This is the Friday jewelry website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week I'm snooping around the interwebs of Malibu, California in search for a great jewelry store.
My hope is that I'll find a store whose website will lure me in and get me to visit them in person. I never know where these reviews will go when I start, but the hope is that we'll all learn something from it.
I start my search using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode to prevent my own search history from providing personalized results. I expect that the results I see here are similar to what a real customer would see.
My search phrase "jewelry stores malibu ca" yields this Google SERP:
The first two organic results are from Yelp and Yellow pages, so I'm skipping those. I'm also skipping the jewelry shown in the third result because they are not in Malibu, CA.
Within the "local pack" of Google business results, the first one and the last three don't even have websites. That leaves me with CD Jewelry Art, Chrome Hearts, and Kohar by Pearl.
Here's the home page of the CD Jewelry Art website:
http://www.cdjewelryart.com/
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I didn't even need to look at the 2009 copyright in the bottom right corner to know that this website was several years out of date. Music started playing immediately and this is a Flash website.
I then quickly tried to peruse their product catalog but was sadly greeted by the 404 page error:
The About Us page of the site explains that CD Jewelry Art is the brain child of impressionist artist, Rita Asfour. They were making custom jewelry from recycled CDs. But it seems like the website's been abandoned.
I found their Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/CDJewelryArt
It looks like it was also abandoned it back in 2012.
Best advice for them is to relaunch the website without Flash, and kick their social marketing into high gear, that is, if they are still in business. Maybe they ran out of CD's to recycle.
Moving on...
Here's the home page of the Chrome Hearts website:
http://www.chromehearts.com/
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First, in case you don't know, Chrome Hearts is an American luxury lifestyle brand, founded in 1988 by motorcycle enthusiast Richard Stark. But don't expect to learn that from their website!
The only thing you find on their website is a list of stores in the USA, Asia, and Europe. The website also has a link to their Instagram account, http://instagram.com/chromeheartsofficial.
They have 153,000 followers on Instagram but yet it doesn't say who they are other than "Chrome Hearts Official Account."
Chrome Hearts is a large brand that's chosen to allow authorized retailers to advertise online. The important phrase there is "authorized retailers." While I was poking through their Instagram account I found a link to chromeheartsonlines.org. I followed that link because I wanted to take a look at their line.
I was a bit surprised to find this legal copyright and trademark infringement notice:
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The chromeheartsonlines.org was owned by persons in China who were manufacturing and selling counterfeit Chrome Hearts products into the US. Chrome Hearts was awarded $2,000,000 for the trademark infringement and seizure of the offending party's assets and PayPal accounts.
It's very rare to find something like this online. I decided to write about it here because I know a lot of jewelry designers worry about knockoff designs and blatant trademark infringement. There is legal protection for you if you are willing to take action. I saved the 16 downloadable court documents on that page in PDF format because I assume the website will eventually be turned off. Drop me an email if you'd like to see them.
Moving on to the next one...
Here's the home page of the Kohar by Pearl website:
http://www.koharbypearl.com/
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This website design is simple and the home page has an introduction to the designer and an image showing exactly what type of jewelry is being sold.
The website only has a few pages, but it functions easily. This is one of their product catalog pages:
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They are using PayPal's shopping cart and checkout features.
There is some strange functionality with the links for their Shipping page and their Return Policy page; clicking them returns you to the home page and pops open a window for the shipping and return info. That seems a little clunky to me, but otherwise, this could easily be a lucrative site as long as they are getting people to it.
The Kohar site lacks content, which is probably limiting their organic inbound traffic. Although they have a Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+ account, they would need to actively create and share content more than what they are doing right now.
That's it for today's reviews.
Let me know if you'd like an in-depth review of your own website. Other than these short public reviews, I also provide private website reviews and evaluations for those looking help getting a fresh start and on the right path.
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.
