This is the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I find a random retail jewelry stores and review their website in hopes that we'll be able to learn something from the process. I call this a "Flop Fix" because I specifically look for websites that are making mistakes, i.e. flops, so I can suggest fixes.
Here's the search results I saw this week when I searched Google for "jewelry stores Elko, NV":
This week, it turns out that the first jeweler in the list, Stonecraft Jewelers, with the website http://www.stonecraftjewelers.com is a prime candidate for today's review.
First Impressions
This is what the site looked like when I first visited:
(click to enlarge)
Their first flop is that big white error message right in the middle of their home page. They set up a widget to display their latest news, but it looks like that widget stopped working some time ago . As yet, they haven't removed it. The fix here would have been for them to pay attention to their home page and remove that widget when it broke.
I also don't like that they have a "Coming Soon" message under their testimonials, and I consider this to be a flop as well. Instead of displaying the coming soon message, you should simply hide that area of your page until you are ready to put something there.
When Did You Move?
The home page of the website says they moved to 2560 Mountain City Highway, Elko, NV, but their Google My Business address still shows 1235 Southside Dr, Elko, NV. According to the website archive.org, the "We've Moved" message has been on their home page since March 29, 2014. That's 2 years ago as of this writing!
This is a major flop, especially since so many people use Google Maps for navigation. I can't believe that, over the course of two years, they could not be bothered to update their Google Maps information. According to this screen shot, they haven't even claimed their Google My Business account:
I have to stand on my soapbox for a moment and say how much this aggravates me. I hear retailers complaining about low foot traffic all the time and yet they are blinded by the fact that something as simple as their address and hours on Google Maps is one of the contributing factors to that foot traffic increase or decrease. Recently, I even built a website dedicated to explaining how retailers could claim their account and update it for free. You can visit that site here: http://www.jewelersgetonline.com/.
Instead of solving the problem, Stonecraft Jewelers posted a moving message on their website home page. I find this sickening.
Social Link Flops
Their home page has social icons for Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. They keep their Facebook account updated daily, but their Twitter account hasn't been touched since March 20, 2013; that's 3 years ago at the time of this writing. You should not publicize your social media accounts on your website unless you are actively updating them; otherwise you're just wasting the time of the potential customers who seek you out.
Their Tumblr account is a complete flop. They deleted it! Upon close investigation, I realized that the broken "Latest News" widget I mentioned above was a link to their Tumblr account. The flop here is not paying attention to your own website and not realizing how one of your online services affected another. The fix is to remove the Tumblr icon from the footer of the site.
QR Codes To Their Apps
It's a nice coincidence that they have QR Codes on their website considering I just wrote about how to use QR codes to save time yesterday. The QR codes on their home page invite me to download their app. This is a good use of a QR code since it allows me to do a quick scan and jump into the app store to download their app instead of spending time searching for it.
Great! Fantastic! Glad to see this here...
It doesn't work. They have 3 QR codes; one for Android, iPhone, and Blackberry, and none of them work. They've deleted the app from all the smartphone app stores but didn't bother to remove these QR codes from their website.
They flopped.
Once again, someone chose to remove their apps, or perhaps stop paying for the app service, and didn't consider how that would affect their home page.
Fix this by removing the QR codes from the footer of the site.
Conclusions
Perhaps the most important lesson from today's review is to realize that how your different business accounts all link together online. Your Google My Business account relates to your business and your social account links bring people back and forth from your website to social media. You have to keep these accounts updated often, otherwise just hide them from your website.
Your customers want updated information, not old information that appears broken.
That's it for this week. Until next time...
FTC Notice: I randomly choose this website and won't be telling the retailer jeweler that I'm giving them these flop fix ideas. Unless someone else tells them, they will only find out about this Nugget if they use Google Alerts or examine their Google Analytics and Google Search Console. I'm not doing this to solicit business from them, but rather as an educational exercise for everyone. This #FridayFlopFix is completely impartial and all my comments are based on previous experience in my website design and marketing agency, and from my personal research data.
