Can Anyone Provide Feedback On My Shop

[OhHandmadeByNat]

Hi

I have been setting up my shop Oh Handmade By Nat and wondered if anyone could take a look and give me some feed back.

I have set up facebook, instagram and pinterest to advertise it.

I have also set up google search console, google analytics and bing search as well.

I have noticed on google search console that my website isn't being index although google has crawled it. 

I tested My urls and google said they were fine and could be indexed, so I requested google to crawl them again. 

I have also submitted my site map to google. 

I also noticed that when I entered the names of other square site in google, bing and yandex they also werent showing up. 

Is there a problem with square sites being indexed by the search engines?

Any help will be gratefully recieved.

Thanks

Nat

[maxpete]

@OhHandmadeByNat welcome to the Community and thanks for asking your question here! I took a look at your site and it looks really nice, great work with it. 

Do you know when you indexed it with Google and other search engines? I know that it can take anywhere from 60+ days to see results from it and your SEO work. 

Tagging some other members to weigh in on here too! @ryanwanner, @TCSlaguna, @JUYBoutique20, and @rtfulk 

[OhHandmadeByNat]

Thanks for your reply.

I submitted my sitemap to google on 3rd Feb this year and it was crawled on 2nd March.

[maxpete]

Oh got you, thanks for the context! I'll let one of our members chime in who has more experience than me with this, but again, nice work on your site!!

[DinaLRosenberg]

I don't know much about google indexing.. but I do suggest perhaps getting some additional photos? I'd love to see your items styled- on real people, used in nurseries, etc.

[OhHandmadeByNat]

Thank you for your reply.

This one might for be a bit hard for me at the moment as I don't have anyone to model for me, thats why I use the mannequin, and as my two children are now in their twenties I don't have any nursery items or the space to recreate the look of a nursery.

Your ideas were really good, just not possible for me at the moment.

[Candlestore]

@OhHandmadeByNat ;

You stated you advertise on different social sites.  With this advertising do you have a Link to your Website with the advertising?

When I make a post on Facebook of an item, I have a Link with the ad to the item on my website.  The other thing is, I looked at the blankets, you have 3 colors..... since they are handmade could you also do other colors?  Not every color now but maybe add a image of a few more blankets for example in other colors?   Maybe offer them in a Larger size for couch warmers / Blankets.  I know wrong time to watch the telly under a blanket but that way people may want them in the Fall too.  Maybe a few in the Romper colors as 1 image to take special orders.  Size color pricing.   When I was growing up my grandparents had hand made blankets on the back of their sofa for when they got cold etc.  Maybe on the Social media sites advertise in Baby sections or new parent groups.  

Like maybe on your contact page, let people know that these can be made in a variety of colors or sizes.  You may get a few more buyers that their children are grown and their grand babies are older that would not require your current items.  Maybe have an Options page to showcase other sizes and colors.  Make a small one in each color and then list prices for larger sizes.  Also give the option for custom sizes can be ordered through the contact section.  Have custome send custom size reqirements and then give them a quote for the size.  All custom size and colors are paid 50% - 50%.... 50% when buyer places the final order (covers material and design) and 50% when its done ready to ship.  People like custom things.  Can you make other designs besides hearts?  Place a few of those on your site too.  Just some ideas to help you get a sale or 2.  🙂

[OhHandmadeByNat]

Thank you for your reply.

My social media sites are a work in progress at the moment, my facebook and instagram don't have photos with links to my website yet, as the last couple of posts I have used to try and get engagement on those sites, although They both have links to my shop in the bios.  So That is something to plan going forward.  My pinterest does have links back to the products that have been pinned.

Thanks for your suggestion s about more blankets in lots of sizes and colours, at the moment I have a pram sized blanket in yellow  and a couple of shawls to photo and list, and I plan on making larger sized blankets in other patterns, but this might take a while as a baby size blanket takes me about a week to make and a larger blanket can take between 2 -3 weeks to finish, but this is something I am working on.

I will definitely look into custom orders, and all your suggestion are really good and really helpful, and have given me a few things to look in.

[Nstrahinic]

I love the font you used, so appropriate to your beautiful items, and your writeups on policy info. Here are a few UI/UX comments...I hope you find these constructive:

*I'm viewing your site on my Samsung phone and the home page banner words are cut off in portrait and landscape mode.

*The hamburger navigation doesn't have links back to your main pages on: https://squareup.com/gift/MLZY0DZPTWFCD/order

I do like this gift card page a lot. May I "copy" this idea for my site?

*Regarding the copy for your "About me" on your home page...perhaps this is your intention however if it's not, it sound like you used AI to write it.

[OhHandmadeByNat]

Thank you for your reply.

To add giftcards to your website go to your square account and look under the online and then items, if you look down the list you should see gift cards.  You should be able to set up gift cards for your website from there.  The gift card page on square websites will all look pretty similar, as thats how square designed that page to be.

I have removed the about me section on the front page as I also have a about page on my website as well.  To be honest my whole website was designed with the help of ChatGpt. I am good at crochet, but when it comes to writing product description, my mind just goes blank.

Thank you for pointing out about the banner on phones I will look into this and see If I can have a play around with it, to see if I can make it look better.

Nat

[Lovewell]

Hello there! 

Your pieces are stunning. 
Don’t know much about search engines to be totally honest! 

As for the website and instagram - checked those out! 

We recommend using social media to boost you up and have your website easily accessible. 

Posting stories (adding your link), reels of the process of your making items but sped up is always cool to watch, share your story!!  This is what sets you apart from anyone else. No one can be you but they might be able to make similar items. 

Introduce yourself and let people get to know you and why you do what you do. 

Show your items as they would be used in everyday life! Seeing them stand alone is wonderful for detail but you also want to show people the tangible feelings they can have when they cozy (for you it would be cosy) up with their handmade creation. 

See if your mom friends would allow their child to be a little model for your children’s clothing. 

Cheers and praying for all the success! 

[tranguyen]

I have to agree with @lovewelltv — your works are stunning @OhHandmadeByNat ✨

I searched for your business name quickly and did get direct to your site, Etsy page and Facebook page as well, so it might have taken a while for the indexing to be completed and for the site to come up in search results. 

There was a thread recently about increasing Square sites SEO, which might be of interests! You can find the full discussion here but I also want to link out to @Hailey's reply specifically. She's the Marketing Manager for the Seller Community and has a wealth of experience when it comes to supporting folks with driving awareness to their small businesses, and I hope her suggestions will help you with driving more traffic to your site ❤️

[OhHandmadeByNat]

Thank you everyone for your replies, they have been so helpful. 

So sorry I haven't been able to reply to everyone.

I have been sorting out my social media.  I have added photo albums on facebook in photos, and made sure each photo had a link back to my website.   I have started some boards on pinterest and added some pins to a few of them, and I have scheduled a month of posts for instagram.

I have also been putting the alt tags on my photos.

I brought a doll the size of the average new born but the rompers I have made are slight big on it probably because they are sized to fit new born to six months .

when I told my aunt she said she has loads of dolls she has collected over the years, so I will have a word with her to see if she has one that fits the rompers I can borrow.

Thank you for all your help.

I am listening to your advice and doing my best to follow it.

Nat

[rtfulk]

@OhHandmadeByNat You’re work is beautiful. It takes a while for Googled to crawl your site, the only thing you can do is be patient. One thing and this is definitely not a criticism just my personal preference. I like for my photos to be the same size so when they are presented on the home page they look uniform. I use Photoroom app and I select the square Shopify setting, it keeps all your photos the same size.

[OhHandmadeByNat]

Thank you for your reply.

With google I found if you go on the search console,click on url inspection and paste the url of the page you want index in there, google will check to see if it indexable and then give you the option to have google crawl the page and index/reindex it.  your page goes into a queue, but  I found doing this had google indexing the page within a week.

I use photoroom as well save all my product photos as 2000 x 2000 pixs.  I think you might be on about the featured section, I chose that lay out because I thought it might add interest to my home page, but I will try one of the other layouts to see if they look better.

I just found https://www.capcut.com/  for making videos for social media.  You can make videos out of static images, and it's free to use, if thats useful for anyone.

Nat

[rtfulk]

@OhHandmadeByNat  Capcut has saved us a ton of time, If you have a lot of social media sites you post to, check out OnlySocial. onlysocial . It gives you the ability to schedule posts on an any day and time.  I usually sit down and do a week to 10 days of posts in one evening and schedule them to go up at different times. It's a time saver.

[Lisa3002]

I'm a handmade maker too. Your items are lovely. I never learned how to crochet. I like the simplicity of your site. One thing that stood out to me is that you have no pictures of yourself on the About page. It was always a hard thing for me to put myself out there, but I'm learning. And I think people like to see the face of the maker. Maybe you could also do a few stories about your space, or pictures of your projects in-the-works, so to speak. I'm learning all the time too.