This is Part 3 in our series of Daily Golden Nuggets explaining the different types of online product catalogs that retail jewelers could have.
The internet provides unlimited opportunities for marketing, sales, and interacting with your customers. Most internet users have no idea what happens behind the scenes to control a website. This series of Daily Gold Nuggets is trying to shed some light on the back office management of 5 different types of product catalogs that a jewelry store could have on their website. So far, we've explained the easier types to set up.
In case you've joined us in the middle of our conversation we are reviewing the TYPE 3 CATALOG today. Here're the types of catalogs we've identified:
Type 1: Vendor Controlled Websites and Catalogs ( http://bit.ly/rhnsa3 )
Type 2: POS Uploaded Catalogs ( http://bit.ly/oILWca )
Type 3: Simple Manual Product Showcases ( http://bit.ly/q4MJwW )
Type 4: Manual Uploaded Catalogs ( http://bit.ly/n25HPS )
Type 5: Full Manual Catalogs
Note: This is a review of the "product catalog" area of a website only, not a review of all the possible website features.
TYPE 3: SIMPLE MANUAL PRODUCT SHOWCASE
Setup Difficulty: Moderate
Customer's Perception: Desirable examples of what's in the store.
Customer Realization: Disappointment with limited online presentation.
Internet Reach: Local with nationwide potential
SEO Value: Medium - High
We consider this to be another product catalog entry point for jewelers. This usually comes about when a retailer starts with a small initial website and then eventually wants to add a small product catalog as examples of what they carry. This is a small step before (if ever) launching into e-commerce.
If you take this approach, we suggest you select your most popular designers and showcase each with a set of 10 styles. It makes sense to use the 10 styles you reorder because you want your website to represent existing inventory without needing to manually update it all the time.
Organize your product catalog by designer subsection using the designer's name and provide as much detail about them as you can. This would include a bio, photos and jewelry design influences. Display your small catalog of 10 items within each subsection. Ask your jewelry designer for their photo, bio and all the product photography. You want to avoid potential duplicate content so ask the designer to write a unique bio for you rather than just taking it from their press kit.
As you can see, the setup here is a little more difficult than just uploading inventory. You will have to work with your website person/company to create the organization like this. You also need to worry about ease of consumer use.
These little showcases should give you a lot of creative sales control. You should write lengthy descriptions for each and every item. The descriptions need to have both romantic descriptions and technical details about the jewelry. The romance creates desire and the typical technical specs appeal to people who find beauty in what can be measured.
It's these romantic descriptions that will propel your SEO efforts. The more you embellish, the better your website will rank, and we've see designer showcase pages appear high in SERP ranks for many jewelry stores. Sometimes the local jeweler's showcase page is even able to outrank the designer's own website. If the designer's website is poorly constructed, and if you've really embellished your product descriptions, you can compete on a national search level.
With regard to customer realization, we're listing "disappointment with limited online presentation" because the e-commerce shopper will be comparing your small catalog to other national online vendors. The strategy outlined above will create good SEO value on your website and you might find yourself ranking against Overstock.com (and others) for specific designer styles. Those e-commerce shoppers will be discouraged that they were lead to your site and couldn't buy online.
On the other hand, your local search ranking should be very good for the specific designer names. You could easily win the sale of those local customers. You win them over because of the more detailed romantic descriptions on your website and by your service and selection once you get them in the store.
The bottom line of a TYPE 3 online product catalog is that they are moderately difficult to set up, and you need to carefully select re-orderable items to showcase. You have the option to set this up once and then forget about it for a few months until the next season of jewelry comes out.
