When a customer comes to an Etsy shop, they’ll need a way to sort through your listings. The shop sections are the best way to help people do that. If you have your sections set up accurately, customers will have an easier time finding things, and they won’t get frustrated and leave your shop!
Etsy shop sections are important because they give customers a frame of reference about what listings you have in your shop, as well as allowing them to skip to the items that they’re looking for easily. A shop that has sections set up well is going to be easier to navigate for customers, and they’ll keep people in your shop longer. Shops without sections can be overwhelming and confusing, which will make customers leave your shop faster.
There are a lot of things that people miss when they set up their shop sections, so read on to find out how to manage them.
Table of Contents
- How to add sections to your Etsy shop.
- How to edit or delete sections from your Etsy shop.
- Are Etsy sections used in search?
- How to add a listing to a section.
- What can you use Etsy shop sections for?
Some links in this article are affiliate links that will pay me a small commission at no cost to you if you use them to make a purchase.
How to add sections to your Etsy shop.
Etsy allows sellers to have up to 20 sections in a shop, but there are no sub-sections at this point. Try to keep your sections accurate when you add them, but don’t make them so super-specific that you have too many unnecessary sections in your shop.
- To add sections to your Etsy shop, you can use the listing manager in your shop dashboard, scroll to the right side (on desktop) and find the sections manager.
- Click on “manage” and the menu for the sections will open up.
- Click on “add new section” and enter the name of the section.
If you want to move the new section to the top of the list, or reorder any other sections, you can do that by dragging the little crossed arrows icon up or down the list.
There isn’t really a specific order that’s better than others, so you can arrange your sections any way that you want to.
Some people like to do them alphabetically, and some like to do them by length. It doesn’t matter for SEO purposes, so think about how your customers would be most comfortable navigating them.
If listing the sections alphabetically makes the most sense, do it that way. If you have groups of things that are similar, you might want to list those sections together.
You can arrange them any way that you want to as long as you think that it makes sense for the customer.
How to edit or delete sections from your Etsy shop.
You might need to delete a section at some point to eliminate things you don’t sell anymore, or to consolidate a couple of sections together.
- To delete a section from your shop, go to the listing manager, go to the right side of the page on desktop and find the sections manager.
- Click on manage to open the menu.
- Find the section that you want to delete and click on the pencil icon to edit it.
- Choose “delete section” and click on it.
To edit the section name, use the same process to navigate to the section, then edit the name in the editor.
You might want to delete sections if you don’t have many listings in them so that they don’t look too empty to a customer.
Sometimes consolidating things into one section that has more items is better for shoppers because they feel better with a well-stocked section.
If that’s not possible don’t worry about it too much. If it makes more sense to leave the items in a section by themselves because they don’t fit with other things, that’s perfectly okay.
One section that you can’t delete is the “on Sale” section that shows up at the top of the page when you have items running on a sale. Etsy adds that section automatically to allow customers to easily find things that are discounted.
Because they do that, you don’t need to add another section for on-sale items unless you want to, and you might want to put it at the end of the list to give people a chance to find it in two places.
If you completely sell out of the things in a section, Etsy won’t show that section in the shop menu anymore. It will still be there as a choice when listing items, but it won’t show up as an empty section for customers.
Are Etsy sections used in search?
Etsy section names aren’t used for the purposes of Etsy search placement, and they play a very minimal (nearly zero) part in Google search. Section names should be aimed at the customer, not at the search engine. Make them descriptive of what the items in that section are, and don’t try to be too creative with them.
One thing that’s interesting about Etsy sections, though, is that they each have their own web address. This isn’t used in search specifically, but you can use the url to direct people to that specific section.
This comes in handy when you have a reason to direct people to your shop, but you’re not sure if the listing will be sold out or not when they use the link.
For vintage shops or One-Of-A-Kind shops, you can use the url for the section as the link when you post on social media or Pinterest. That way, if someone goes to the link and the item has sold, it will take them to the section instead of a page that says the item isn’t available.
To find the link for the section, go to a page where you’re not signed into your own shop and go to your shop’s homepage.
Click on the section that you want to link to, and copy the link for the page from the browser.
Make sure that you’re not signed in because if you’re signed into your shop the link might include your shop editing links, and they won’t work correctly!
How to add a listing to a section.
To add a listing to a section, you can use the listing manager or the listing editor.
- To use the listing editor, click on the listing itself and scroll down to the section choice window.
- Click on the section window and choose the section from the drop down menu.
- Save the listing by clicking “publish” at the bottom of the page. This won’t cost an additional listing fee unless you’re revewing the listing after it’s expired.
When you create a new listing, you should choose the section while you enter all of the information for the new listing. That will put the listing in the right section from the beginning.
You can also change the section for a listing from the listing manager by using the editing options.
- To change the section in the listing manager, check the listing you want to update.
- Click on “editing options” and choose “change sections.”
- Choose the section that you want to change the listing to using the dropdown menu.
- Click “apply.”
- You can do multiple listings at a time with this method.
This video also shows another use for the section manager…It tells you if you’re missing a section on a listing! If you see that there are any items in the “no section” category in the section manager, make sure to go in to see which ones they are.
You can add them to a section using the methods above.
It’s important to have all of your listings in a section so that customers can navigate to them easily from your shop’s home page. If an item isn’t in a section, the customer won’t find it unless they scroll through all of the individual pages in your shop!
What can you use Etsy shop sections for?
Etsy sections are excellent for navigating through your shop, and there are a lot of ways that you can divide items up.
- Color
- Size
- Type of customer (men/women/kids)
- Category (types of items)
- Materials (plastic vs, glass, genuine vs. artificial)
- Printable/Physical items
- Where they would be used (home decor, rooms of the house, etc.)
- Discount/Clearance items
- New Collections
You can duplicate listings and put them in more than one section as long as you can fulfill both orders if they’re purchased at the same time. This would come in handy if you have things that you want to include in a section for one thing, but it also fits in another section.
At this point we can’t put a single listing in two sections at the same time, but duplicating things works.
The universal “All Items” section is another one that Etsy adds to the top of the sections, and it doesn’t count toward the 20 that you can use to organize your products.
Make sure to take advantage of shop sections to make the customer experience easier!
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