What is a conversion rate?

A conversion rate is the number of views on an ad that result in a sale. Average conversion rates vary across platforms. For example a conversion rate of 1% would mean that for every 1000 views you would sell that product 10 times.

IG posts can average 0.30% and 2.6% depending on reach.

Facebook paid marketing reports a conversion rate of 9.21% in 2022.

Based on experience, these conversion rates seem really high. One factor is that SPD is a saturated market. Our industry is highly competitive. In looking at my own marketing, I believe that my average conversion rate across social media posts is less than 0.0001%. Most of my sales come from customers finding my designs on Spoonflower through key work searches. But for the sake of learning, lets use 0.0001% as our average to work through some strategies for hitting 10000 views and making 1 sale.

How do you Market a New Design?

I created a ‘New York State Flower Roses’ and made it available for sale in March. In this blog post I’m going to describe all of the different ways that I have promoted this design.

A brief note about the Spoonflower Algorithm:

I participated in a ‘Comment Club’ for this design, where designers exchange comments on designs, and also entered it into a Challenge. This design now has 107 hearts and 24 comments. The hearts and comments helped to move my design higher in key word searches so it is currently listed 24th in a Spoonflower search for the word ‘rose’, and 3rd in the Fresh Picks section of my Spoonflower shop.

Here are some examples of mock ups that I posted to IG featuring this design, along with a bag that I made out of 1 yard of recycled canvas.

Marketing Breakdown

DESIGN CHALLENGE *2000 baseline

It is hard to guess how many views a design receives in a design challenge, so I give it a baseline number of about 2000

INSTAGRAM total views 1192 SEE MY IG POSTS

7 grid posts, 1 sewing reel, mentioned 8 times in stories with links to my shop, added 3 highlights with links.

The bag that I made was from a pattern promotion, with a decent online following, called ‘The Bag of the Month Club’ so I tagged them, the pattern designer and the company that I bought the hardware from in my sewing posts, Bag of the Month club has 11.4k followers, Sincerely Jen Patterns has 6.5k followers and Emmaline Bags Hardware has 46k followers. Of the three, Sincerely Jen, shared one of my posts to her stories. The rest of the posts just show up in their ‘tagged’ feed. I also tag the photographers when I use their work to create mock-ups.

TIK TOK total views 553 SEE MY SEWING REEL

1 sewing reel (tagged BMC, Sincerely Jen & Emmaline)

FACEBOOK conservative estimate across FB posts is 1200 views

I posted photos and a blurb to:

The Bag of the Month Club Facebook group 19.6K members (people who sew and shop online)

Three different posts to Spoonflower Fans Facebook group 12.3K members (people who are interested in Spoonflower)

7 Facebook Stories about 200 views (people who know me personally)

BLOG POSTS SEE MY BLOG POST conservative estimate 50 views (but if you’re reading this 51!)

I wrote 2 blog posts featuring this design as a response to questions from other Spoonflower designers, and linked from their Facebook questions to my blog in the comments to direct traffic to my website.

WEBSITE GALLERY estimating 50 views SEE MY WEBSITE

I’ve added images of this design to 2 Galleries on my Website

ADOBE PORTFOLIO estimating 50 views SEE MY PORTFOLIO

I’ve added 3 images of this design to my surface pattern design portfolio

DIRECT EMAIL 1

I emailed the one person about this design, the pattern maker that created the sling bag pattern, to offer her some photos to use in her marketing.

IN PERSON so far about 20 – estimating 100

I opened my fabric sample at school pick-up and showed it to some friends to ask for feedback on my new design. I sewed a new halter for my dog, and when people see her, I tell them that I designed the fabric. I’m giving the bag that I made as a gift to my daughter’s teacher, so that might generate some in-person views as well.

TOTAL VIEWS SO FAR 5197

So my estimated total views on this design so far this month are 5197, halfway to the goal of 10,000 views. Over time some of my social media posts will have more views, and my design will continue to show up in Spoonflower searches. My guess is that when I hit about 10 000 views I will have a sale. And I will update this blog when I do. Why work so hard to chase a single sale? Because of the way designs are sorted in the POD algorithms the first sale on a new design is the hardest target to reach. After you sell a design once, it is much more likely to sell again.

Rather than be discouraged by conversion rates, I would encourage designers to see them as a way of setting realistic targets for visibility. I would love to hear what other strategies you find effective for marketing your work.

FIRST SALE April 21, about a month since publication

Rough estimate of views across all marketing at the time of sale: 7072 views.