You have already started your Etsy journey and things are going great so far!
However, you might start to think that your business name or your “shop name” as it is referred to on Etsy is not resonating with your audience or may not imply directly what kind of goods you are selling.
That’s perfectly okay! In fact, many Etsy sellers end up changing them name to really nail down their brand image.
Brand image is one of the most important aspects of selling anywhere online, especially on Etsy.
Once you as an Etsy seller find a shop name that works for you, your brand will start to grow, which will lead to happier customers, more sales, and a booming business.
As a quick example of why you may want to change your Etsy shop name, consider a business that starts off selling Scented Candles. You are doing well but you quickly realize that a good product to sell alongside candles, are customized lighters that can be used for gifts.
You start listing some of these customized lighters, and they start flying off the “shelf” so to speak.
Eventually, these customized lighters make up 87% of all of your sales.
The only issue is, your shop name is related to selling candles! This brand image is confusing to your customers (especially new customers who may land on your shop). So in this case, rebranding and changing your shop name can be extremely beneficial to your Etsy career.
So, how do you change your Etsy shop name? Glad you asked, let’s get into it!
How To Change Your Etsy Shop Name
Changing your Etsy shop name is extremely easy.
First, you want to head over to Etsy.com and click on the shop manager in the upper right hand menu (you will want to be logged in to see this option):
Once you click on the Shop manager on the right hand side there, you will want to go to the left hand menu and click on Settings:
This opens up the settings sub menu where you will then want to click on: Info & Appearance.
On the info and appearance page, you will then be able to click to change your shop name and have this pop up:
You can read through the dialog box here, but you will notice that if you change your shop name, all of the links to your CURRENT shop name will be redirected to your new shop URL.
They use what is called a 301 redirect, so that anyone that is looking for your old brand name, will automatically be redirected to your new name.
That being said, it is VERY important that you let all your customers know that you are rebranding.
Get on social media, blast it out through your email list… communicate with your customers! You want them to return to your shop, and if they are not sure what name you changed to, they may never be back. Over communication is the best strategy here and being clear and transparent to let them know you are still in business with a new name will pay dividends far into the future.
Shop Name Rules On Etsy
If you know what name you want to change to on Etsy, you need to make sure that the name change fits within the rules on the Etsy platform.
Here are the current rules for Shop names:
- Shop names need to be within 20 characters long
- Shop names cannot have any spacing or punctuation
- Shop names need to be appropriate for all ages
- Shop names can be changed an infinite amount of times as long as the shop is not live yet
- If the shop is live, you will be able to change the shop name up to 5 times (so make sure you are really ready to do this)
- You cant use the old shop name again
- Your shop name will become your Etsy store URL (for easy sharing purposes)
Knowing all of this, it is really important that you are not constantly changing the shop name on Etsy. Doing it a few times to make sure that your brand really makes sense is perfectly acceptable, but once you start building up a customer base and daily sales, it becomes a bit harder if you want to keep the momentum going!