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Okay, TPT sellers ready to see 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 sales. Let’s get started y’all.
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Hey, y’all. Welcome back to another episode of the savvy teacher seller. I’m your host, Kristen Doyle. And today I am granting a listener request and diving into a topic that we have probably all dealt with. Those products in our TPT stores that just aren’t converting.
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If you’ve ever looked at your TPT dashboard, and picked out a product and thought, why isn’t this product selling when I know it is such a great resource. And my students love it. And I know that other students love it and need it as well… stick around. Because today I am sharing five straightforward fixes that could turn things around for you and get those products to start converting better.
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The first reason your product might not be converting is also probably the most common one, and it is having bad quality thumbnails. The reason that this matters so much is that those thumbnails are the first impression that buyers get of your resource.
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They can determine whether or not somebody clicks over from search onto your product. If you’re sharing those thumbnails on social media, or you’re using them in ads that can determine your click throughs there as well. And let’s face it, those first impressions are so important.
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If someone makes it to your page, and the rest of the thumbnails don’t entice them to stick around, they’re going to head back to the search results and look at someone else’s product.
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The biggest mistakes that I see on thumbnail images are using poor quality images. And that may mean that they are too dark, or they are on the flip side, they are over processed and they are way too bright. Or using bad quality mock ups.
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And when I say bad quality mock ups, I don’t mean that the mock up image itself is bad because to be honest, most of the ones that I see for sale on TPT are really great quality images. What I mean is that when you put layers on top of that mock up, your layers don’t look like a real photo.
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So a pencil might be way too big as compared to the size of the piece of paper. Or maybe the tablet is much smaller than it should be compared to the phone or the laptop. Anything like that can make your product just not look high quality.
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Another common mistake is having way too much on one image. A lot of times we want to just cram everything we can into one single image. And the truth is that just clutters it up and makes it hard for people to know what they’re supposed to focus on, especially in that small size that we have on our thumbnails.
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And the third mistake is having a hard to read text. And this can come into play for a number of reasons. Maybe your font size is too small to be easy to read. Or maybe the font choice itself is a difficult font to read a bunch of text in. Sometimes the color contrast between our text color and the background isn’t good enough. And that makes it tough to read. Or just simply including way too much text on a page can also make it difficult to read the text.
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Some quick ways to fix this are to think strategically about making each of your thumbnails serve one single purpose so that you’re not tempted to include too much on there. And then try doing some AB testing, where you put similar thumbnails on different products, trying out two different styles to see which one seems to resonate better, or even testing out one thumbnail on a product for this month and another thumbnail next month.
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Of course, you would want to do that with evergreen products and not seasonal ones, because this seasonality could easily affect your sales.
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The second mistake, which is probably just about as important as the first one, these are definitely the top two is missing previews.
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See, this is important because teachers really need to see the product in order to know if it meets their needs for their students and if it will work for their class. So when we create a preview, we are giving them that deeper look into our product that you just can’t show in those four tiny thumbnails and in a text only description.
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One of the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to previews is not taking the time to create a separate preview for your bundles. Now, I’ve heard some rumors that people think that it will help you show up higher in search if you have a preview on your bundle. I don’t think that’s the case. Actually, it is more about the fact that buyers prefer to have that separate preview, so that they can get a good view of what’s in the bundle. And that means that your product is going to convert better.
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The other mistake that we sometimes see is not being strategic about what goes into the preview, and just slapping a few screenshots of pages up or making a collage and calling it good, you really want to be strategic about what goes into your premium.
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So your fixes here are to always, always, always take the time to create a preview for your bundles, use that preview to create an overview of the contents of the bundle, and then let the individual previews that buyers can see on that page, provide more detail for those teachers who want that extra information.
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A little pro tip for you here is to create your previews strategically, with a top down framework that follows a sales page type formula, to kind of guide buyers through your product, from the big picture overview all the way down to the nitty gritty details.
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Mistake number three that might be causing your product not to convert well is not having a good quality description. Teachers really need to be able to understand the value of the thing that they are purchasing. And one of the best ways that you can convey that value is by using your description.
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Some common mistakes I see here are descriptions that are way too short. So you might want to start writing descriptions that are a little longer and more thorough. And the other mistake I see that is probably most common is listing out only the features and not solutions.
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So what I mean by that is that instead of just listing what’s included in your product, and thinking about what are the pages of this PDF that they’re going to download, you should lead with the problem that this product solves. And when you get to the individual features, again, lead with the problem that those features solve.
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Why did you include an answer key on this product? To save the teacher time to make grading easier, lead with whatever benefit there is to each of the things that is included? I like to list the feature alongside the benefit. And I use phrases like so that and to help you. And so you can as that transitional phrase between what’s included and why should you care.
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When you do this, use some bullet points to make this more readable. Another thing you might consider doing at the end of your product description is adding a little FAQ section to preempt some questions and keep people from accidentally purchasing something that is not what they were expecting.
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I know we’ve all had those people who come back and they wonder why our product wasn’t editable when we never said it was. But we might be able to hold off some of those types of comments by having that FAQ section at the end that says no, this product is not editable.
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Mistake number four is forgetting about social proof. Social proof is any sort of content, you can use that as a testimonial from someone else. This could be reviews you’ve gotten on TPT messages that have been sent to you, or even something like screenshots of comments on social media posts.
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The reason this matters is because teachers trust other teachers who’ve used your product, far more than they trust you to tell them that your product is high quality. And one mistake that I see that you might even be thinking right now is that we know that those product reviews are right there at the bottom of our product listing the number of stars is at the top.
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And I would say it is a mistake to expect busy teachers to scroll through pages and pages and pages of those reviews that say thanks. There was 17 S’s so they can get to the character limit. Or one of my favorites I’ve seen lately is n/aaaaaaa.
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Because we all know that we get so many more of that type of review than the really helpful ones. So what I would encourage you to do is showcase testimonials, everywhere that you have an opportunity to and choose those really helpful, thorough, longer comments to show off so that teachers who are already super busy and exhausted, let’s just be honest, aren’t having to scroll through all those pages to find the helpful reviews because they probably wouldn’t anyway.
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Some places that you can put that social proof or those testimonials are in the feature testimonial section that TPT has put at the top of our product listings. But you also should be including them within the product description itself. And I would recommend including some in your preview as well.
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If you want to take that a step you even further, you can take some screenshots of your best feedback to use in your promo marketing materials, whether that is social media, or emails, or ads or anything else that you are doing to market your products.
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Last but not least, having your product at the wrong price point could cause it not to convert as well as it should. And I know that you probably are thinking that the big issue here is if you price your products too high, teachers won’t purchase them.
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But I would encourage you to think about what happens when you price your products too low as well, because there’s definitely such a thing as pricing too low. See price signals value for all of us, teachers, absolutely go to the Dollar Tree and buy those dollar baskets.
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But we also know that the ones we bought at the Dollar Tree are going to be flimsy, and they’re probably not going to last us more than one school year. Which is why we sometimes also shell out the extra cash to buy the better quality baskets that you might get at Target or at one of the teacher supply stores.
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Because we know that certain things we need to last a long time. That stuff that we might only be using this year for a special themed event or something we buy at dollar tree, but if we want it to last we spend more money on it.
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So keep in mind that both overestimating the value of your products and pricing it too high and undervaluing your work and trying to price too low can be a mistake when it comes to your price point and you may even see your conversion rate go up when you raise your price.
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I would encourage you to watch your conversion rates and test out different price points. Try raising your price a little at a time or lowering it a little bit at a time to see how your conversion rate is affected. Take a peek at similar products that are in the TPT marketplace by other sellers to see what their pricing looks like and make sure that your pricing is competitive.
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But you don’t want to be the lowest priced product in every case. Another thing to consider is making sure that you have products in every price bracket. See we need very inexpensive products that people can test out to see if they like the quality of our work.
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We need middle range prices for those things that are really thorough, solid units. But we also need to have some bundles that are at much higher price points.
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Before we wrap up, I have an action step for you. I want you to pick one of these areas that I talked about today. And choose a product that isn’t converting as well as you think it should. And give that product and overhaul just in this one area this week.
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Trust me when I say a little tweak can go a long, long way. And hey, if you make a change and you see some really good results I want to hear about it. So come in the savvy teacher sellers Facebook group and share your wins so we can all celebrate with you.
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That’s it for today friends, if you found this episode helpful and you are thinking you know, I really need to dive deeper into this and I really would like to learn more about these changes then you are in luck. I go into all of these fixes and more in great detail in my Profit Booster Bootcamp.
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If you’re listening when the episode airs been registration for the fall session of profit booster boot camp is open right now. So head over to profit boosterbootcamp.com to join in. And if you’re listening later and registration is closed, don’t worry, you can get on the waitlist at the same link so that you won’t miss out next time.
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Talk to you soon friends. 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 Kristindoyle.co/tpt. Talk to you soon.
