First, let's review the benefit of displaying a gift registry on your Shop Local Store. Benefits include:
1. Past registries boost your Google ranking
A registrant (e.g. bride) often adds a link on their official wedding site and social media sites (e.g. Facebook) leading back to your Shop Local Store. These links are called 'backlinks.' Google and other bots crawl the web and keep track of these links lead to and from sites. Google counts these links and they are one criteria for how your Shop Local Store ranks in Google. If you delete a registry, Google will remove this backlink connection. This hurts your Google ranking.
Google also crawls your site and 'reads' the words on your site. When you have many registries, Google then knows your Shop Local Store is a registry-related site. Google will then rank your store more highly as a gift registry resource for shoppers.
2. Past registries generate new orders
Your Shop Local software automatically sends an email to a customer that bought a gift for a registrant on the registrant's anniversary. For example, if Aunt Mary bought a gift for her niece Amy on your Shop Local Store, on the third wedding anniversary, your Shop Local Store will automatically email Aunt Mary reminding her of the wedding anniversary. This email boosts awareness about your store and increases orders. If you delete a registry, this email will not be sent.
3. Your Shop Local software motivates your registrants to redeem their registry credit
Your Shop Local software emails the registrant to remind them to use their registry credit during the redemption period. If you delete the registry, then your software will not send an email to the registrant reminding them. This results in a registry credit staying on the 'books' longer. Having registry credit on the books is not ideal since registry credit is a type of debt. Credit is best when converted and used towards an actual product. When you delete a registry, this deletes our software's ability to reminder registrants to redeem their credit.
4. Be known as a registry expert
Your Shop Local software outputs at the top of your Shop Local Store the number of registries you've serviced. With this feature, a customer knows your expertise in the registry field and is motivated to register. Potential registrants are encouraged when they see a higher number of registries listed on your site and it provides an extra incentive to sign up for their own registry with you.
5. Past registries motivate new registrants to register
On your Shop Local's Gift Registry home page, your software displays anniversaries. Potential registrants and shoppers see these and know you care about your registrants. This encourages more registrants to register.
6. Use past registries to get new orders
We show anniversary reminders to you on your private internal Newsfeed. Retailers use these reminders to contact the registrant and increase sales. If you delete a registry, this anniversary reminder will not appear.
Advice on which registries to delete
Shop Local suggests you first delete older registries and ones that:
- Have $0 or a low dollar amount in sales.
- Have no registry picture added.
- Have no registry success steps completed.
- Contain 1 or fewer registered items.
- Were set up as a test registry and are not real registries.
To find the above information, please browse to your registry admin page and look for registries that meet the above criteria.
Delete archived registries
We also suggest you look at your archived registries to find registries that you may wish to delete. To view your archived registries, you will:
- Log in to your Shop Local.
- Hover over Registry at the top of the page. From the drop-down menu, click Archived Registries.
- On the Archived Registry page, by default you'll be viewing the current year.
- Follow similar steps as to what is listed above to find and delete registries.
To find how many active and archived registries your Shop Local account has, please follow these steps:
https://www.shoplocal.org/help-center.cfm/230/find-out-how-many-active-and-archived-gift-registries-your-bridge-account-has
Please find steps to delete a registry here:
https://www.shoplocal.org/help-center.cfm/3/Delete-a-Gift-Registry-from-Your-Bridge-Account
