AI readiness for makers and handmade sellers

A buyer who followed you off a marketplace and needs a reason to stay.

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The moment

Tom, a ceramicist selling from his own store

A buyer who saw a piece on a marketplace asks an assistant whether the maker sells direct, what shipping costs, and how long a commission takes.

What the agent needs: Do you sell direct, what does it cost delivered, and what is the lead time.

What actually happens: Shipping is calculated at checkout only, lead times are mentioned in an Instagram caption, and the commission process is a contact form. The assistant sends the buyer back to the marketplace, where every fact is structured.

Which dimensions decide it, and why

AIScan grades five dimensions. These are the ones that carry the outcome for this kind of business.

Commerce

Selling direct only beats a marketplace if the direct facts are machine-readable: price, shipping, lead time, availability. Otherwise the marketplace listing wins the answer about your own work.

Content

Materials, dimensions and process are the differentiators, and on maker sites they typically live in photo captions or social posts rather than the page.

Discoverability

Small stores frequently have no sitemap and a homepage-only presence, so individual pieces never get fetched at all.

The checks that matter here

Fix guides: /docs/checks/commerce · /docs/checks/content · /docs/platforms/shopify

Most sites like this run on Shopify — read the Shopify playbook for where each fix lives.

Questions we get asked

Is it worth this effort for a small shop?

It is the cheapest way to stop losing your own buyers to a marketplace listing of your own work.

I only ship after a chat. How do I publish that?

Publish the shipping bands and the typical lead time, and say the commission is discussed. Ranges are readable; silence is not.

My captions are on Instagram. Does that count?

No — the platforms largely block fetchers. Only your own site is reliably readable.

Do I need product schema for one-off pieces?

Yes, including availability. A sold piece marked sold is still useful; an unmarked one just reads as unavailable data.

Would an RSS feed help?

For new-work drops, genuinely yes — check E5 covers it and it is a small change on most platforms.

Where do I start?

Scan the store free at aiscan.site and fix the commerce checks first.

Scan your site and see where you actually stand

Free, no account, about twenty seconds. The report names every failing check by ID, shows the evidence we found, and gives the fix for your platform — plus a hand-off prompt you can paste straight into Claude Code or Cursor.

Run a free scan npx aiscan-cli yoursite.com

Prefer to read first? Browse every check we run or the guide library.

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Also covers: handmade, maker, craft seller, ceramics, pottery studio, jewellery maker, woodworker, print shop, illustrator shop, candle maker, textile artist, small batch brand, artisan goods, commission work, etsy alternative.