How DAKCRAFTDESIGNS cut the gift lists out of its titles

DAKCRAFTDESIGNS makes handmade goods in a little Cornish workshop, and the catalog reads like a field guide. There are owls, highland cows, puffins, guinea pigs, rats and a long list of dog breeds, from Westies to Bernese mountain dogs, each drawn as a watercolour illustration or a pencil sketch.

Those animals go onto ceramic mugs with matching coasters, insulated steel water bottles, toughened glass wall clocks, engraved wooden chopping boards, metal bookmarks with tassels, cushions, plant pots and notebooks in A4 or A5. Almost everything can carry a name, a date or a short message. The shop has more than 1,100 listings and a 4.95 star rating from over 3,100 reviews. Christmas cut-off dates go up well ahead of the rush, an early one for international orders and a later one for the UK, because the post gets overwhelmed in December.

A personalised mug is a gift, and the older titles said so at length. One read "Watercolour Elephant Milk Jug - Personalised Flower Vase, Ideal Gift for Mothers, Friends, Grandmothers, Gift for Her, Elephant Home Décor." Every phrase in it is true. Someone could buy that jug for their mum, their friend or their gran.

The catch is space. Etsy shows only the start of a title in search results, especially on a phone, and Etsy's own guidance to sellers is to put the words that describe the item first. A list of recipients pushes the useful words, like ceramic, A4 or custom name, toward the end. Across more than a thousand listings, fixing that is a big job, with the tags, descriptions and photo alt text waiting behind it.

The cleanup happens in Alura's listing editor, one listing at a time. The editor puts a listing's title, tags, description and photos on one screen, with a Listing score that grades each part, so title, tags and photos can be fixed in one sitting. The titles are the shop's own work. The recipient lists and filler words come out: "Gift for Her", "Ideal Gift for Mothers", "Cute", "Unique". What stays is the product, the personalisation and the format. The notebooks keep A4/A5. The elephant milk jug gained "Ceramic Pitcher" and "Custom Name". The giraffe plant pot went from "Personalized" to "Personalised", the spelling the rest of the shop uses.

The tags changed too. On the squirrel notebook, "unique gift" and "gift for mum" made way for "a4 notebook", "a5 notebook", "name on notebook" and "custom diary". On a border collie water bottle, "gift for her" and "back to school" came out and "name on bottle" and "500ml bottle" went in. The beagle cushion picked up "name on cushion" and "pet portrait". Some descriptions changed as well, and now open with the product name on its own line.

The photos are where AI does the writing. Each listing photo can carry alt text, the short description a screen reader reads aloud to a shopper who can't see the image. In the editor, AI drafts it from each photo. The drafts sit in the editor with the rest of the changes, and nothing reaches Etsy until Publish changes is clicked. If something needs to go back, Listing history keeps earlier versions that can be restored.

The titles got shorter, and the useful words moved to the front. Most now open with the fact that the piece can be personalised, then the animal and the product, then the size or format, and only then the kind of animal lover it suits. A buyer still learns the piece would make a lovely present. The photos, with a name written across the mug or the board, make that case on their own.

The birthday card shows the pattern in miniature. "For a Personalised Touch" and "Squirrel Lover's Birthday Gift" came out. "Wildlife Lover" went in, two words that cover anyone who likes squirrels, and the rest of the title says plainly that the text can be edited.

The shop's advice for other personalised gift sellers is to trust the buyer. Someone searching for a squirrel notebook already knows who it's for. Put the product, the size and the personalisation first, and use the tags for concrete details too: the bottle size, the paper size, where the name goes. And don't skip the parts shoppers rarely see, like photo alt text. Every photo deserves a description.