A look at katherinemahoneyceramics.com.au
I've spent the last few weeks going through every page, two years of visitor numbers, your product list, and a comparison against the two makers whose sites you admire. This is what I found.
Products on your site that Google can currently find
Findings from 3 August 2026 · Plan from 10 August 2026
Section one
The honest bit first: online sales have dropped a long way, and they're still dropping.
Three orders in seven months. Five of those months made nothing at all. At this rate the year finishes around $500.
But here's what makes this fixable: more people are visiting than ever. 2,066 so far this year, against 3,442 for the whole of last year. The interest is there. Something is going wrong between someone liking your work and being able to buy it.
The top of that list is fine. People arrive and they're interested. The break is in the middle: 874 people looked at a piece of your work this year and didn't put it in the basket.
And something new has gone wrong this year. Of the people who do reach the basket, the share who finish has halved — from about 30% last year to 16% now. Eighteen people started, fifteen gave up.
Section two · What's already working
Out of everything you make, exactly one product turns up in Google's records at all: the soap dish. Search "soap dishes ceramic" and you're reported as the second result in the country. Search "soap dish ceramic" and you're sixth.
Those two positions come from a third-party tool and we couldn't reproduce them in a manual search, so treat them as reported rather than verified. These tools work from periodic snapshots and positions move around. We'll know properly once Google Search Console is reconnected — that's first on the list.
What isn't in doubt is the pattern. The site appears for seven search terms in total. Five of those are other people called Mahoney. The only two describing something you sell are both the soap dish.
It's because you called it "Soap Dish." A plain, obvious name that matches what somebody types when they want one. Google understood it immediately.
Products that appear nowhere in Google at all
"Skinny Pourer", "Egg Body Pourer", "Frilly Top Vase". They're good words in a workshop. But nobody has ever typed "skinny pourer" into Google. Not a small number of people. Nobody.
"Vase", "Plates", "MUGS", "Bottles". Thousands of shops compete for those single words, and there's nothing to tell Google yours is different. ("Bottles" has a second problem — they're bud vases, so it doesn't even describe what they are.)
"Soap dish" is neither. It's two words describing one particular object — specific enough that Google knows exactly what it is, common enough that people search for it. That's the shape we want for everything: water jug. butter dish. herb stripper. spoon rest. Every product, name by name →
Those two phrases get about 50 searches a month each. The way most people phrase it — "ceramic soap dish" — gets 390 a month, and there you don't appear at all. That front page is Bunnings, Bed Bath N Table and Pillow Talk.
So there are two lessons. A plain name gets you found. And getting found for the popular phrases needs something more — which is the business of other websites linking to you, further down.
You've already taken it down. But before it went, it told us something we wouldn't have found any other way.
That page had the lowest bounce rate on your entire website. "Bounce rate" just means the share of people who arrive and leave immediately without looking at anything else. Lower is better.
Left straight away — lower is better
119 people visited it — more than visited your Contact page — and two thirds stayed and looked around.
Four products, not forty. Nothing overwhelming.
All of them available. Nothing sold out.
Prices shown right there. No clicking to find out.
Every photo on the same background. It looked like one collection.
Those are exactly the four changes we were going to suggest for your real shop — and it turns out we've accidentally already tested them, on your own visitors, and they worked.
Those four fake products were all vases. Look at what you actually sold last year:
of last year's income came from vases
119 people arrived at a page of vases they couldn't buy, on a site where vases are the majority of your income, while your real $350 vase sits ninth down the shop page with a Sale sticker on it.
Section three
These are the number of Australians who search Google for each of these things, every month.
Eight thousand people a month search for a butter dish in Australia. You make one. It's marked sold out. Two other small potters are already on the front page for it, which tells us it's reachable for someone your size. It's a firing, not a redesign.
Four and a half thousand people a month search "water jug". You make them. You call them Pourers — the correct word in a pottery studio and the wrong word in a search box. Renaming costs nothing.
Three people typed "garlic grater" into your own site's search box over two years. We assumed coincidence. It isn't — 460 Australians a month look for one.
Nobody searches "pottery st ives". But "ceramics Sydney" and "pottery Sydney" together get 650 searches a month, and nobody has claimed it — three individual potters rank on the front page, no big shop dominates. You are a Sydney ceramicist with fifty-two years' experience and you don't appear anywhere.
Squarespace has been writing down what people ask for, and nobody has ever opened the page.
Someone searched "garlic" in 2025. In 2026, someone searched "garlic grater" — twice. A person came back and got more specific. Nationally, 460 people a month want one.
Someone searched "tea" and "tea pot" in 2025. In 2026: "tea strainer", "infuser". Five searches over two years. There's a teapot with a strainer in one of your own FAQ photographs. Nationally: 3,600 searches a month.
None of this is a failure of attention on your part. That information lives on two screens nobody ever had a reason to look at.
Analytics → Engagement → Site Search Keywords
what people typed into your search box
Analytics → Sales → Sales by Product
every product, how many looked, how many bought
And a way to test an idea without committing to a firing: list one piece — a garlic grater, say — and mark it sold out. Squarespace shows a "let me know when this is available" form. Three sign-ups means it was a curiosity. Thirty means it's worth making six, and you've got thirty names waiting.
Section three b
The Australian potter doing best online at your scale is Winterwares in Fremantle — one maker, handmade stoneware, selling direct. Google sends her roughly 180 times as many visitors as it sends you.
Visitors from Google, per month
Winterwares
Milly Dent
Sophie Moran
You
Every out-of-stock piece on her site says this instead:
"This product is not in the shop right now but we will make it for you! Allow four weeks to receive it. Making ceramics is a lengthy process and each piece is handmade with care right here in Fremantle. We promise they'll be worth the wait!"
Why it matters
You have around eighteen pieces marked sold out. Your Plates page alone had 159 visitors this year and 95% left immediately — there was nothing to do there. Winterwares turns that exact moment into an order, and makes the four-week wait sound like proof of craft rather than a problem.
A wording change. Costs nothing. Probably the single most valuable item in this document. The full comparison →
"We have honed the art of packing and shipping fragile items… if a parcel is lost or damaged we replace it." Yours opens by apologising for the cost. What people actually worry about is whether it will arrive in one piece.
You already have a better line than hers — "Relish the ritual" — with nothing underneath it.
Section three c
already exist — out of stock, or filed under a name nobody searches for
Around twenty thousand searches a month, most of them needing no new making at all.
Your own FAQ says it started from someone asking for "the perfect soup bowl". Nineteen hundred people a month search exactly that. Keep the name — add "soup bowl" to the description.
They're bud vases. Sixteen hundred people a month search for a bud vase. Nobody searches "bottles" hoping to find one.
You don't appear to make one. Twenty-nine hundred searches a month, and Google rates it among the easiest things on this list to rank for. The best unclaimed opportunity found anywhere in this work.
Section three d
Photography comes last in the plan — but this is worth planting early.
A dozen Australian potters' websites all look the same: pale linen, soft light, bone and oatmeal, everything very calm. Lovely, and completely interchangeable.
Your header photograph is better than any of them. White pieces against a dark teal wall, a plum, a bone-handled knife, hard directional light. It reads as an old still life. Nobody else in Australia is doing it.
Your Muse Restaurant photographs do the same, and are the strongest images across any site in this comparison — yours or theirs.
So when photography comes round, the recommendation is not to copy the field. It's to do more of what you've already done once: dark background, strong light, real shadows, one piece of fruit, food actually in the bowl.
Why it matters: it's distinctive, your glazes read far better against dark than grey, and it looks like work by someone who judged the Hong Kong Biennale rather than a market stall.
And it's measured, not taste. That /store page — four fake vases, all on one background — had a 33% bounce rate against your site's 60%. Consistent backgrounds already outperformed on your own visitors. The photography direction in full →
Section four
Eight findings. None of them are about the work itself.
For sale right now: Jar with Wiggly Handles, $350 and Sorbet Vase, $300 — one of each. This year, 21 people saw the jar. 29 saw the vase.
Meanwhile 159 people visited your Plates page, which is sold out. 95 visited the Juicer, also sold out. About eighteen of your forty pieces are sold out and sitting in the shop at the same size as things people can buy. Your $350 jar is ninth down the page.
Why it matters
Someone arriving today mostly sees things they can't have. They give up before reaching the good stuff.
The fix: reorder so available work comes first and sold-out goes last. Ten minutes in settings.
Why it matters
People browse by price whether we like it or not. Hiding it adds a step to every decision, and most won't take it.
The Sorbet Vase is $300, there is exactly one, and it has a Sale badge. Same with the Everyday Bowl set. Two more elsewhere. Meanwhile "only one available" — which Squarespace can show automatically — is switched off.
Why it matters
The site says this didn't sell about work it should be saying there's only one of this about. Sophie Moran does the opposite — every listing says "Only 1 available", and she doesn't discount. Four Sale badges across forty products makes the shop read like a clearance rack.
Your FAQ says shipping is worked out by weight through the courier, and opens with an apology: "Shipping costs might seem high however all prices are calculated by the courier service."
Why it matters
Ceramics are heavy. If someone adds a $60 mug and sees $22 postage at the final step, they leave — not because it's unfair, but because it's a surprise at the worst moment.
Sophie charges a flat $18 for one item and $6 for each extra, anywhere in Australia. She mentions postage on every product page. And because extra items only cost $6, people buy two or three instead of one.
We need from you: put a single mug through your own checkout and tell us what postage comes to.
Over two years, people typed into your site's search box: plate. vase. spoons. sake set. All things you stock. They couldn't find them by looking.
You have nine categories — All, Studio Collection, Pourers, Bathware, Drinkware, Homeware, Kitchenware, Serving, Sets, Tableware. Drinkware, Tableware, Serving, Kitchenware and Homeware all mean roughly the same thing, so nobody knows which holds the mugs.
On a phone it's worse. What actually happens:
Four taps, and you can't see a single category name until the fourth. Just over four in ten of your visitors are on a phone — around 390 landed on your shop this year with no idea it was sorted into sections at all.
Why it matters
They weren't confused. They were browsing a shop with no visible aisles.
Proposed — six sections instead of nine
Each means something different, and each uses your word alongside the customer's. And rather than a Filter button, these become plain links in a row above the products — visible immediately on a phone. Sophie has no filter at all.
"Interested in becoming a stockist? Click here." — 127 people saw it this year. One clicked. It's not a form, it's an email link. On a phone, or in Gmail in a browser, those usually do nothing. It also puts your email where spam robots read it.
A half-finished form is live, still called "Contact(WIP) Form 3 3 3". 99 people have seen it. It has never captured anything.
Why it matters
That's your wholesale enquiries, going nowhere.
Your real contact form is the best-performing thing on the site — 13.5% of people who see it fill it in, twelve enquiries this year with nothing pointing at it.
Your hero line: "Handcrafted stoneware & porcelain for the table & home celebrating the beauty of simple forms."
Genuinely lovely writing. But it contains none of the words people search: ceramics. pottery. Sydney. Australian. handmade. tableware.
Sophie's homepage does contain them, which is why she's number 7 in Australia for "Melbourne ceramics" — from a homepage, not a clever product page.
Why it matters
Google can only recommend you for things it can tell you do. Right now it can't tell.
Suggested description for GoogleHandmade ceramics and pottery from a Sydney studio. Hand-thrown stoneware and porcelain tableware, vases and one-of-a-kind vessels by Australian ceramic artist Katherine Mahoney.
Not poetry — but it's the sentence that gets you found. Your beautiful line stays on the page underneath.
Squarespace scores your site:
Pages with a description
Photographs with a description
The first is the sentence Google shows under your name in search results. Half your pages don't have one, so Google writes its own.
The second is a short description attached to a photo. This one matters a lot for you — people search Google Images for pottery constantly, because it's a looking-at-things purchase. With one image described out of twenty-five, your photographs are essentially invisible there.
Both have an "Add" button right in that panel. An afternoon's work, free, best return on effort on the list.
And: there's a section checking how your business appears when someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation. Yours has never been set up, and Squarespace has given you 30 free credits. There's also a file telling AI tools what your site is about — yours is empty. We've drafted one.
This is the writing on your Ramen Bowl page, in full:
"Designed in a more tradition bowl shape these versatile individual bowls work perfectly with Ramen or your favourite soup." — plus two lines about colours and measurements.
And this, from your FAQ, is about the same bowl:
"My ramen bowls actually started with a passing comment from someone looking for the 'perfect soup bowl'."
That second sentence is the one that sells the bowl. It's the register Sophie Moran writes in throughout, and on your site it's parked behind a nav item people only click when something's gone wrong. A short story about how a piece came to exist does more work than a list of measurements — it tells someone why this bowl and not a bowl from anywhere else.
What it could say instead
Now
Ramen Bowl
A$69.00 · Sold out
Designed in a more tradition bowl shape these versatile individual bowls work perfectly with Ramen or your favourite soup. Various colours. 17.5cm wide x 8cm high.
Could be
Ramen bowl — hand-thrown stoneware
A$69 · Only 2 available · Flat-rate postage $18 anywhere in Australia
This one started with a passing comment. Someone told me they were after the perfect soup bowl — deep enough to hold a proper serve, light enough to lift with one hand. I threw a few, and this is the shape that stayed.
Thrown on the wheel in stoneware and fired to 1260 degrees, so it's dishwasher and microwave safe. The glaze is one I make in the studio. 17.5cm across, 8cm high — noodles, soup, or a generous breakfast.
Made by hand in St Ives, Sydney. No two are quite identical.
Nothing in the right-hand version is invented — every sentence of it is already somewhere on your site, in your FAQ or your About page. It's a move, not a writing job. Do it for the six or eight pieces people look at most and leave the rest.
Section five · Being found
Google works out who to recommend partly by looking at who else on the internet points at you. A link from a respected website is a bit like a reference from someone Google already trusts. Lots of good references, and Google starts putting you in front of people. None, and you're invisible no matter how good the pots are.
Genuine links to your site
Genuine links to Sophie Moran's
That's most of the difference between you appearing in searches and not. And the encouraging part is that almost none of hers is clever marketing — it's things you already do, or would happily do.
Garland Magazine covers craft across Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Sophie has a link from them.
You apprenticed in Kent in 1974, worked in Hong Kong, judged the Hong Kong Biennale, and taught at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. That's a genuinely unusual story and exactly what a magazine like that publishes.
It has to come from you — an editor can tell the difference immediately between a maker writing about her own work and someone doing it on her behalf. Adam will help draft it and find the right editor, but your name goes at the bottom.
The Design Files — Australia's biggest design site — deserves the same treatment.
One thing not to worry about. Your site has picked up a few dozen junk links from spam websites overseas. We checked Sophie's — she has the exact same ones. It's automated, it happens to everybody on Squarespace, Google ignores it, and trying to remove it usually does more harm than good. Leave it be.
One good thing we found: the Royal Botanic Gardens website links to you. That's the single most valuable link you have. Do you remember what earned it?
Section six · Your list
You have 236 contacts — 109 who've bought something, 83 who asked to hear from you. Squarespace still shows its "your audience is waiting" prompt, which means no email has ever gone out.
Why it matters
Tableware is something people collect. Somebody buys two bowls; six months later they want the plates, or a gift. At the moment they have to remember you and come looking.
Both makers you admire run on email — Jono has "Newsletter" as one of only four menu items. And Jono Smart has almost no presence on Google at all. Three search terms, no traffic. His whole business runs on his mailing list and Instagram. He doesn't need Google because he has an audience.
One list, one place. Squarespace already does email campaigns, free at your numbers, connected to your shop. No need for Mailchimp or anything else.
Three leaks
When someone asks to be told a piece is back in stock, they don't join your list. There's a setting and it's switched off. They put their hand up and then disappear. One click.
Your contact form may not be adding people either. About a hundred form submissions over two years, but subscribers only grow around three a week. We'd like to check where those people are going.
Markets. You're still doing markets and fairs, and there's no way for anyone to join your list there. Those are the warmest people you'll meet all year — they've held the work. A printed QR code on the stall, or a paper sign-up sheet, might bring in more names than the website does.
On consent. We can't simply add everyone we find. Australian spam rules need people to have agreed in some form. Anyone who's bought from you or ticked the box at checkout is fine. Someone who handed you a card about a wholesale order is less clear. Where we're unsure, better to send one short personal note asking if they'd like to be on the list, and only add those who say yes.
Every way someone could join, and what the first email should say →
Section seven
Nothing goes live without you seeing it. Almost all of it is free.
Owner key: A Adam · K Katherine · A+K both
Adam only. Nothing touches your site.
The free switches. All reversible.
What we expect: the share of people adding to basket roughly doubles, from 2% to about 4%.
These are estimates, not forecasts. They're worked out from three things: your own two years of sales and visitor numbers, the traffic already arriving at the site, and what comparable makers' sites achieve at a similar size. Where we've seen a change work on your own pages, we say so.
These are estimates, not promises. The first two rows we're confident about, because they're fixing things that are demonstrably broken and we have evidence from your own site that they work. The later rows depend on things we can't fully control — whether new pieces find an audience, how quickly the list grows, and whether Google notices the changes. How we arrived at these →
What would make it go faster
The butter dish and a teapot selling well; markets bringing in email addresses; a magazine picking up your story.
What would slow it down
Postage turning out not to be the checkout problem; the list growing more slowly than hoped.
Section eight
Almost nothing.
Working safely. We won't make a practice copy of your site — a copy doesn't bring your products across, so we couldn't test the shop changes on it anyway. Instead, before anything changes, Adam takes a full backup and keeps a written record of every setting he touches. Almost all of it is a switch that can be flicked back in seconds. For anything bigger, like a new homepage, Squarespace lets us build it as a hidden page on your own site — real, but not in the menu until you've seen it.
And one thing that might save you money: Squarespace charges an extra fee on every sale on its lower plans and nothing on the middle ones. Adam will check which you're on.
Section nine
First, please
What does postage come to on a single mug through your own checkout?
Then, when you have a moment
If you want the detail
Nothing here is needed to follow the plan. They're for the moments when you want to know why — or when Adam needs to check something.
Why the numbers say what they say, why the plan runs in that order, and what the end of it looks like. Includes a correction: some of this year's visitor growth isn't people.
Every product, what it's called now and what it should be called instead — with the reasoning, and the two things we'd like to check with you.
The five makers Google puts ahead of you, what's worth taking from each, and the argument for photographing against dark rather than joining the field.
Who to approach and in what order, what to say, and every way somebody could join your mailing list — including the three that don't currently work.
Section ten
We should be clear that the raw material here is strong.
Your About page. You apprenticed at Cranbrook Station Pottery in 1974. You exhibited internationally from Hong Kong. You judged the Hong Kong Biennale. You taught at Hong Kong Polytechnic and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Fifty-two years at the wheel. For comparison, the strongest thing on Sophie Moran's site is that she's eaten off her own dishes for twenty years.
Yours is the sixth item in a ten-item menu, written in the third person like a press release, reached by a button saying "Who is Katherine?"
"Each piece is thrown on the wheel in either porcelain or stoneware clay and fired to 1260 degrees. Plates are made from slabs of clay — rather like making pastry — and hand formed. All glazes are designed and made by me."
"My ramen bowls actually started with a passing comment from someone looking for the 'perfect soup bowl'."
That's exactly the writing that sells handmade work, and it's behind a page people only visit when something's gone wrong.
Your Collabs photography. The plated dishes from Muse Restaurant are the best images on the site by a distance — and that page has no links, no story, and nowhere to go afterwards.
Your best pieces are for sale right now and almost nobody has seen them.
Your best writing is on the page people only visit when something's gone wrong.
Your most impressive credential is six clicks from the front door.
And the one product Google can find is the soap dish, because you happened to give it an obvious name.
The business behind this site is clearly working. The site just isn't — yet.
Findings from 3 August 2026 · Plan from 10 August 2026 · Private — please don't share