How MamasundMinis rewrote its titles around who each gift is for

Mamas & Minis is a small business run by a mom in Germany, and its catalog follows a family's year. There are matching Christmas sweaters for Mama, Papa, the kids and the baby, "Mein erstes Weihnachten" bodysuits in organic cotton for a baby's first Christmas, and big brother, big sister and big cousin sets for announcing a new arrival. For children starting school, there are named "Schulkind 2026" shirts.

Then there are the thank-you gifts: personalized mugs that parents give to the midwife (Hebamme) or to the kindergarten teacher (Erzieherin) when a child moves on. Almost everything carries a name, so most orders are made to order. The shop has 396 reviews and a 4.94 star rating, and Michele signs the thank-you note every buyer receives.

A personalized gift rarely has just one use. The school shirt works for the first day of school, for a birthday or for the last year of kindergarten. The midwife mug could just as well go to a friend. The first titles in the shop tried to cover every one of those reasons at once.

The midwife mug was listed as "Hebamme Geschenke Personalisierte Tasse mit Name Geschenke Dankeschon Hebamme Geschenk für Freundin Tasse Personalisiert Geschenk für Sie". Every phrase in it is something a shopper might search for, which is what the title was built to do. A parent scrolling search results on a phone, though, has to read a run of search terms before learning what the product is and who it's meant for. The titles were written for the search box. The person reading them came second.

Michele starts in Alura's keyword research. She types in the phrases parents might use for a product, in German, and looks at what comes back: the search volume, how many Etsy listings already compete for each phrase, and the trend. Similar Keywords suggests related phrases she might not have thought of, and Bulk Search lets her check a whole set of candidate phrases side by side instead of one at a time.

The point is to choose. A title has room for only a few phrases before it turns back into a list, so she decides which phrase leads, which one supports it, and which ones move to the tags instead. Etsy gives every listing 13 tags, which leaves plenty of space for the variations and the second-choice phrases, while the title stays short enough to read in one glance.

The rewriting happens in Alura's listing editor, and the titles are Michele's own. She types the new title herself, listing by listing, and nothing changes on Etsy until she clicks Publish changes. If a version doesn't feel right, Listing history keeps the earlier ones so she can restore them.

The photos are where she lets AI help. Each listing has several product photos, and each photo needs alt text, a short description that tells search engines and screen readers what the image shows. Writing that by hand for a whole catalog of shirts, bodysuits and mugs is slow and repetitive work. In the editor, she has the AI write the alt text for the photos and publishes it along with her own title.

The new titles share a shape. Near the front, a few words say who the gift is for: Hebamme, Papa, Schulkind. Then comes what the product is and that it carries a name, and a last phrase covers the occasion. Commas separate the phrases, repeated words are gone, and small typos from the old titles, like "Dankeschon", are fixed.

For readers who don't speak German: the first pair is a personalized name mug as a thank-you for the midwife, the second a personalized dad shirt that matches his child's, and the third a named shirt for a child starting school, sold as an Einschulung gift. The rewrite is still going, one listing at a time. A few of the changes so far:

Michele's advice for other makers of personalized gifts is to stop trying to sell every product to everyone in the title. Decide who the gift is really for, say it first, and say what the product is right after. The other occasions still matter, and they belong in the tags and the description, where they don't crowd the line a shopper reads first.