Beautiful Jewelry Web Site Design

"Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder."

We all know that expression. It's introduced to us when we are young through fairy tails and antic-totes. It teaches us that each person has their own personal point of view to view something as beautiful. You might say the sunset with it's red-purplish colors is the most beautiful thing in nature; whereas I feel there is nothing more beautiful than a tall leafless tree blanketed in glistening white right after a calm winter snowfall.

We each have our own point of view, as it should be. But that also means your perceived beauty is not just different than mine, it's also different than that of your customers.

Honestly, I don't think diamonds are that special looking. When viewing a white diamond I still have the attitude of "eh, big deal - it's clear and it reflects light." Maybe I'm a little jaded in that I dabble in theatre lighting design and pure white light is not exciting to me. Give me color over pure white any day of the week! On the other hand I think fancy color diamonds are really nice. Yellow diamonds, pink diamonds, blue diamonds... black diamonds are my favorite.

So what's your point of view? What is your favorite type of diamond? Post a comment and let me know, in the mean time I'll continue with my commentary of beauty and beholders.

If we all have different tastes in jewelry and what makes it beautiful, wouldn't you think the same holds true for websites?

I personally like any website using the #990000 color. That's a medium shade of red. Many retail jewelry store owners like black websites with white text. Many jewelers have told me they feel you can show your jewelry more elegantly on-line if the background is black.

Would it surprise you if I told you that most internet users associate websites with dark and black backgrounds as gaming or hacking websites? Take a look at the Playstation website to see what I mean.

Whereas websites with white backgrounds are immediately trusted. Banks understand the concept of trusted color association and intentionally create white background websites. Bank of America, Capital One and Wells Fargo are three fast examples of white websites. If you come across a bank with something other than white please post it below; I'd love to see them.

When the time comes for you to design your website you shouldn't think in terms what's the most beautiful jewelry web site design, but rather you should consider how your website will be perceived and how easy it will be for your customers to use.

Generally accepted "standards" have evolved in many aspects of human lives because one company came up with a good idea and everyone else followed it. I wonder which electronics company was the first to put the power button at the top of a remote control. Who knows? But it's a general standard of daily life and we all have an instinct to look at the top of a remote control for the TV/DVD power button.

I've seen some interesting jewelry web site design standards evolve. People click on your Contact Us and Directions pages more often that most other pages. So put those in the top right of the page where users can find them quickly. There is statistical data to prove that location. Another interesting statistic we've tracked it to create a separate pages called "Store Hours." We discovered that people are looking at the Contact Us and Directions pages for actual store hours, and when we split that information apart we can measure exactly how many people go to your site simply to get your hours.

Will your website be "beautiful" if you have 3 links at the top right saying Contact Us, Directions, Store Hours? Honestly it depends how you integrate those words into the design. But it's better to make a link look like a link and a button look like a button. Use underlining on links an effect on a button so it doesn't look flat.

Form vs. Function is really what you need to decide. I can spend all day giving you telling you about all the statistical examples of what is right and wrong, but that's not what I really want you to take away from this post.

I simply want you to realize that your perception of a beautiful website is different than that of your customer's. I also want you to realize that you will alienate your customers (and detriment your profits) if you strive for a beautiful jewelry website without also researching how efficiently your customers will use it, or how they will perceive it.