How to Create a Banner for your Etsy Shop
You only get about half a second to grab the attention of an Etsy customer who has landed in your shop. To do that and get them to browse your shop, you need great items photographed well and an eye catching, professional looking banner.
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Instructions
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If you don't feel confident enough to credit your own banner you have a couple of options.
Option A) You can search the Etsy site for one of the many graphic designers who sell banner design services.
Option B) You can put a request in Alchemy for a banner to be made for you.
Option C) Or you can go to the Etsy banner generator http://community.etsy.com/resources/banner-generator.
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Decided how to brand yourself and your shop is always a daunting task. Think about what your main product(s) is, think of several words you'd use to describe what you sell, think about how you want your customers to feel when they enter your shop and expand on those ideas.
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The first must have element to your Etsy banner is including your shop name. A photo of a field of flowers is nice but it tells me nothing about what you sell or where I've landed in my web search. Unless it's a fantastic picture I'll be moving on.
A picture may tell a thousand words, but have your shop name staring me in the face when I get to your page is going to stick in my memory longer.
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Be sure to chose a font and color scheme that reflect the branding of your shop. You may not think the typeface is that important, but subconsciously they affect the way the viewer feels about a webpage. Fonts can be formal or fun, traditional or contemporary, cool or warm, friendly or serious.
Go through the fonts you have available on your computer. There are also several sites that offer free font downloads. Choose the font that you feel goes with the brand you are trying to create. Be sure to keep in mind it still needs to be easy to read. That fancy, swirly script may look fantastic on paper, but when you resize it to fit your banner it's barely readable on the screen.
One of the most popular fonts on the web is Arial because of it's great proportions and it's easy to read.
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Include either your logo, avatar image or photos of your work. Don't over clutter your banner, simpler is better for that initial impact.
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The sizing of your banner on Etsy is VERY important. Your banner must measure 760 pixels wide by 100 pixels high at 72 dpi resolution. It's very important to have your banner the correct size other wise it will appear distorted.
So once you've decided on your color scheme, font and images to include in your banner you're ready to put it all together.
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The background of your banner can be a plain color block or a photo. A plain color block is easy, just draw a rectangle and then resize to 760 pixels wide by 100 pixels high. If you are using a photo you'll need to crop out a rectangular section of what you'd like to use first then resize it. If you use a square photo and resize to fit the required measurement it will become distorted.
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Once your banner background is the right size you are ready to add your other design elements ie Etsy store name, photos, logo etc. There is no set layout so play around with the layout of your banner until you've created look you love that says welcome to my shop, take a look.
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Save your file. The simplest way is to save it as a jpeg. Be sure to confirm the size is 760x100. The best way is to save your banner is by using the "save for web" option in your file save menu.
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Now it's time to upload your new banner to your Etsy shop. Log into your Etsy account and click on Your Etsy. Scroll down the left hand side and click on Appearance. You will see a Banner Upload box. Click upload and it will bring you to your photos. Select your new banner and it should load a tiny version. If it looks good (nothing is cropped out) scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Amy L yn
