A student project at Olin College of Engineering
We’re students trying to help Etsy sellers find out what actually sells.
We’re two engineering students in a year-long entrepreneurship class. Our project is about how small Etsy shops improve their listings, and we’re building a small tool to test one idea. We’d really value your help.
- Nothing to buy
- No Etsy password needed
- Talk directly to the students
Why we’re doing this
Improving a listing is a lot of guesswork.
We started the semester by talking to sellers who run shops on Etsy, Shopify, Faire and eBay. A few things kept coming up:
- Edits take an afternoon. Researching keywords, rewriting a title, updating tags, one listing at a time.
- It’s hard to tell what helped. Sales go up or down, but was it the new title, the season, or luck?
- Following up gets forgotten. Checking back two weeks later to compare is the first thing to slip when you’re busy making and shipping.
We’re still early, and we may have some of this wrong. That’s exactly why we want to hear from more sellers.
The idea we’re testing
Small changes, tested one at a time, measured on your own numbers.
Instead of general advice, what if a tool tried one small change on a listing that isn’t selling, checked the results a couple of weeks later, and kept it only if it worked? Here’s the loop we’re prototyping:
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1
Spot listings that get views but no sales
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2
Suggest one small change, like a clearer title
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3 you
You decide whether to try it
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4
Compare before and after, then keep or undo
Seller conversations. Talking with shop owners about how they run and grow their listings.
A working prototype. Clickable, running on a made-up demo shop. Nothing touches a real store yet.
Testing with real sellers. A small group trying it on a few listings, with us checking in along the way.
How you can help
If you sell on Etsy, we’d love to learn from you.
Any of these helps a lot. Pick whatever fits your schedule.
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01
A 20-minute chat
Tell us how you work on your listings today. No prep, no pitch, and we’ll work around your schedule.
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02
Try the prototype
When it’s ready, test it on a handful of listings and tell us what’s confusing, useless or missing.
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03
Tell us we’re wrong
If this isn’t a problem for your shop, that’s just as useful to hear. Send us a note below.
Count me in.
Leave your email and we’ll reach out personally. It’s just us on the other end.
Questions or thoughts?
Write to us about anything: the project, your shop, or why you think we’re on the wrong track.
What we promise you.
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Nothing changes without you
We never touch your shop unless you say yes to a specific change.
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No passwords
We’ll never ask for your Etsy password. Any connection goes through Etsy’s own sign-in.
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No sales emails
We’ll only reach out about this project, and only as often as you’re happy with.
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Leave any time
Step out whenever you like, and we’ll delete what you shared on request.
Questions
Who are you?
We’re two engineering students at Olin College of Engineering, near Boston. This is our project for a year-long entrepreneurship class, where the goal is to find a real problem, build something for it, and test it with real people.
Is this a sales pitch?
No. There’s nothing to buy. Right now we’re trying to learn whether this is a real problem for sellers and whether our idea actually helps.
What happens after the class?
If it turns out to genuinely help sellers, we may keep building it, and the sellers who helped us would hear about it first. You’d never be charged for anything without agreeing to it.
What would a chat be like?
A relaxed video or phone call of about 20 minutes. We ask how you run your shop and work on listings, and mostly listen. You don’t need to prepare anything.
Why Etsy?
Many of the small shops we spoke with sell there, and it lets us keep the project focused. We may look at other marketplaces later.
Are you part of Etsy?
No. We’re independent students and aren’t affiliated with or endorsed by Etsy.