In preparation for this weekend's MJSA and JA Expo at the Jacob Javits center in NYC, I'm jumping way, way back to my fifth Daily Golden Nugget from July 30, 2010 about photography. I've written about photography many times since then, written product reviews about the VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to present a photography workshop at MJSA ConFab. Even though I don't necessarily like to be known as "The Jewelry Photography Guy," I seem to be gaining that reputation. After all, this was the 4th time I've enjoyed teaching jewelry photography techniques at an MJSA event.
I'm always being asked the same few questions about photography, which usually includes questions about macro lenses, lighting, and ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review where I do a Google search for an independent retail jeweler in a random town, then review their website.
This week, I'm starting my search with the phrase "jewelry stores in grand fork nd." Every week that I do this, I try to give you my first impressions of every website as I work through it. Just looking at the results given below, I have a feeling this week's review is going to be quite... nasty. Hold on to your seats gang and let's jump in...<... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of the Friday website review, I'm traveling to Shreveport, Louisiana in search of my review candidate. Using the Chrome browser in incognito mode, I searched for "jewelers Shreveport, Louisiana" and saw these SERP results:
In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to analyze the photography of a popular e-commerce jewelry site. In this exercise, I hope to reveal some aspects of photography that you can apply to the photography on your own jewelry website.
For this exercise, I'm going to search Google for the Verragio style INS-7074R. This is a very popular engagement ring style and it's easy to find many different website selling it. What I hope to find is a website that took its own photos instead of using the photos ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday jewelry website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week I'm snooping around the interwebs of Malibu, California in search for a great jewelry store.
My hope is that I'll find a store whose website will lure me in and get me to visit them in person. I never know where these reviews will go when I start, but the hope is that we'll all learn something from it.
I start my search using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode to prevent my own search history from providing pe... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
My journey today began with a search for "jewelry stores Hayward CA." You see, I'm pretending to be a real customer searching for a local jeweler in Hayward. My goal is to examine how the local jewelers in that town stack up in Google search, take a look at their websites, and see what can be learned by the experience.
This is my weekly retail jeweler website review, but this week I'm changing up the format a little bit.
Here's a snapshot of the business listing I saw in the Google SERP for that search: VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
During the summer of 2012, more than 12 months ago now, Google dropped support for Flash websites in its Android 4.1 OS. Did you know that?
Actually, it was Adobe that decided not to support the Android OS, and Google just followed their lead. By default, this means that you can no longer see any type of Flash video or website widget on an Android smartphone or tablet. (Steve Jobs said years ago that Apple was never going to allow the iPhone to see Flash videos, which has remained true al... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
One of the best ways to hide your website from Google is to create it in Flash. Of course hiding from Google also means you are hiding from website visitors. Sound like a good business strategy? Of course it's not.
Since 2003 we've seen the popularity of Flash rise and fall. Google and Adobe even tried to work together so Google could read the words inside of Flash files. It seems like their joint effort never realized its full potential.
Within the last 9 years, our industry--the jewelry industry--saw many stores set up very beautiful looking Flash websites but later realized that their website yielded no return on investment. Additionally, a very large part of the customer audience could not see Flash on their mobile devices as the popularity of iPhones and iPads grew. Apple's Steve Jobs was always very critical of ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In August 2010 we presented a Daily Nugget about Flash and it's usability with Internet Explorer's 64-bit web browsers that is installed as the default browser in Windows 7. Today we're providing a follow up to that Nugget with new Flash developments that affect everyone.
As a recap, Adobe Flash does not work properly in any 64-bit web browser. All popular browsers are available in 64-bit versions, but Internet Explorer is the only one that comes installed and activated by default in Windows 7. Many non-technical internet users don't understand that IE 64-bit cannot run Flash. The result is a lot of user disappointment and seemingly non-functioning websites.
The obvious solution is to switch to IE 32-bit and not use any 64-bit browsers... thus losing the blazing internet speed that we all would love to experience. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We've mentioned the Google SERP Preview feature a few times in this last week, and we want to talk about this a little more since it has another hidden effect on your website.
When Google introduced the preview feature in November 2010, they also provided some basic guidelines that would improve the preview's effectiveness for your website. Let's examine the important guidelines.
1. Keep your pages clearly laid out and structured, with a minimum of distractions or extraneous content.
This is great advice, especially from the world's largest search engine. So many jewelry stores say they want a "clean looking" website yet when the final site is created, they've cluttered up every page with content or images in every last pixel.
Every page of your site should be dedicated to a single topic, and everything on th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every day, the team over at Google's headquarters makes advances in Search Engine technology. A few years ago they announced the ability to read Flash websites, and then last year they further announced the ability to read deeper inside Flash websites.
Unfortunately, Flash websites still suffer from lower ranking than normal HTML websites.
In 2010, Google admitted that they have trouble reading websites that rely on JavaScript or AJAX. The Googlebot spider is not able to provide the user input needed to display website information that to us would be very simple to interact with.
The result is that websites with heavy JavaScript and AJAX programming are penalized similar to Flash websites. A simple home page rotating image is nothing to worry about, but you should worry if all the menus on your website rely on Java... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The bottom line of today's Golden Nugget is: Don't require JavaScript or Flash or Java to make your Contact Us form work. You are potentially missing out on a lot of visitors who may have tried to reach you, but couldn't because of technology limitations.
Why did we start this Nugget with the "bottom line?" Because the explanation is a little history lesson that might not interest you. Keep reading if you would like to have a well rounded understanding of why JavaScript/Flash/Java are all bad for your Contact Us form.
Every few days a new computerized device is released; new computers, new cell phones, new GPS, new portable gizmos of some type that can connect to the internet.
Even though the hardware changes, the underlying programming languages of the internet haven't changed much in several years.
Design is one of the foremost concerns for your website. Trying to figure out the aesthetics that best please your customer is very difficult. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you personally like, because the customer will like something completely different.
You need to program your website so it best functions for your users.
Typical design concerns are: * Width of the website. Do you want to be full screen or static width? * Colors. * What web browsers do you want it to work in? IE, Firefox and Safari are the big players. * Do you want the website to work on a mobile device? * Do you want to use a lot of images as part of the design? * Do you want Flash? Remember Flash does not work in IE 64-bit, the standard browser for Windows 7. * Do you want your website readable by users with visual impair... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Smart cell phones are everywhere. The Android is more and more popular, the iPhone is expanding its user base now that Verizon sells it, and somehow, the BlackBerry is still strongly accepted by the corporate world.
comScore.com released the 2010 mobile report on February 14, 2011 where they reported that 27% of cell phones are of the smartphone variety and 29% of smartphone users have unlimited data plans.
For you, the jewelry website owner, you seriously need to consider how your website will react when a mobile device visits it. You might spend $1000 developing a simple HTML website or $3000 for a simple Flash website, and they both may look great on a computer. But what about the mobile device?
As you consider your future website design and functionality, you need to give some ser... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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As you formulate your mobile website game plan, you will have to think through various features unique to the mobile website experience.
One of these features is exactly how a website will work during that initial split second when a cell phone makes the first connection to your site.
During that first split second of communication, every computer and every w... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Competition is good; well, at least that's what some businessmen will say. Competition keeps companies honest because it prevents monopolies, and it also spurs innovation.
In June 2009, Microsoft re-branded its MSN search engine into the Bing search engine. This engine has some very nice features, but according to our tracking of jewelry websites, only 7.63% of search traffic comes from Bing, so we don't pay attention to it much.
Although, Facebook is inching closer to becoming a full-fledged search engine using Bing, so that minuscule 7.63 might increase. Again, we'll let you know if it does.
Bing has one really good SEO feature for reverse engineering your competition's website, and that's the IP Address lookup. You can put the IP address of any website into the Bing engine and find out all the other websites ho... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The internet changes every day and it's difficult to completely keep up with new technology. In jWAG we prefer to test out new things first and see if they are useful before simply reporting on the news like every other technology blogger is inclined to do.
However, last week Google made an announcement that is well worth reporting on, and one that certainly contradicts what we, and many other SEO professionals, have been saying for some time now.
So here it is: About 2 years ago Google announced that they would collaborate with Adobe to develop a way to read text from a Flash website, more specifically a SWF file. Then in June of 2009, Google announced that they had made strides with reading and understanding external files that are loaded into Flash. The more complex Flash files are built in layers, and sometimes the te... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Doing some research over the last few days we discovered something that we admit we should have known about. We're willing to admit when we make mistakes so we're openly publishing it since it's big enough news.
There's a continual argument regarding the support of Flash on website. Some web programmers love Flash, others hate it. To use Flash, or not to use Flash on your website? It's a heated debate akin to the typical arguments between the Republican and Democratic political parties in the United States.
Web programmers waited many years for Apple to come to an agreement with Adobe so the iPhone could display Flash sites. But we were all crushed on April 29, 2010 when Apple announced it would never support Flash, but that's old news and not what today's Nugget is about.
"...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
During the summer of 2012, more than 12 months ago now, Google dropped support for Flash websites in its Android 4.1 OS. Did you know that?
