This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of today's review is to take a critical look at a random retail jeweler's website in hopes of finding something we can all learn from.
At the start of each review, I launch a new Google Chrome incognito window. This allows me to search for a jewelry store without any influence from my previous search history or personalized results.
Searching Google for "jewelers Chandler AZ" returns these results:
The top ranked jeweler has a 5.0 Google review rating with 16 online reviews. This very uncommon to see a perfect 5-star rating for any business, and most of the time, it looks unnatural.
I certainly can't pass up a jewelry store name like Coffin and Trout Fine Jewelers, so let's take a look at their website here:
http://www.coffinandtrout.com
This is what the home page looked like when I visited:
(click to enlarge)
I have to admit, I'm chuckling at the name of this store. Thankfully they spelled it out right away in the first sentence of their Our Story page with "In 1984, Randy Coffin and David Trout started their business..."
Speaking of 1984, I'm also laughing at the copyright in the footer of every page because it says "Copyright © 1984- 2015." Normally these copyright dates refer to the years the website has been online. It's assumed that the information you publish on the website is original at the time it's published.
Somehow their website copyright is prior to the December 25, 1990 creation date of the WorldWideWeb Web Browser, the world's first web browser. I have to assume that they have jewelry designs on their website that date all the way back to 1984. I have to say that the '84 date simply looks like a mistake.
Throughout their website, they consistently use "Coffin & Trout" as their branded name, yet the name shown in the Google SERP above shows "Coffin and Trout." The difference, of course, being that the word "and" is spelled out. That's a wise move on their part because Google will properly match "and" to their name in the SERPS, but the "&" might cause inconstant results.
I find myself quite impressed with the photography on their website. I started at their Collections page shown here:
(click to enlarge)
All of their product pages look something like this:
(click to enlarge)
Other than their own jewelry designs, I can't find any other jewelry designer mentioned on their website. Normally I would not recommend this, but they obviously have a large selection of different jewelry designs that they make in all categories.
Although I still feel the 1984 copyright in their footer is a bit silly, I do understand their zealous use of copyright statements all of their website. They've even used a JavaScript to disable users from right clicking and downloading their photos. While that tactic is out of date, it's well-intentioned. The non-expert will not be able to grab the image, but trust that definitely it can still be done. On a mobile device, you can just hold your finger down on the image, and you are invited to save the image with no hesitation.
By the way, even though they are attempting to block the ability for someone to right click and save, they are allowing users to share their products to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+. Certainly people will swipe their product photos from those social sites faster than they would through the C&T website.
The product image in the screen shot above shows the C&T logo and the message "Design copyright by Coffin & Trout," however, that logo and message are not actually part of the photo. They are overlays on the website. The actual photo shared to social media doesn't have either.
Recommendation here would be to imbed that overlay into the actual image. That way the copyright would carry through to all the social networks.
One of the oddities that bothered me with this site is the "VIEW CART" link in the header. I don't see any evidence of an e-commerce site, and the product catalog has only the option to add items to a wish list. I feel that link is misleading and I would remove it.
I found their blog nestled under the "Media" section of their site. A blog is supposed to help build interest in a website and should not be hidden. Perhaps they could remove that View Cart link in their header and replace it with a "blog" link.
At the time of this review, their last blog post was August 28, 2014. That was about 6 months ago. They had been blogging every month from July 2013 through August 2014, then they stopped. They stopped just when it seemed like they were building momentum with the blog.
Recommendation here would be to move the blog from http://blog.coffinandtrout.com to http://www.coffinandtrout.com/blog and put that link in the header where it can be found. This will help Google better associate the blog with the website and make it easier for users to find too.
That's it for this week's review; I'll see you next time.
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.
