How big is your sheet of paper? How big is the direct mail post card you send? How big is the newspaper ad, or the billboard you paid for?The answer to each of those questions will always include specific dimensions, but the answer I'm actually looking for is "finite."
Each of these advertising mediums has a time and a place, but they all need to attract attention. Most of the time the best attention-getters include good artwork, good layouts, and just the right amount of information. Too much information in a print ad will make it look cluttered and can kill the effectiveness.
Your website home page and other main landing pages within your site need the same care and finesse to balance artwork and information. When first arriving at a website, the customer does not want to be greeted with a proverbial wall of written words. They want to see interesting jewelry.
Good photography is essential for your printed ads and for the landing pages on your website. Since I'm on the topic of photography I'll also remind you that you also need good jewelry photography in your product catalog if you expect to sell online.
Discovering the balance of words and photographs is something you will need to figure out for your own website. Although you can follow guidelines given by other people, your own testing will lead to an answer in the long run.
On the other hand, Google loves to read huge walls of written words. The words are absorbed and saved into their database for matching against the next search. Therefore you need written words somewhere on your website. That can be a blog, services pages, or a special landing page that you create for "more information."
I'm sure you've seen the "read more" links on news websites, and bogging sites. Many business websites also give options to read more. As of this writing Facebook is using "... Continue Reading" instead of the word "more."
Once you continue reading you no longer have the finite limitations imposed by the well designed ads or webpage layouts. You can deluge the reader with information because they asked for it. Website pages with overwhelming amounts of information usually should not be linked from your main top or side navigation, instead you should link to them from the body of your page... with a "read more" link.
Keep this in mind the next time you create a print ad of any type. You should always include a website address on a print ad so the person can continue reading. Don't simply put your domain name on the ad, instead use a specific address. If I were sending a direct mailing out to announce my Ladies Night event I would list my domain name as perosijewelers.com/ladies instead of just perosijewelers.com.
That specific "ladies" landing page would have all the details about the event that the direct mail post card couldn't have in a finite space. I would also include photos from last year's Ladies Night event if they were available, and if they were, then I would include a note saying "Visit this website to see photos from last year's successful Ladies Night."
What I've explained here is how you can start using your website as an integrated part of your overall marketing strategy. You are limited only by your creative ideas and you should not pigeonhole yourself into the standard thinking of most jewelry websites.
