BlueKimonoStudio posted this on the etsy forum. I thought her post was a good one and food for thought for jewelry designers. She provided suggestions from a buyer’s perspective when looking for artisan jewelry on etsy.

BlueKimonoStudio posted:
Since there are so many fab jewelry sellers here, I thought I’d share a recent experience as a buyer on Etsy.

I wanted a simple chain with a certain pendant for my daughter. I found hundreds of listings, but most had some problem that was a deal breaker:

•  the listing didn’t tell me the size of the necklace or charm

•  the listing gave me the size in millimeters. I suggest giving millimeters and inches. I did not have my metric converter handy.

•  the listing used jargon including BOGO and OOAK. (today I’ve figured them out, but what if I didn’t want to do that?)

•  the listing showed only close-ups of the item, and nothing like a hand, person or even a coin for scale in the photos. Even if the measurements were there, it helps sooo much to have a scale photograph, hopefully near a human body part.

•listing didn’t tell me what the materials are.

Folks, I searched through dozens of listings with problems like these. I would buy more jewelry on Etsy if I could learn what I need to know about a piece. I need to see the item in relation to something else for scale. Seriously, this is the biggest drawback for me.

I finally found my necklace after about 20 minutes of scrolling through listings.

There’s so much gorgeous jewelry here on Etsy…I hope these observations are helpful to some of you makers.