After many years of talking and teaching about it, I'm finally starting to see retail jewelers embracing the reality of catalog and ecommerce websites. The reality I'm referring to is the tedious process of photographing your inventory, maintaining a website, and handling all aspects of order fulfillment.
Within the jewelry industry, there are several ways to mimic an ecommerce website without actually setting it up or managing it yourself. Many large man... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Twenty-five years ago, no one understood how the internet would trigger an evolutionary change in how almost every business in the world operates. Today, most businesses have some type of website to represent themselves online, and even the companies without websites have some type of online presence in business directories like Yelp and Google Maps.
It seems like every business industry has figured out how to use the internet to improve the efficiency of their business and their c... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I was in New York City over the Independence Day weekend helping someone troubleshoot a sound and mixing board problem for a friend of mine. They recently bought a new sound board that was causing a hum when connected to the older equipment.
This little challenge was a throwback to my pre-2003 days when I volunteered as a sound and lighting engineer for community theatre productions. I knew exactly what the problem was and what was needed to solve it. I needed something called a "ground loop isolator," ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
No one ever wants to write a business plan for their new business or new business venture. Most people feel that a business plan is especially needed when you want to raise startup capital, which while true, a business plan helps you create focus.
Many business owners have great ideas that they feel they can accomplish without writing the ideas down on paper. I started my first business in 1994 with just vague ideas and didn't write my first plan until 2 years later after suffering several slow starts.
This is the Friday website review where I search for a jeweler in a random town around the United States then review their website. By reviewing a live site, I'm usually able to highlight good and bad points that we can all learn from.
For this week, I wanted to find a retail jewelry store in Laguna Beach, California. Here's the SERP when I googled "jewelers in Laguna Beach, California":
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 request has come far too often. I get a phone call from someone wanting to redesign their website. They tell me that their website is old, hasn't been updated, and they just want to start over.
Along with the request to redesign a website, I'm also usually told that they don't want to tell their current web programmer that they will be canceling service. Some business owners have decided that they want to file for a surprise divorce of their programmer.
The conversation of internet taxes is very complicated.
In May 2013, the US Senate voted in favor of the Marketplace Fairness Act which is supposed to simplify how sales tax is levied on items purchased from the internet. The Act called for a simplified method of free software that each state would have to provide so e-commerce website owners could more easily collect, report, and submit the sales taxes collected from online sales.
If you attempt to set up an e-commerce jewelry website without a dedicated monthly budget you will set yourself up for disappointment. Not failure, but very slow progress and low sales.
That's a bit blunt, but e-commerce does need to be treated like a separate business entity with its own expenses and even employees, or at least an employee that spends a lot of time in front of the computer managing it.
The big players in our industry have established a strong foothold in e-commerce selling. Kay, BlueNile, JamesAllan, Zales, Tiffany, and a few others have the deepest of pockets of advertising dollars to beat out all the local retail jewelers.
If you want to have a jewelry e-commerce site you need to navigate your way through the variables of setup, monthly maintenance, and monthly marketing. Some of the variables ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
What type of jewelry website would you prefer? One with a product catalog on the home page and no jewelry store details other than online selling? Or would you prefer a website that has detailed store information in addition to a full catalog of all the items you carry in the store?
It really doesn't matter which you choose, just as long as you take the time to learn what will attract buyers to your site. What attracts buyers? Words do.
The more words you put on your site the better the chances are that you will attract random organic traffic to your site. Yesterday we explained the value of adding a blog to your site. But what if you simply didn't want to do that?
One common strategy for optimizing large e-Commerce sites is to create dedicated landing pages for sections of the catalog. Another common name for these l... 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
Last week, Rob Bates, News Director for JCK wrote an interesting article with 
The conversation of internet taxes is very complicated. 
