We’re back with the third in our series of Shop Owner tips to help you get your shop ready for the holiday season.

You’ve spent time perfecting your model, photographed it, chosen appropriate materials. Now its time to get discovered!
We at Shapeways love that everyday we see new designs being posted and are thrilled by what you do. We write weekly Designer Spotlights, highlight a rotating cast of products on the homepage and we feature your 3D prints at events worldwide.

Categories & Tags.  How can you help us help you get discovered in search? Categories and tags! On the model edit page, under the material picker, you can choose two categories to put your model into, and then create an infinite number of tags.

Categories are the indisputable “what” that defines a product, and they are mutually exclusive or at least have one primary purpose. Tags will still be used to share other attributes, like the occasion (e.g., holidays, gifts), suggested recipient (e.g., for him, for her, for mom), qualities (e.g., geeky, whimsical), or even potential uses (e.g., driving, photography). The wider the net you can cast, the more potential buyers you can catch!

Two great examples are jewelry and homewares. For a bracelet you would choose the categories Jewelry and Bracelets and then create tags to describe them: the color, the style and who they might appeal to.

Best Practice Examples. Kevin Wei has done a great job with the Cosma Silver Bangle using these tags: art, arabesque, architecture, facet, filigree, floral, lace, lattice, mosaic, romantic, silver, white, Valentine’s day. These tags describe his design, and even suggest which occasion it might be appropriate for.

For a coffee cup, the categories For Your Home and Dining are perfect. For the Aero Cup, Kioro Design has used these tags to cover a broad range of searches: art, for your home, dining, ceramics, coffee cup, cup, espresso cup.

The more tags you use, the more likely someone looking for something like your product will find you. It is not redundant to use both the tags coffee cup and espresso cup, it just increases the chances that someone will find it in search, either on the Shapeways site or using a search engine like Google.

Do you have any other tips for getting found in search? Any questions?  Feel free to share them here! 

Stay tuned for next week’s tip: the role of personalization and custom gifts in 3D printing.