Can you learn from someone else's mistakes? That's exactly what I hope you'll get out of this Friday Flop Fix. This week, I'm venturing over to Tupelo, MS in search of a retail jeweler that might be making a mistake with their online presence.
This is the result I saw when searching for "jewelers tupelo ms" in Google:
In yesterday's Nugget, I gave you 4 ways to prepare for ecommerce. Long before you get to the ecommerce state, you need to have a perfectly working website that reflects how your business operates and the customer service you provide. To help you achieve that today, I'm giving you 5 ways to improve your website.
Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review here!
This is the weekly #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every Friday, I search for a really bad website in a random town, and provide ideas for how to fix all of its flops.
This week when I searched Google for "jewelers Scottsbluff, NE" I saw these results:
Not much has changed since I wrote that previous Nugget, but I should recap the basics.
What is a Bounce Rate?
I should explain what a bounce rate is for those of you not quite up to speed. This is the percentage of people who visit your website, look at one page, click nothing else, then either close their web browser or c... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
With the 2015 Holiday Season at an end, let's take a look at some website tracking results from the Thanksgiving week through Christmas.
I have a lot of data to from various retail jeweler websites. The set of data I'm referencing below was recorded across retail jewelry websites that have been active with updating their website regularly over the last 12 months. These same websites are also mobile friendly. This includes a combination of retail jewelers and ecommerce sites. Remember, the results show... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I've previously estimated and explained that the customer cost of acquisition for a retail jeweler is somewhere around $75. You can calculate this number by summing up your advertising expense for a campaign and dividing that by the number of new customers you've acquired during that period.
Every business experiences some type of growing pains; these usually have something to do with lack of time, hiring the right employees, and supply and demand of products, but there's also a website growing pain that's very real.
Welcome to the Friday Website Review. In honor of Halloween, I went searching for a spooky or horror related city name in which to find a candidate jeweler to review. Sadly, populated places like Devil's Peek, Hells Corner, and Pumpkinville are nothing more than tourist traps in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than a general store.
I then tried a search for Haddonfield, Illinois, the city portrayed in the Halloween movie series. But as it turns out Haddonfield, Illinois is a fictiti... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I need to jump back to my discussion about Google Website Optimizer in September 2011. In 2012, Google closed down their Website Optimizer standalone product and merged its features into Google Analytics. They now call it Experiments instead of Website Optimizer.
The old Optimizer was designed to handle A/B testing, which is when ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In today's Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show you how to look at your Google Analytics Exit Page report and explain what it is, and steps you can take to analyze it.
This is part of my Practical SEO Guide series with the goal of giving you quick, actionable information to make the search engine optimization of your website a little better.
Get started by logging into your Google Analytics account and navigate your way over to Behavior -> Site Content -> Exit Pages as shown in this animated screen grab:
Apparently Google is turning a few more heads with its recent search engine ranking algorithm changes again. I'm not talking about Mobilegeddon, which will happen on April 21, 2015, but their latest announcement about e-commerce product images.
Google has put a lot of effort into improving how it understands images and the types of images that people would like to se... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every year for the last 5 years, many website programmers and marketing guys have tried to say "this is the year mobile websites will take over," but we've all been wrong. I was so wrong when I said 2010 would be the year of the mobile website; back then, it was just the year of the mobile website hype.
Mobile marketing and mobile websites had to go through a few stages of evolution to get to where we are as of today. As smartphones really started... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Success often leaves footprints. If you want to achieve higher success rates in your business, you can attempt to copy the strategies that similar businesses are using to achieve their apparent success.
As a retail jeweler, you would have to closely examine what your local competitors are doing, particularly if you feel they are more successful than you are. You could study their websites and marketing, but many times the success of a store also depends on the customer service provided by all the staff.
With the 2014 Holiday Season at an end, let's take a look at some website tracking results from the Thanksgiving week through Christmas.
The following data was recorded through more than 100 jewelry related websites. This includes a combination of retail jewelers and e-commerce sites. Results shown here only apply to the jewelry industry.
Holiday 2014 Sessions
Here's a screen shot of my Google Analytics tracking across the retail jewelry websites I'm tracking:
Here are the website tracking statistics from mid-November through mid-December 2014. As usual, these results are pulled from the group of 100+ retail jewelry websites that I monitor and the results might not apply to any other industry.
4-Weeks of Holiday Data
Here's the graphical representation of the sessions I've been tracking:
In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'm showing you the most popular desktop screen resolutions for September 2014 and spanning back 3 years.
Knowing the most popular screen resolutions is great to know if you are redesigning your website, but 'tis not the season to be launching into a redesign. My hope is that this will help you put the final touches on your holiday online marketing.
About This Data
The data presented here was tracked across more than 100 retail jewelry websites. This is com... 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
Welcome to the Friday jewelry website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal for today is to examine a random retail jeweler's website and learn from something they did right or wrong.
I don't plan these reviews out, and I usually write these reviews as I work through the discovery of each site, documenting my first thoughts as well as how different stuff fits together.
This week, I searched for "jewelry stores Kirksville, Missouri" and was given this Google SERP:
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to show you how to read one of the most popular reports in Google Analytics. In my opinion, retail jewelry store owners should know the basics of how good or bad their website is doing, and what might make it better.
When you first log into your Google Analytics account, you will be brought to your Audience Overview page, so let's start there. Here's a snapshot of one of my accounts:
Today I'd like to go over some specific ways you can achieve a bounce rate for your jewelry store website that is lower than the 47% average that I've measured. The ideas here are come directly from websites that have consistently had lower than average visitors bouncing.
Idea One: Increase the number of return visitors to your site.
Getting people to come back to your site again and again is achievable if you simply share pages or product from your website to any of the social networks. Over the last few we... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
What do the following things have in common: kangaroos, shock absorbers, Silly Putty, ping pong balls, checks, and Tigger? The answer is that they all bounce. Kangaroos bounce off the ground, checks bounce off your bank account balance, and Tigger, well he bounces off everything. Of course then there's the "bounce rate" for your website.
A website bounce rate is the percentage of people who found your website in search results, clicked over to your site, but then left your website without clicking on a second page.
Many people talk about search engine optimization as the process to tweak your website so search engines will spider it and index it easily. Hopefully when someone local searches for an "engagement ring" you will appear in the search results.
However, you also need to add a bit of marketing flair when writing your page title tag and the meta description for each page.
In the past I've said that you need to keep your page title tags short in order to have th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.
Do you ever search Google for the phrase "engagement ring" hoping that your website will appear?
What about searching for other phrases like "custom design engagement ring [Springfield]"?
You're probably pretty happy when you see your website appear for your important phrases. Maybe you've even clicked on one of your own links to see where it leads to within your website. After a quick look at your own site you may even click the back button to see your other SERP page competitors.
Take a moment and think about what was just explained. 1. You searched for a phrase. 2. You saw your website in the SERP. 3. You clicked on your own link. 4. You looked at your page. 5. You clicked the back button to look at your competito... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In Daily Nugget #227 we explained the importance of lowering your bounce rate. In that Golden Nugget, we explained that you should try your best to lower your bounce rates as much as possible. You can read the full Nugget here: http://bit.ly/iExxJP
Google interprets bounce rates and uses them to judge the quality of your overall website when compared to particular phrases or topics. Google actually refers to topics as "themes" and that's a common word amongst website SEO professionals.
We've always said, and continue to teach, that you should be publishing educational articles or blog entries on your website. Each additional post increases the overall visibility of your site by giving Google more information to index and provide back out to users.
Next time you log into Google Analytics, take a look at your bounce rate. The jewelry websites we track range between 45% - 55% overall website bounce rate.
If your own bounce rate is below 45% then you are doing a much better job than the average jeweler.
As a reminder, the "Bounce Rate" is a measure of how many people first landed on your website, decided it was ugly/disorienting/wrong color/wrong size/misrepresented/etc. and they immediately click the Back Button in their browser.
Launched in March 2011, Google now gives individual users the ability to block results from your specific website. As first, this feature is not visible on the SERP. It becomes visible when you click one of the results and then click your browser's back button.
When you return to the SERP page you will see a sudden bright yellow... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The way you build your website directly effects how customers will respond to it. A product catalog site will not satisfy customers looking for custom design rings and a website with pages of information about designers will not satisfy customers looking to buy online.
Since Google is a machine, it doesn't exactly know what people are looking for when they search.
Someone searching for "Claude Thibaudeau Rings" might be looking for information or maybe a photo of the ring their friend was wearing; but they could also be searching for a place to buy a ring online.
Since Google doesn't actually know the intent of the searcher, it can only guesstimate results. The search results will return all answers with the best ranking for the phrase "Claude Thibaudeau Rings." Those results could be e-commerce sites, blog website... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google would like to make 1 thing absolutely clear: They do not use your Google Analytics account to help with ranking your jewelry website. However, they do use your Bounce Rate.
The Bounce Rate is a measure of the number of people that visited your website and immediately clicked the back button to leave. If 10 people visit your website and 2 of them click the back button, your Bounce Rate would be 20%.
According to several videos and reports from Google they do use the Bounce Rate of your website as a ranking signal, but they do not get it from your Analytics account. Instead, they are somehow using JavaScript to monitor when someone clicks a link from the SERP, visits your site, then immediately returns back to the SERP.
They track these bounce rates as a measure of quality. Their goal is to provide the most r... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
"...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
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Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review 
The big shopping dates of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed for the 2013 season and the mobile user numbers are in.
Today I'd like to go over some specific ways you can achieve a bounce rate for your jewelry store website that is lower than the 47% average that I've measured. The ideas here are come directly from websites that have consistently had lower than average visitors bouncing.
What do the following things have in common: kangaroos, shock absorbers, Silly Putty, ping pong balls, checks, and Tigger? The answer is that they all bounce. Kangaroos bounce off the ground, checks bounce off your bank account balance, and Tigger, well he bounces off everything. Of course then there's the "bounce rate" for your website.
Many people talk about search engine optimization as the process to tweak your website so search engines will spider it and index it easily. Hopefully when someone local searches for an "engagement ring" you will appear in the search results.
