I can only describe Cindy Edelstein as a tour de force within the jewelry industry whose presence can't be replaced. In the shadow of the announcement that Cindy had passed away at age 51 on Sunday, January 24, 2016, I sat in disbelief at the reality of losing a dear friend, and watched as a deluge of tears and loving comments flooded Facebook during the next several hours that evening.
As I looked at the shared photos and loving tributes, I noticed that Cindy always had an uncompromising smile and obvious joy to be with who she was with at that exact place and time. The title of Barbara Palumbo's tribute post describes the situation best: "VIEW FULL ENTRY
The 2015 JCK Talks "How the Game Is Changing: Big Data in Retail" with moderator Mike Lees and panelists Tony Glowacki, Sam Mallikarjunan, Ara Darakjian, Monica Ermacora.
Here's our collection of blog and social media coverage of that event:
The 2015 JCK Talks "The Power of Blogging" with Host Diane Wara-Arias, and bloggers Monica Stephenson, Danielle Miele, Barbara Palumbo, Katerina Perez.
Here's our collection of blog and social media coverage of that event:
The 2015 JCK Talks kicked off with the "BEST OF THE BEST Event" with speakers Shane Decker, David Brown, Kate Peterson, Peter Smith, and Diane Warga-Arias.
Here's our collection of blog and social media coverage of that event:
While most people were relaxing during the 3-day Labor Day weekend in the states, I had to use that time to do a complete upgrade to the jwag.biz website.
Server administration and website upgrades are always tricky business. For very active sites that stuff needs to be carefully planned for when the site might have the lowest usage. Unfortunately the jwag.biz site has continual usage because of its broad audience.
The last time I did an upgrade to jWAG upgrade was in 2010. Similar to a shoemaker having holes in his own shoes, the jwag.biz website had become my own worn out shoe. The site is huge. As of this morning there are 1375 pages of content on the site. That's not a lot when you compare that to a product catalog site with 3000 products, every one having its own page. But this is a blogging site where ... VIEW FULL ENTRY
Back in early 2011 I started following the online exploits of one Mike Michalowicz, an author with an unconventional writing style, and an even more unconventional book about entrepreneurship titled The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, or TPE for short. That book contains a lot of amazing, straight forward business advice, and a bit of toilet bowl humor.
At first I thought I saw a cat, then a tree stump. No... it really was a garden gnome!
Google honored the 129th birthday of the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach with an interactive doodle showing various ink blots.
We called them "Rorschach tests" when I was young, and I was always afraid I was going to fail it. Some time later it was more common to just call them "inkblot tests." Perhaps Rorschach was too difficult for Americans to say?
Take the Cost of Doing Business Survey to Benchmark & Improve Your Company’s Financial Performance – and have a chance at $500
Participate in Jewelers of America’s Cost of Doing Business survey and receive customized Performance Analysis Report free
Jewelers of America – the national trade association for businesses serving the fine jewelry retail marketplace – is seeking participation in its annual benchmarking survey of retail jewelers, the Cost of Doing Business Survey, through July 15, 2013. Participants will have a chance to win $500. Data from this survey informs Jewelers of America’s Cost of Doing Business Report, the most complete financial benchmarking resource available to retail jewelers in the U.S. The confidential survey is easy to complete and provides invaluable benchmarking benefit... VIEW FULL ENTRY
I subscribe to every jewelry industry news related email, feed, or social profile that I come across. It's a lot of information daily and I admit that I can't consume it all, but I do look at the headlines. When I see something that would be of interest to my clients I take the time to read it.
I usually read the INSTORE Worksmart emails every morning because they are short and I like to see what they are recommending. Sometimes the daily tips are good, most of the time I find that they are simple reminders of what jewelers have already heard at trade show seminars.
Reminders are good.
Sometimes those Worksmart tips are bad, and I usually just shake my head.
Today's tip (shown below) was so bad that I had to stand up and say STOP! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!?
Since I spent a lot of time covering Landing Pages in 2012 I would like to present the top 10 Daily Nuggets that attracted website visitors. This is the list of Nuggets people most often landed on, which also could mean that these are the top 10 topics that jWAG helped people with in 2012.
Surprisingly enough, none of these Nuggets were written in 2012. The first one on the list was written in 2010 and the rest were all written in 2011.
July 27, 2010 What are those square dot-like bar codes becoming so popular? I couldn't be more proud of this Daily Golden Nugget. Why? Because this is actually Nugget #2 that I wrote from a hotel room while vacationing around France. I had been dabbling with QR Codes myself since 2007, but few people had smartphones back then and only techo-geeks would even attem... VIEW FULL ENTRY
An interesting thing happened to the jWAG site in 2012 after we hit our 500th Daily Golden Nugget. The Google spider started visiting our website at a rapid pace, and our visitor counts increase dramatically. On most days the Googlebot spider will visit our latest Daily Golden Nugget at least 30 times in 24 hours.
Here's a list of the top 10 most visited Daily Golden Nuggets for 2012 according to our own Google Analytics tracking:
July 3, 2012 Google Free Merchant Center is Now Paid Shopping Google announced in 2012 that their free Merchant Center system would transform into a paid advertising model called Google Shopping. Those of you with automated inventory uploads from your website to the Merchant Center would have to change things around and start paying for yout products to appear in the SER... VIEW FULL ENTRY
On September 21 Apple released it's iPhone 5 and iOS 6 with a lot of fanfare. On the same day all around the world millions of people picked up their new phone and immediately started playing with it.
Apple was touting the new Apple Maps which would now provide spoken turn-by-turn directions. Unfortunately this new Maps App turns out to be a complete dud, to the point that the CEO of Apple issues a public apology for the disastrous results.
The previous versions of iOS (the operating system that runs on the iPad, iPod, ... VIEW FULL ENTRY
Looking back over 2011 I'm happy to see the increase in popularity of the jWAG Daily Golden Nuggets. My team and I have tried various formats ranging from simple SEO ideas, to marketing lessons, to an entire series relating to the holiday season.
We get positive feedback on all the formats, and we don't yet know what you guys prefer most. Here now are the 10 best of 2011 Nuggets as measured by our own tracking and Google Analytics.
July 28, 2011 "Meta Descriptions are Your Online Jewelry Window Displays" Increasing the popularity of your website now goes well beyond the basic search engine optimization techniques, but as Google's machine learning techniques have improved we've had to think way beyond the number of times a phrase is mentioned on a page, your page title, and whether you use the ... VIEW FULL ENTRY
Take a look at the product catalog. The photos are compelling, the descriptions are completely alluring. You better turn on a stop watch before clicking that link because time will FLY!
This website has previous successful history because it's a PR5, but the Alexa ranking in the past 4 days has gone through the roof to the 18,471 most popular website in the USA.
There was a 1200% rise for "stauer jewelry" in search, which is how I just found it in Google Insights.
Takeaways: Photos: Basically... another very successful site that does not use white backgrounds Descriptions: Wow... everything has a story!
Avoid weasel words like may, might, could... WHY? Because they suggest to your customer that you’re not confident in what you're saying. H... VIEW FULL ENTRY
It's July 26, 2011 and I'm thinking the jewelry industry needs to be shaken up. Either a shake up or a wake up, but I'm not exactly sure how to accomplish either.
I've spent eight progressive years working with jewelry stores and jewelry manufacturers and developing online marketing for jewelers and general jewelry websites. I'd like to explain what I see about the industry and why I think it's being held back from technological progress when so many other industries have already taken 1000 steps forward almost overnight.
The first problem I see is the general lack of technology interest that retail store owners have. I know many jewelry retailers that are still using simple cash registers while maintaining their inventory by hand. Others use point of sale software, but many use it ineffectively without understan... VIEW FULL ENTRY
I've decided to bring in the New Year with a pretty challenging task over in the jWAG offices. I'm riffling through our collection of webmaster and SEO magazines, re-watching hours and hours of training videos and pouring over our own mountain of what is now 8 years of analytical data.
What's my goal? I'm compiling a massive list of SEO techniques and directions.
Honestly, with our recent realization of the incorrect usage of rel=nofollow that we mentioned in yesterday's Daily Gold Nugget, I realized I needed to compile a book of verified SEO notes. Sort of like an SEO training and consulting book to rule them all!
For a long time now my philosophy has been "think for yourself, question authority." Basically that means you should not blindly trust anything that someone tells you if there is at all the... VIEW FULL ENTRY
I have many colleagues within the internet marketing business.
Many times I participate in forums where they talk about "spinning" articles in order to create more content on the web with links back to their websites. I've been saying for quite some time that all this spinning is nothing more than spam website content and eventually someone will come up with a way to filter it.
So INSTORE Magazine is supposed to be the current industry best source for information, right? Every jeweler we know swears by the magazine for its fresh take on things and business worthy information.
Unfortunately, they are a print magazine, and that means by the time their magazine is mailed out they run the risk of their information being out of date. Staff writers tend to do what they were trained to do. That is to say, when they need input on a topic they seek out sources for information, except there's just never enough time to provide investigative reporting or to cooperate their first source.
Let me add another caveat here before I tell you why I'm upset. I do enjoy my monthly infusion of INSTORE Magazine information, and I've had the pleasure of and editorial and interviews with Trace Shelton. I also ... VIEW FULL ENTRY
Matthew A Perosi provides 3 examples of how you can use Google AdPlanner to find the best websites to run your PPC campaigns on. Thank you to Kendra Weinman from Manhattan, NY, USA for the question. This is part of a series of videos records in Nice France discussing online marketing for jewelry stores. The Jeweler Website Advisory Group provides straight forward, easy to understand, and actionable examples through it's educational information via video, eBooks, audio and daily email lessons.
I considerable myself lucky with all the experiences I've had in my travels. I've never been stranded at an airport, and if my flights have been delayed or canceled it was easy enough to get on the next one.
I've never been stuck out on the tarmac for 4 hours waiting to take off, and recently while millions of people were stranded due to a volcano, it was easy enough for me to extend my stay in beautiful Nice, the South of France.
In fact the worst experience I ever had was an extra 4 hours stuck in a plane at the gate in Newark, NJ before an already long 10 hour direct flight to Hawaii. The plane broke and they wouldn't let us off, but they gave us extra food and open bar (those little bottles are so cute).
Today I'm writing this from my iPad at 33,000 ft just passing over Epernay, France. I'm not o... VIEW FULL ENTRY
Because the Google Maps feature is so much more than getting printable driving directions from your computer.
Smart cell phones can download a mobile version of Google Maps which will lead customer right to your front door. Once your Google Places account is set up it is tied directly into the features of Google Maps. Then, whenever someone is in your neighborhood your jewelry store will appear as a little red pin on the map whenever someone searches for "jewelry."
Better yet, the person could be anywhere in the world planning a trip to your town, yet when they search for "jewelry" they well still see your little red ... VIEW FULL ENTRY
A thoroughly satisfied customer of Confer's Jewelers in Bellefonte, PA took the time to rave about the service, staff, selection and value they always encounter when shopping there.
In a glowing review, this customer discovered how knowledgeable and trustworthy Bella Jewelers of New Milford, CT is when presented with finding the perfect diamond to go in an heirloom setting.
If you're trying to find a new line to carry in your store I whole heartedly recommend Mark Schneider Designs. But my recommendation does not come because of the countless awards they have won (which you can see here) or the quality, or price point or anything else you might consider as a retail jewelry store owner.
My recommendation comes strictly on the basis that they know what they are doing with online advertising. Now, that's not even to say that I am looking at their website, or following them on... VIEW FULL ENTRY
Our course on retail jewelers Learning the Basics, Lesson 2, Website Vocabulary has been posted. There are 54 very important website terms explained in great detail.
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 reflec... VIEW FULL ENTRY
On Monday this week I received an email from Tony Seideman. He's doing an article for Colored Stone Magazine about how jewelers should design and build their web sites.
I have a telephone call scheduled for this afternoon, but before that he asked me the following questions:
This email cam to me tonight. This is rather typical of the questions people ask me and it's worth while to post the answer here for everyone.
Hello Matt, I had your email address from a while ago when we met.
I would like to create a website using one of your templates. I have never made a website before so all of your help is appreciated. You have so many templates available so what I want to do is recommend a site that I would want mine to look like and you can let me know if you have any similar. A site that I like is:
http://www.oroking.com/
The only difference I am looking for is I wouldn't want the categories on the front page (at the bottom with the jewelry pictures) to be at the bottom. I would want those in the middle where currently they have their logo and new arrival... VIEW FULL ENTRY
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
Back in early 2011 I started following the online exploits of one 
At first I thought I saw a cat, then a tree stump. No... it really was a garden gnome!
