Hey y’all thanks for joining me today for this episode all about three quick things that you should be doing to get your store ready for the upcoming back to school season and for every sitewide sale.
Now I’m sure we would all like to pretend that it’s not happening, but back to school season really is right around the corner. In fact, some of you might already be heading back for some of those teacher in-service days now.
Regardless of how we feel about it or whether we are ready or not, it’s definitely time to start getting our stores ready for the back to-school rush and for the upcoming TPT sale.
When it comes to site wide TPT sale prep, there are a few things I do every single time to make sure that my store is ready to go.
You know I am all about working smarter not harder so implementing all 3 of these should take you no more than 30 minutes. You’ll want to start by looking at your top sellers for last August. Whether you think of these as back-to-school products or they’re evergreen resources that sell all year, if they are in your top sellers for last August then they should be your focus again this year for back to school season.
Start with just the top five for right now and then if you still have more time that you can spend on this, go ahead and keep moving down the list.
The first thing you’ll want to do is look at your product titles. Even if the entire product has already been SEO optimized. The way that teachers search changes constantly as terminology is changing and just the way that we talk about certain things.
So for each of your top sellers start by typing some terms into the tpt search bar. And then also do a little keyword research on a tool like Ubersuggest or KW Finder, and make sure that you’re using the terms in your product title that are currently trending because they may not be the same as what was trending last year. So give yourself some time to do that research and to update those product titles so that they will reflect the way teachers are currently searching.
Next up, scroll on down your product listings to the feedback section. Take a look at what is there and look for some really good meaty feedback that you can add in to your product descriptions.
A lot of times we forget to come back and do this or even to come back and update as we get better feedback that we’re able to add in. So take a few minutes to do that. As you are looking, look for feedback that talks about something specific about the product rather than generic feedback that just says, “this was great. I really loved it.” Even those that say “this is one of my favorite purchases on TPT” aren’t really that great at helping convert people who are browsing your product listing to someone who’s going to purchase.
So look for things that are very specific. Features that the teacher liked about your resource, ways that they used it in the classroom, results that they got or improvement that they saw in their students after using your resource.
Those kinds of things will make a bigger difference and will really help teachers see how useful and how helpful your resource is going to be for them and help convert them to buyers.
Now once you’ve identified some good ones, go ahead and copy paste them into your product description. I like to use a couple of emojis to kind of draw attention to that feedback within the product description. I usually use stars because that kind of signifies that this is feedback that got five stars or however many it was.
And if it’s a longer piece of feedback, take a second to look for some really important phrases and go ahead and bold those. Now this is not done for search engine optimization or anything like that. It’s really just to draw the eye to the most important part of a longer piece of feedback.
Alright, the third thing that you’ll want to do is check up on your price. Now, price is one of the last things I normally suggest that people make changes to, but if you have over 400 page views on the product, you’ll want to look at your conversion rate as a way to determine if your price is right.
If this product did not get over 400 page views last August, then go ahead and expand out your date range until you get to 400. That way the data will be valid and helpful for you to look at.
Now on your product, if the conversion rate in those over 400 page views is over ten percent, this is an indication that you probably could raise your price a little. So try it out. Test out raising your price maybe ¢50 or a dollar depending on how big the price is.
Test out small increases and check back over time to see how they’re doing. When it comes to lower conversion rates I really do recommend being more cautious about dropping your price. And the reason for that is that if we all drop our price every time the conversion rate is a little low, we will turn TPT into a bargain basement and that is not what we want to do.
We want our products to be affordable for teachers of course, but we don’t want to turn it into a race to the bottom where everyone is just dropping their prices and like I said turning us into that dollar store or a bargain basement.
The other reason for being a little more cautious about lowering your price is that there are so many other factors that affect conversion rate. A lower price is probably the last thing I would look at.
So here are the things I would kind of check up on before I decided to try lowering my price. Does your product have a really good current modern looking cover and thumbnail images? Does it have a preview, even if it’s not the most perfect preview, having a preview is a huge indicator of whether or not people will actually purchase your product.
How’s the description? Does it need some help? Is it one of those older ones where we wrote two or three sentences and called it good, or have you written a really thorough description.
If you can check all 3 of those boxes; the cover and thumbnails are great, you have a good preview, you have a solid thorough description, then you might look at possibly lowering your price a little bit. And when you do that I recommend that you do a little market research.
Take a look at similar products that are on the same page of search and see how they’re priced. And if your product is priced higher than similar things then maybe lower your price a little to fit it into the same price range as most of the other products that are selling well.
Now I know it can be very tempting to start a major overhaul of your images or your preview or maybe even the entire product, especially if you have seen that lower conversion rate. And if you have time for that, absolutely go for it, especially right before back to school. But I also know that sometimes we don’t have time for that.
So if you don’t, then put it on your to-do list for later when you have time. But focus in on these 3 steps that really do make those quick and easy changes that make a huge difference in your sales during back to school season.
So just to recap those three steps again, you’ll want to check your title to make sure it’s using currently trending search terms. Add some feedback or update the feedback that’s on your product description. And then check your price to make sure it’s in line with others and that you don’t need to actually raise your price a little because you have a high conversion rate.
Your action step for this episode is to identify your top five sellers from last August and then check and update each of those 3 things to get your store ready for back to school season and for the back to school TPT sale that will be coming up soon.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Savvy Teacher Seller. If you’re enjoying the podcast I would love for you to take a minute to rate it on your favorite podcast app and write a quick review.
To celebrate the launch of this podcast I am doing a giveaway of two 1:1 strategy sessions with me, where we can talk about anything related to growing your TPT business or your website.
To enter, all you need to do is screenshot your favorite episode so far and share it somewhere on social media. This could be in your Instagram feed or your stories or on Facebook. Either way just be sure to tag me at @kristendoyle.co so that I can mark down your entry. This giveaway closes on July 26, 2022.
