Retail is being redefined every day. Everyone still looks at their bottom line sales, but it doesn't matter anymore if the sales are from foot traffic through the front door or via shipping boxes out the back. While most retail businesses are still struggling to figure out how to bring foot traffic back in the front door, I submit that it's probably easier to learn what it takes to build your ecommerce business and increase the flow of shipped product instead.
Every week, usually on Friday, I write a website review. This week, I'm publishing my review a couple days early because I have something special planned for Friday. The goal of my website reviews is to dissect the online efforts for a random local retail jeweler. I don't bother reviewing the websites for chain stores because I want to illustrate how a local jeweler can improve a similar site like their own.
I find my website candidates by searching Google using the Chrome browser set to incognito mode. Incognito mode is good to use whe... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It seems like only yesterday when it was thought that email addresses would become more important than telephone numbers, and now a website address is more important than both a telephone number and a physical address. A website is the most important representation of your business, yet most jewelers don't treat it that way, and many still view it as an online brochure that needs to be made once, and then forgotten about.
The local retail jeweler is losing a lot of business to the internet. The younger gen... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
When it comes time to consider a new jewelry designer for your store, you have an extra tool at your fingertips to help decide if you should buy into the line or not. However you evaluate a new line, you can also use Google Trends to help you decide. <... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Throwback Thursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today I'm jumping back to Nugget number 55 and the topic of money sites.
The topic of marketing funnels came up during the 2015 JCK Talk on multi-channel marketing. The original idea of a marketing funnel was that you would reach a lot of people with a broad scope... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You can read that article yourself, but in brief, the 6 theories posed were:
People are disappointed... Which I guess means all of us in the jewelry industry are wondering when our industry will rebound from the recession like... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The internet has seen many changes over the last 4 years since I started writing these Daily Golden Nuggets. Undoubtedly, a lot of that change was informed by Google, but really there are a lot of other factors involved.
Through the Great Recession, a lot of easier and less expensive technology emerged that now allows us to access information from anywhere at any time. You could argue that the technology companies forced fancy new mobile devices on us; or you could say that the technology devel... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show and explain the Exit Page report in Google Analytics.
Although this edition can stand alone as a single Nugget, it's actually part of a larger series on holiday marketing and how to analyze that marketing. This is the 8th part to that series. I've included the first 7 in a link list at the bottom of this Nugget.
Google Analytics Exit Page Report
Let's take a look at the Exit Pages report in GA. This is similar to the VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the second part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part I began yesterday explained how you should select a specific set of jewelry items and then write blogs, take photography, and make videos for those items.
The other day, I was helping a business colleague of mine review a website design his customer gave him. For storytelling simplicity, I'll refer to my colleague as Joe and his customer as Sue. Although Joe doesn't work in the jewelry industry, the early steps in designing a website are very similar across all industries, and I bet all website programming companies have the same experience working with their customers.
Sue wants to open a brand new e-commerce store by December 1st. She already owns an old e-commerce store w... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It's the end of one year and the beginning of another, and that means it's time for predictions for next year.
I have 4 predictions for retail jewelry stores for the 2013 year. Here they are...
Prediction #1. The problem of easy tracking of users from point of origin online to an in-store sale will NOT YET be solved. This is one of the largest problems that retail jewelers face; in fact all businesses that use online marketing to increase the business of their brick and mortar stores face this problem. The true ROI ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Yesterday's Nugget was pretty long to get through, but we really needed to explain how to use Google Website Optimizer ( http://bit.ly/qEVCUP ). It is such an important tool and it's easier than Google Analytics. Although, if you are still wondering what you would want to test then today's Daily Golden Nugget is for you.
Some basic things to test with Google Website Optimizer: 1. Captions on images 2. Font size, line spacing, and font family 3. Adding or reducing white space around the site 4. Culling your content or swapping it with bullet points 5. Font and link colors, underlined or non underlined links 6. Button sizes and colors 7. Jewelry photography methods using different background other than pure white 8. Headlines 9. Repositioning your call to action message<... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This Daily Golden Nugget is probably a little more advanced than most others. Thankfully, though, it's not too technical because the Google tool we're going to explain takes care of all the confusing tech stuff.
We want to introduce you to the world of website split testing, also known as A/B testing.
As we've said in the past, your website is never really complete. You need to keep working on it to improve your conversion rates, lower your bounce rates, and overall increase your sales. But other than simply watching the daily sales reports, how do you know if your website efforts are getting better?
The answer is A/B testing, and with it you can create 2 variations of the same web page and have Google run its magic until the better of the pages appears.
"...articles are easy to follow and seem to have information one can use right away." -Ann, Gallery 4, Hamden CT
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
It seems like only yesterday when it was thought that email addresses would become more important than telephone numbers, and now a website address is more important than both a telephone number and a physical address. A website is the most important representation of your business, yet most jewelers don't treat it that way, and many still view it as an online brochure that needs to be made once, and then forgotten about.
Last week, Rob Bates, News Director for JCK wrote an interesting article with 
It's the end of one year and the beginning of another, and that means it's time for predictions for next year.
