Talk to you soon.
