It's the holiday season and like most men, I'm going to wait until the last minute to buy my gifts. But I think I'll start looking today. So I open up my web browser and search Google for "jewelry gift for her in Huntington, New York."The first listing is the Facebook page for "Presents of Mind," but that doesn't seem like a jewelry store to me, so I skip it. I then noticed the SERP listing with 5-starts for Frassanito Jewelers. I check them out...
Someone out there is doing that search this holiday season and it's an example of how someone might use, and think through, the search results at this time of year.
Now I'll review the Frassanito Jewelers so you can learn a little about the good, the bad, and the ugly of how to set up your own website.
Here's the website: http://www.frassanitojewelers.com; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.
Their home page looks very clean and simple. It looks like they designed it to fit perfectly on a laptop monitor without scrolling. I think this website would immediately appeal to me if I were looking for an e-commerce jewelry website. With all the jewelry on the home page, the one thing that stands out the most are all the social network icons at the bottom center of the screen. Perhaps I noticed them because they recolored them to match the gray/blue color pallet of the website. Let's check out what they are doing...
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Frassanito-Jewelers/24287933691
They seem to be updating their Facebook page every day. They mostly share links to product pages on their website, but occasionally throw in photos from their store. Good job here!
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/frassanitojewel
It looks like they have their Facebook account set up to feed tweets, with infrequent direct tweets on their own. They have 174 followers as of this writing, but I wouldn't call this successful Twitter use.
Pinterest:
http://www.pinterest.com/frassanito/
They've got a good setup here. They have a variety of Boards that Pinterest users typically engage in, and they even have a special Board for this holiday season called "25 Days of Christmas" here:
http://www.pinterest.com/frassanito/25-days-of-christmas/
They are updating that every day with the same product posting they send to Facebook.
Good job here!
Instagram:
http://instagram.com/frassanito_jewelers
I have to say "Good job here!" just because they are using Instagram. So few jewelers use this social network, and Frassanito is using it daily to post those same products they are posting on Facebook and Pinterest.
Google+:
https://plus.google.com/+Frassanitojewelers/
They're using Google+!!!
It looks like they started using Google+ heavily in November 2013. They're currently using it to post their 25 days of Christmas items just like they are doing everywhere else. These Goolge+ social shares will benefit them more then than they realize right now since Google Search indexes them faster than any of the other networks. Hopefully they will look at their Google Analytics after the season is over.
Yelp:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/frassanito-jewelers-huntington
They've claimed their listing and added a description of their business. They also have 22 reviews, but because of Yelps filtering methods, those review are not immediately visible. I also couldn't help but notice that they didn't update their holiday store hours on Yelp. They took the time to update the hours on Facebook, but not Yelp. Actually, I just went back to check Google+ and found that they didn't update their holiday hours there either.
Although I'm glad to see they are fully using the most popular social networks, they are taking a slightly wrong approach. They should not be posting the exact same information to each network, instead they should think about their audience on each network and what would be best for them. Someone following you on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will get very board if you post the same things across all 3 networks. They might even un-follow you because you use that approach.
What's the best way to figure out what to post to each network? Use it yourself from your own smartphone.
Returning back to the website now...
I clicked on "Our Story" from the top menu to read their about us page. It has a brief history of the store, but nothing about the current owners. I liked the videos they have on that page, but during the holiday rush I don't want to take time to watch the videos.
As a web programmer and website designer, I quickly noticed that their footer only has a copyright statement. There's no link for a privacy policy, no link for terms of service, and no sitemap link. Since they are an e-commerce site I would also expect to see easy to find footer links for their shipping policy and return policy.
As I browsed around the site, I finally noticed a link for "Conditions of Use" at the bottom of their left margin. This page has their return policy, but nothing about their privacy policy.
Without the privacy policy, I have no assurance how they will use my email address. Will they sell it? I'm daring enough to sign up for their email newsletter anyway... Oops, I just tried signing up and got an error message from their iContact signup form. This makes me think they changed a setting but didn't update their website, or maybe they canceled their iContact account and never removed the signup form from their website.
Next I clicked on the "Blog" link on their top menu which brought me to another website...
http://www.dianeandrachel.com/
My immediate question was: "Who are Diane and Rachel and why am I here?"
Remember that the About Us page doesn't give any details of the staff or the owners, so for all I know I just landing on a stranger's blog.
I had to look at the blog bio page to find out that Diane and Rachel are the daughters of the store's founder, but that information should also be included on their real website. Although their blog is attractive and well laid out, it really should be part of their store's real website. They have a small button on the top right of the blog header that says "back to Frassanito Jewelers," but it's way too small to notice. That should be much larger. They also don't update their blog enough. They should do it at least once per month.
That's it for this week's basic review, hopefully there are a few Nuggets you can take away from this one.
FTC Notice: I randomly choose this website and won't be telling the retailer jeweler that I'm doing a review. Unless someone else tells them, they will only find out about this review if they examine their Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. I'm not doing this to solicit business from them, but rather as an educational exercise for everyone. This review is completely impartial and all my comments are listed in the order that I discovered them.
