Eastern Accents
Closing The Trust Gap
No showroom.
No sales rep.
No brand reputation shoppers already knew.
Here's how the product page learned to close the gap.
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UX Writing Conversion Optimization Content Strategy
PROJECT METADATA
The Basics
ROLES
UX Writing
MEMBERS
Suleyman Sarigoz (me)
Botan Erpolat (supervisor)
INDUSTRY
E-commerce
TIMELINE
4 Months
TOOLS
EtsyAdmin
Etsyhunt
ChatGPT
PROJECT SUMMARY ★
The TL;DR
THE PROBLEM
Traffic Without Trust
Plankroad (Eastern Accents' sister company) had steady traffic but weak conversion, because pages read like trade spec sheets with no showroom or sales rep to vouch for them.
THE INSIGHT
Visibility Wasn't the Problem
Research revealed the real issue was trust, not visibility.
THE SOLUTION
Rebuilding Trust
I rewrote UX copy and optimized tags across 650 fall and winter listings.
THE RESULT
Trust, Measured
Across 650 listings, conversion rose 48% year over year, from 0.95% to 1.40%, with no pricing changes.
Revenue rose about 63% on flat traffic.
BEFORE VS AFTER
See the Difference Below
PROJECT CONSTRAINTS ◼︎
Working Within Real Limits
BUDGET & SCOPE
Doing More With Less
Management's priority was maximum impact at minimum spend, ruling out costly interventions like pricing changes or paid campaigns.
ROLE SCOPE
Earning a Bigger Seat
I was initially brought on strictly as a tag optimizer, and had to advocate for a broader UX writing role before I could address the deeper trust issues I was seeing.
RESEARCH ACCESS
Reading Between the Data
Without direct access to Etsy shoppers, my research relied on indirect signals, clickpath data and customer service reports, rather than firsthand conversations with the people actually making the decision to buy.
COMPANY BACKGROUND ♣︎
One Brand, Two Worlds
COMPANY BACKGROUND
Who Is Eastern Accents?
Eastern Accents is a Chicago-based luxury home textile brand founded in 1989. For over 35 years, the family-owned company has designed and manufactured premium bedding collections, decorative pillows, and fine linens entirely in-house. Every piece moves from initial concept to final stitch within a single facility on the city's northwest side.
Their 2 Tier Business Model
This two-tier structure creates an inherent tension. A brand built on exclusivity and craftsmanship is selling surplus goods on a marketplace platform where buyers expect transparency, value signals, and instant trust, without the benefit of a showroom, a sales rep, or a brand reputation they already know.
Eastern Accents
Sells flagship collections direct-to-trade.
Targets interior designers and high-end hospitality clients.
Prices at a premium, in line with trade and showroom expectations.
Plankroad
Operates as Eastern Accents' sister store, a secondary Etsy storefront.
Resells unsold Eastern Accents inventory.
Targets a broader, middle-class consumer market.
Prices more accessibly than the flagship line.
PROBLEM & SOLUTION ✖︎❤︎
From Traffic to Trust
THE PROBLEM
Traffic Without Trust
Plankroad’s 1,800+ listings drew steady traffic through an established Etsy presence, yet conversion consistently lagged.
Pages listed specs but gave none of the trust a showroom or sales rep provides, and shoppers left before buying.
THE SOLUTION
Rebuilding Trust, Page by Page
I rewrote UX copy and optimized tags across 650 fall and winter listings, giving shoppers the confidence a showroom rep would.
My supervisor scoped the work to those 650 of 1,800+ listings, so I measured results on them only.
I stayed inside management’s limits of no price changes, no paid campaigns, and low spend, so the lift came from the listings, not a discount.
THE RESEARCH ◉
Listening Past the Traffic Numbers
TARGET CUSTOMERS
Two Buyers, Two Expectations
Eastern Accents sells to designers and hospitality clients.
Plankroad sells to middle-class consumers with different expectations.
Why
Plankroad pages read like trade spec sheets, but its shoppers weren’t trade buyers, so I profiled both audiences.
Design Decision
Middle-class shoppers, not trade buyers, led to shopper-first copy in place of spec language.
USER JOURNEY MAP 1 - THE PRIMARY PATH
How Most Shoppers Actually Move
This map traces the path taken by the majority of users, based on Etsy clickpath analytics and customer service feedback. It represents the default shopping experience most visitors encounter, and the primary target for optimization.
Shoppers stayed positive through search, product page, images, and description, then turned negative at price.
Shoppers understood the content but did not believe it, which matches the quality questions customer service kept hearing.
Why
Conversion lagged despite steady traffic, so I mapped the default shopper path to find where interest turned into doubt.
USER JOURNEY MAP 2 - DIVERGENT PATHS
Where Shoppers Hesitated
Why
The primary map hid friction, so I read the final step of alternate clickpaths and inferred why shoppers hesitated.
Clickpath data showed where some shoppers ended: leaving at the price, or saving the item and messaging customer service.
Leaving at price suggested price doubt, and saving then messaging suggested quality doubt the page left unanswered.
Design Decision
Positive sentiment broke at price, which led to craftsmanship copy that justifies cost.
Inferred reasons behind the save-and-ask-service path led to policy, quality, and sample links answering doubts on-page.
DISCUSSION WITH STAKEHOLDERS
Two Teams, Two Theories
Why
Conversion lagged despite steady traffic, so I compared customer service’s view of shoppers with management’s view of the business.
CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM
What Shoppers Were Really Asking
The customer service team was the most valuable source of ground-level insight in this project.
Quality Anxiety Was Pervasive
Customers repeatedly asked about material quality and durability — even when that information was already present in the product description. This told me the existing copy wasn't doing its job. Information was there. Trust was not.
Price Was The Most Common Complaint
Customers frequently requested discount codes, signaling that Plankroad's price points felt unjustified relative to the Etsy marketplace context.
Photography Was Not The Problem
The team produced high-quality images for every listing — multiple angles, close-ups, and fabric detail shots. Visual presentation was already strong.
Design Decision
Quality doubt despite strong photos and specs led to copy that earns belief.
Discount requests with price cuts off the table led to craftsmanship copy justifying cost.
MANAGEMENT TEAM
What the Business Believed
Management came into this engagement with a clear hypothesis and firm constraints.
Their Constraints: No Price Reductions
"Prices are already low enough" — and no artificial price manipulation strategies, which were dismissed as too much effort for too little return.
Their Priority: Max Impact, Min Spend
They wanted a high-return, low-cost solution with results they could see quickly.
Their Belief: More Traffic = More Revenue
Tag optimization was the lever they wanted pulled.
Design Decision
Price cuts were off the table and the budget was low, which led to prioritizing copy and tags over full campaigns.
Steady traffic contradicted their initial assumptions, prompting us to reframe the work around conversion.
IMPACT & EFFORT MATRIX - PERCEIVED VS ACTUAL
Choosing the Right Lever
This matrix shows where each strategy was expected to land in terms of impact and effort, based on management's initial assumptions.
Management immediately ruled out price reduction and discount campaigns, stating that prices were already set to maintain profit margins. This narrowed the path forward to tag and copy optimization.
Grey items are management’s starting view and never happened.
Muted green is where tag optimization was first expected to land. Bright green is what actually happened, and the arrow shows the shift.
DESIGN CHANGES ⏏︎
Rewriting the Page
BEFORE VS AFTER
The Spec Sheet, Replaced
Old Page
A manufacturer spec sheet built for trade professionals.
Six gaps marked, including trade jargon, unexplained codes, no policy, no quality messaging, and no samples.
New Page
Shopper-first content built to inform, build trust, and sell.
Six fixes marked, including use cases, policy upfront, quality language, sample links, plain language, and clear headers.
Use cases replaced codes, because shoppers browsing alone could not decode “CAL117” or “VO - HO.”
Policy and samples went on the page, because fabric is cut to order and nonreturnable, so shoppers needed a safe way to try.
A craftsmanship line answered the quality doubts customer service kept hearing, and justified price when price cuts were off the table.
I built the rewrite as a reusable template for the remaining 1,800+ listings.
REFLECTION ⬅
Looking Back
What I Did Well
Diagnosis Over Assumption
I tested management’s traffic hypothesis against customer service reports and clickpath data, found a trust gap instead of a visibility gap, and redirected the work from tags to the product page copy.
Scope Earned, Limits Respected
I grew my brief from tag optimizer to UX writing and content strategy, and that expansion carried the result.
I worked inside the no-price-reduction and low-spend limits instead of arguing against them, so copy became the lever management could approve.
What I Can Do Later
A/B Test The Copy
I would A/B test copy variants, such as craftsmanship language against use-case-first language, instead of relying on one rewrite.
I would study description length, since I changed what the copy said but did not test how much of it shoppers need to feel confident.
Keep the System Scaling
The 650-listing rewrite will extend to the rest of the 1,800+ catalog and serve as the template for future listings, so new inventory launches trust-ready.
What I Would Do Differently
Measurable From Launch
I would record listing-level baselines before launch, so I could separate the effect of copy from the effect of tags.
Closer to Shoppers
I would bring customer service in from day one, because their input was the strongest evidence and could have shortened research.
I would interview Etsy shoppers directly, because clickpath data only inferred the divergent path and could not show real motivations or hesitations.