In honor of the jewelry shows in Tucson, Arizona this week, I decided to search for a website review candidate in that area. I began my search with the phrase "jewelry stores tucson az" and saw these results on Google:
What's good and what's bad? What works and what doesn't work? This is what I try to reveal every Friday as I work through my Flop Fix website reviews. I always start them with a Google search in a random town around the U.S. in search of an independent retail jeweler that could use a little help while also allowing me to publically explain what can be learned from their mistakes.
This week, I began my search for "jewelers Honesdale, PA" and saw these results:
It's time for the weekly case study of a website that's pretty old and in desperate need of a makeover. I call these weekly posts my Friday Flop Fix review. During these reviews, I look for websites that are implementing search engine optimization strategies poorly, or have poor website designs and I suggest ways to make them better.
This week, I searched Google for the phrase "jewelers Zanesville, OH" and was shown these results:
Welcome to my weekly Flop Fix website review. I dedicate my Friday Golden Nugget posts to reviews of randomly chosen jewelry websites. The review candidates are randomly chosen through a Google Chrome incognito search for jewelers.
This week, I searched Google for "jewelers Christian County, KY" and was given these results:
Last week, I went shopping for a water proof iPhone case; something that would be good enough to protect the phone while canoeing on a river. After a bit of searching at the local mall, I found a potentially good case made by THULE. Due to its price, the THULE Atmos X5 case was locked in one of those anti-theft store packages that covered most of the important details. Before buying it, I needed to make sure it was really waterproof rather than just splashproof, and to what dep... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Your customers and online followers will eventually become familiar with the routine and presentation of your content. Your content, and how you post it online, eventually becomes part of your brand's positioning, which is why planning ahead is so helpful for building that brand identity. The routine is just as important as the visual look because eventually your followers, whether paying customers or just readers, will expect things from you.
This is the last Daily Golden Nugget where I'll dive deeply into specific keyword phrases I collected during the 2015 Holiday Season. I've presented a lot of information over the last 30 days and I could spend another month sifting through it, but this stuff does get boring after a while when there's no specific goal in mind. That's an important thing to remember; it's best to perform your keyword research when you have a specific goal in mind. Every time I grind through keyword data, I seem to lose an... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week I seek out a website that needs some help, and I make improvement suggestions. Most of the time, I simply do a random Google search for a jewelry store, sometimes I come across a store randomly during work, and sometimes one of my friends sends me a website that perplexes them.
This is the Friday Flop Fix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each Friday, I search for a website that isn't living up to its full potential, and I give suggestions on making it better; my fixes for their flops. I started my search today with the query "jewelers Rolla, MS" and received this as a result:
This is my weekly #FridayFlopFix website review where my goal is to find a website that has a few problems and suggest potential fixes. I start this review with a jewelry store search in a random town and then I quickly look through the search results for websites with problems I can talk about in a terse evaluation like this.
I started my hunt for a candidate website this week with a search for "jewelry highland in." Google showed me these results:
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to April 2012 to the topic of jewelry designer line microsites. Specifically, I need to update my information about <iframes> and how their usage has changed over the 3.5 years since I wrote that original Nugget.
What is an <iframes>?
Iframes are standard HTML tags which allow you to take a website and make them appear within one ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
When was the last time you read your own website? Even though that seems like a simple, even a silly question, can you remember when you last read through your entire website?
If you're like most business owners, you probably haven't read through your website since the last redesign, or worse, since you first launched it several redesigns ago.
No doubt that your business has changed since your website was last launched. Here are some simple examples of things that might have changed in your store that you neglected to change online.
Welcome to this week's edition of the Friday Website review. I'm journeying to Bayside, NY this week in search of my website review candidate. Using Google Chrome, I searched for the phrase "jewelers near bayside ny" and saw these results:
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
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:
In honor of the big jewelry shows in Las Vegas that came to a close on Monday this week, I'm searching around Las Vegas again for this week's website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget.
The internet is a very visual place. Photos, videos, memes, animated graphics, and company logos flood every social network. When used incorrectly, they also create clutter on websites.
One of the methods I use to gauge how often a website is updated is to look at the 3rd party logos used throughout the website. I'm especially critical of search engine optimization companies that tout their modern SEO services next to search engine logos that are more than 10 years old.
Shortly before leaving for the JCK show in Las Vegas this year, I was reading through The Retail Jeweler magazine and reviewing the monthly column I submitted. Magazines editorial deadlines are always more than a month, sometimes two months, ahead of the publication date and I needed to refresh my memory of what I had written.
While flipping through the magazine, I found an ad for The EDGE software. The ad touted that they were voted #1 ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is another edition of the Friday Website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search out a random retail jeweler from around the U.S., and then I review their website.
I never know what I'm going to find when I start these reviews. My hope is that I can illustrate one of my previous Daily Nuggets with a live example.
My search began this week with the phrase "jewelers in Evergreen, CO" and saw this as my search results:
Over the past 5 years, many retail jewelry store owners have asked my opinion about a jewelry designer before deciding to buy into a new line. I always find these questions interesting because they are asking my opinion as a data analyst, rather than a current trends watcher.
You see, you can easily track the popularity of a jewelry designer based on the number of people who search Google for their name or product name. G... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
What's your favorite type of content? Given that content includes written articles, videos, podcasts, photography, and every other type of creative digital experience. There's a labor cost associated with creating a digital experience for your customers, a cost that's not easily understood by small business owners.
There's also a competing value of the content that swings between the long term value to attract quality customers and the short term value of getting a lot of attention. S... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
What is the real value of the content you produce? Should you be creating your own content or hiring someone to do it for you? What about content curation?
This is part 2 of my in-depth answers to those questions. I've identified 6 levels of content and list them here in order of their most valuable to least valuable:
1. Business Owner Creates Content 2. Business Owner Curates Content 3. Business Owner Socially Engages 4. Hire Content Creator or... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There are a few standard pages needed on all websites, like the Home, About Us, and Contact Us pages. Other pages become important depending on the business; a Directions/Locations page is important for a business with a physical location but it's probably useless if your business is 100% e-commerce.
Other common pages for retail jewelers include: * List of Designers * Services * Staff
Once we get past the 7 pages I've already mentioned, the need... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today is the Friday Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this review is to analyze a website for its good qualities, and bad, and to learn from it. Every week I choose a location in the United States from which to pluck a review candidate from.
This week I'm heading over to Albany, Georgia. What I remember most about my own visits to Georgia is the unstoppable kudzu. But today I'm less concerned with vines that grow 1 foot per day because I'm in need of a quality jewelry store.
Technical SEO is certainly something that computer scientists and programmers do best. Even though the technical SEO procedures are important, I don't often not... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'm digging deep into some numbers today to show you an easy way to increase the traffic to your jewelry website.
For the past few years I've been continually tracking the increasing or decreasing effect on visitor traffic when two specific conditions are applied to a jewelry site. The first condition is whether or not there's a jewelry product catalog. The second condition is whether or not the website has designer line pages.
In a recent survey I read that brand names would play an important part in jewelry sales during the Holiday 2012 season. I have a feeling that if we were to look at the surveys for the last 10 or 20 years, we would see similar survey results. Some people prefer to shop brand names and some people don't care.
The difference this year over last year is that social media has further changed the way in which communicate with customers.
Before this holiday season kicks into full speed you should track down... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the 3rd in a series of Daily Golden Nuggets explaining the good and the bad techniques of Designer Line pages on your jewelry website.
As a recap, a "Designer Line Page" is usually a single web page on your site that's dedicated to a single jewelry designer. They are commonly used as landing pages since they (should) include background information about the designer, and general details about the type of jewelry styles that designer creates. The designer page should also have a few high quality photos.
Some jewelers will link a designer line page to the designer's website, but in the past two days we've given you plenty of reasons why that's a bad idea.
Some time in 2008 we started seeing internet savvy designers create stand alone microsites that could be added to a jeweler's website. In this context we're... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In Friday's Nugget we gave you 5 ways you can get customers to your website and 1 very easy way to lose them. The bottom line of Friday's Golden Nugget was our commandment to not link to designer websites. Instead you should do whatever it takes to keep customers on your own site and avoid all "off-site" linking.
Jewelers who do use off-site linking to a designer usually do not have the time or perhaps the ability to include that designer's product catalog on their own site. It seems to make sense to link to the designer, but really, it's bad news.
Our primary concern with all off-site linking is that run the risk of losing your customer to another jewelry store or e-commerce website. But there's also a usability factor to worry about.
When you send someone away from your jewelry website you will disjoint their us... 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
I'm digging deep into some numbers today to show you an easy way to increase the traffic to your jewelry website.
In a recent survey I read that brand names would play an important part in jewelry sales during the Holiday 2012 season. I have a feeling that if we were to look at the surveys for the last 10 or 20 years, we would see similar survey results. Some people prefer to shop brand names and some people don't care.
