In this week's edition of the Friday Website Jewelry Website Review, I'm beginning my search in "jewelers morgan city, la" to find a website review candidate. I go through these website reviews every Friday as a way to monitor and show you what's happening in the world of jewelry websites. I never know how the review will turn out, but the hope is that something is learned.
Here's the Google SERP for Morgan City:
For the purposes of these reviews, I always choose the higest ranked jeweler in the SERP. In this case, that's Klutts Jewelers and their website:
http://www.kluttsjewelers.com/
This is how the home page looked on a desktop computer:
(click to enlarge)
This is how it looked like on a smartphone:
Immediately apparent, the top menu is much wider than the body of the website. The menu and the header are cropped from view on the smartphone.
Way Behind...
I have to point out that it is April 8, 2015 as I write this review, yet the Klutts home page has two huge ads for Valentine's Day.
Neither of the ads link to inside pages but looking closely I see that one says visit mybridalbells.com and the other says visit ROLdiamonds.com.
You should never put ads on your home page that don't link further inside your site, and ads like these should have been cropped to remove those other website addresses.
Still new?
Their About Us page (http://www.kluttsjewelers.com/about.php) shows 4 photos of the inside of their store with the message "Visit us today at our new location at 924 Seventh Street - next to Joes Boots"
The time stamp on that page is October 2, 2014, so that's not too long ago, but I recommend that you never use phrasing like "our new location" or any other terminology that could appear outdated very quickly. It was definitely not their new location after more than one seasonal change.
Website Plug-Ins
Klutts is using IFRAME website plug-ins for their Bridal page, Diamonds page, and their Class Rings page. Each one of those pages opens a different website within an IFRAME window.
The Bridal page uses the increasingly popular Gabriel & Co plug-in that we see on many websites today.
The Diamonds page uses the popular diamond uniquediamondcollection.com search plug-in from RDI Diamonds.
Here's what the Class Rings page looks like:
(click to enlarge)
Now take a look at a close up of this message I excerpted from that page:
It says "Or select one of our online retailers: Daniel's Jewelers, Joy Jewelers, Birks Jewelers." In addition to the sleazy remarketing tactic Gabriel & Co sometimes uses, explained in this Nugget, you also have to be careful for situations like the one above.
You have no control over what your customers will see through these plug-ins. In this case, Klutts Jewelers will lose a sale if a customer clicks through to one of those other sites.
Most jewelers like these plug-ins because it lowers their own website maintenance requirements, but I prefer to avoid these because you are giving up control of your website and lowering your website ranking ability.
Sloppy Design
I haven't said anything about this design because, frankly, it's ugly and broken. To my surprise, it looks like the programming of this website is done by hand, without the use of a content management system. That means the website can't be updated unless someone edits the HTML code by hand.
This is not the type of site I would use in my portfolio, yet the home page proudly displays the logo for the local Louisiana web design company that created this site.
One of the things that caught me off guard was the LSU Watches page. There are two LSU links in the top menu to the far right. Here's the watch page:
(click to enlarge)
As you can see, that page has a plain white background with an LSU Tigers Collection header and photographs of all the watches.
There's no mention of Klutts Jewelers anywhere on this page, indeed, it seems like a completely different website.
I look at this and I can't help but wonder three possibilities:
1. Is it possible that Klutts cares so little about their site that they don't care what it looks like?
2. Was Klutts unwilling to pay to have this new LSU Watches page created using their design?
3. Is the website company completely inept at their job?
If a website is going to be the first impression for a business, a quick visit to the Klutts Jewelers website would certainly be my last, and I wouldn't bother going to the store.
That's it for this week's review, I'll catch you next week...
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.
