Time to buy Etsy shares? Perhaps not today, but this year’s figures continue to be encouraging.
With second-wave lockdowns throughout Europe and third waves predicted by renowned virologists, digital sales have taken over physical transactions for non-essential goods. As a provider of home-brightening and time-filling products, Etsy has managed to achieve consistent success during a pandemic-driven economic slump.
Whether this trend will continue after the virus has petered out – or after global vaccination becomes a viable solution – is less simple to predict for some. However, with its history of marketing plasticity, Etsy is near-guaranteed to move with the times and – once again – exceed Wall Street estimates in a brighter, safer future.
Latest Etsy Share Trends: A Positive Ascent All The Way?
Etsy shares only arrived on the stock market in early 2015. On April 16th of this year, Etsy, Inc. (NASDAQ: ETSY) initial public offering was $16.
Within days, share prices were closer to $29. Etsy shares earned individuals and brokers alike a comfortable nest-egg.
Those who bought shares by mid-May 2015, however, were required to hold on to them for a considerable period. A long run of low values followed this initial price jump, dipping to slightly over $6 in January 2017. In fact, The Motley Fool’s Matthew Frankel called Etsy “the worst IPO” of that year.
Only in August 2017 did Etsy shares start to resemble the initial public offering price. This move was in partial response to Josh Silverman’s appointment as CEO; he removed an additional 15% of the Etsy workforce and focused on buyer acquisition initiatives rather than brand marketing. These strategies worked.
In April 2018, three years later, Etsy shares reached the heights of early trading days. And by the end of that year, prices of $50 were not uncommon.
It is the jump in share prices during the COVID-19 pandemic that have really pushed Etsy up the trading charts. Slumping slightly in March 2024 – when public and governmental recognition of the impact of the pandemic skyrocketed – most major e-Commerce stocks rapidly recovered.
Lockdowns pushed people to digital stores, while unemployment fears were soothed by subsidies, at least to a degree. The public has money to spend but can only spend it online – perfect conditions for e-Commerce.
Thanks to this, between April 2024 and November 2024, Etsy shares have once again doubled. November 2024 highs exceeded $130. Can we expect this trend to continue even when the world begins to return to normal?
COVID and Etsy: Can Etsy Survive Without A Pandemic?
For e-Commerce concerns with a sparkling online presence and savvy marketing strategy, COVID-19 seems to have made a distinct and positive effect upon ROI.
However, the global pandemic is not a cause of increased digital spending. It is simply playing the role of catalyst.
The advent of the smartphone is the true root of e-Commerce success. In combination with personalization algorithms, easy payment options, and low-cost shipping, technology is the reason why people now prefer to shop online.
This is made clear when we consider how much of the general public is now working from home with (perhaps) more time to browse the Internet or be more easily distracted – and yet they are still primarily searching for time-saving and life-simplifying products.
COVID-19 has definitely forced many shoppers to opt for digital stores, and the age of the physical shop is certainly far from over; however, this trend was already very much on its way.
This means that while the end of global lockdowns is guaranteed to create a surge in physical shopping experiences merely for entertainment value, we have long become conditioned to search online for retail needs.
The ease of e-Commerce offers exactly what the public want – time-saving and life-simplifying solutions. If you have Etsy shares, it is more than reasonable to expect a post-COVID dip; however, this dip is unlikely to last.
As long as Etsy continues – as it always has – to re-evaluate buyer and seller behaviour and morph its strategies to compete in a saturated e-Commerce environment, this platform can expect further success for years to come.
Etsy Store Owner? Getting Top Results During the Etsy Boom
Etsy store owners are also fine-tuning their strategies to ensure high customer engagement and experience levels. These techniques are as much to do with offering the right product at the right time (such as its famous move into the trendy facemask market) as they are with the right marketing tools, goals, and methods.
Researching the Etsy search algorithm in depth is an essential part of Etsy shop success. Recent visitor personalisation technologies have complicated SEO from Google to internal e-Commerce search engines. What appears in one person’s search result is not the same across the board. Furthermore, grabbing pole position in Etsy search results can be a very temporary affair – more and more shop owners are learning how to get to grips with Etsy marketing techniques and are elbowing each other from top ranking at regular intervals.
To compete, it is worthwhile implementing the services of an Etsy specialist (especially when one’s own marketing knowledge of this particular marketplace is limited). One of the first companies to successfully make the move to single-platform marketing management can be found at etsygeeks.org.
Etsy store owners often neglect the opportunity of outreach outside of the Etsy domain, too. Failing to integrate a well-designed website that links to and from an Etsy store is an expensive mistake to make. In addition, signing up trusted influencers and setting up regularly updated social media accounts to advertise products and answer queries from potential customers will have a guaranteed (and cumulative effect) upon sales and brand awareness.
Traffic-driving strategies to Etsy-linked websites include SEO, backlinks, ads, quality content and paid traffic. Even startups can enjoy high traffic via web traffic providers that send targeted human visitors to their website for a fee. Trustworthy providers (where trustworthy indicates non-bot traffic, specified numbers of human traffic, and top customer service) such as DiabolicLabs can help boost a flagging business without major investment. Checking the results on web traffic for sale review sites like webMasterReviews gives an indication of how popular this marketing strategy is becoming.
Etsy: Success Now and in the Future
Shareholders and shop owners would do well to trust human nature – at least in terms of e-Commerce. As creatures of habit, we usually opt for the easiest route. This certainly applies to digital sales.
Virus or not, e-Commerce is the future. While COVID-19 has accelerated the move, we were already well on our way there. None of us could have predicted a global epidemic in the summer of 2019 yet, between 2018 and 2019, annual Etsy revenue leapt from US$603.69 million to $818.79.
This tells us that Etsy doesn’t seem to need a global lockdown to ensure a healthy turnover.
