A Comprehensive Ecommerce Guide for Jewelry Stores

With the effects of the COVID19 pandemic still having a ripple effect on traditional jewelry stores, companies are now looking for new ways to accommodate the needs of online shoppers. 

While you may not think it’s possible to sell high-ticket items like jewelry through a contact-less medium like the internet, the truth is that by adapting to take advantage of both in-store and e-commerce buyers, you’re creating a hybrid that’s much more likely to weather the storm than just a standalone traditional jewelry store or boutique. 

The question then becomes, how do you get started? In this detailed blog post, we’re going to look at the steps you need to follow to not only create a strong presence online, but leverage that online presence to go where your potential customers and markets are. 

E-Commerce By the Numbers

E-commerce accounted for 1.3 trillion in sales in 2014 -- projected to rise to 3.5 trillion this year.  That’s a lot of people relying on the internet to help them make more informed purchases.  That also means that whether you’ve started creating a web presence, you have an older site, or you’re just now getting started, there’s no better time to tap into the huge number of people that are doing business online. 

Getting Started with the Right Platform

The first step in navigating the world of e-commerce for online jewelry stores is to choose the right website platform to enable your business to have success online. The good news is that there are several platforms that are optimized for e-commerce and ready to help you sell, right out of the box. The most popular e-commerce platforms include Shopify and WooCommerce, which is a fully integrated component of the popular Wordpress content management system. 

Choosing the Right Keywords

Once you’ve decided on a platform, the next step is to choose the right keywords. Like with e-commerce platforms, there are a handful of excellent tools that can help you narrow down your keywords. For example, Google’s keyword suggestion tool and Ubersuggest (both free) are good starting points. Spyfu is a great way to see the terms that your competitors are using. 

Considering the 92% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, it’s a smart idea to plan your keyword strategy appropriately. Research the best keywords and create dedicated landing pages with the content and products you’re aiming to target. 

Optimizing your website for keywords is probably the most crucial component to your overall holistic digital marketing plan because it presents the opportunity for you to show up when a user types in a word on Google and other search engines related to the product or services you offer. When a user types in a specific keyword, they are showing intent, which means they have interest in that product or service. This mere fact is the reason why keyword optimization can be so important because it can start to fill your marketing funnel with quality traffic. Once you get quality traffic from search engines, you can start retargeting on throughout the internet, including on the Google Display Network, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, and Instagram. 

What to Include on Your Landing Pages

One of the most overlooked components to your website and search engine visibility is landing page experience.

Your landing pages are going to be those pages that your users arrive on after clicking your listing or ad. The best way to look at a landing page is like a home page for each product or service that you would like to get business for. In most cases, we see most traffic going to a website's home page, but if someone is typing in a keyword for "Engagement Rings" but they land on your home page which may mention Engagement Rings, it also probably mentions wedding rings, fashion jewelry, watches and other products or services that you offer. This makes the user feel like the page is less relevant to their search. 

Therefore, it makes sense to create individual landing pages for each keyword that you would like to show up for. It is also important to optimize your pages to perform well and to convert those users from browsers to buyers. When selling high-ticket items like jewelry, this can seem like an uphill battle, but with the right strategy, you can help increase the visibility of those pages. 

To do so, you’ll want to make sure that each one:

Includes Call-To-Action Buttons

These large, noticeable buttons should encourage your users to take the action you want them to take. It’s not just a matter of slapping up an “Add to Cart” button and calling it a day. Instead give them every reason to order, including things like: 

• Multiple payment options
• A payment plan
• A number of five-star reviews
  Alongside your button -- making it a button with added firepower behind it that gives a user every reason to take action with confidence.

Is Mobile-Optimized

Google loves sites that are optimized for mobile (and other) devices. Mobile-optimized means choosing a responsive design that loads content independently of the device so the design is future-proof for whatever sized device is being used to view it. This means a better overall user experience and in turn, greater relevance to searchers.

Loads Quickly

In addition to sites that are mobile-responsive, Google loves sites that load fast -- and users do too! Google even has a free tool, called PageSpeed Insights, which can help you better see what could be slowing down your site, and suggestions on how to remedy the problem. 

Allows for Multiple Forms of Communication

Having a way for users to get in touch with you is a smart idea. Having multiple ways is even better. Some prospects would rather write an email, whereas some prefer a phone call. You can even experiment with live chat. According to a report by Kayako, 79% of businesses surveyed said implementing live chat on their site resulted in higher conversion rates and improved customer loyalty. Plus, simply by having live chat on your site increases the chances that users will buy from you by as much as 38%. 

Optimize for Every Stage of the User Experience 

Every buyer’s journey can be broken down into a series of stages: 

Awareness - They didn’t know about your product or brand prior to this moment. They’ve become aware of what you offer and then move into the next stage.

Consideration - They’re in the process of researching a product, perhaps deciding between different engagement rings or other jewelry, and you are among those brands they’re considering.

Decision - They’ve made a decision and intend to go through with a purchase. Here, reminding them of things like your guarantee and customer service is paramount. 

In addition to optimizing for every stage of the buyer’s journey, it’s also a good idea to look for ways to optimize your conversion rate -- that is, the rate at which browsers become customers. You can do this by leveraging online tools like heatmaps and positive reviews. Heatmaps will show you where users are clicking (or conversely, where they aren’t). and having positive reviews in place could mean the difference between taking action and placing an order, or not. 

Optimizing Your Products

Another advanced but highly recommended step to take along your roadmap for selling jewelry online is to optimize your content by way of what’s known as a Rich Snippet or Google Schema. You’ve seen these in action whenever you’ve searched for a review, a product or even a video -- they will display additional information, such as whether or not a product is in stock or what star rating a product has. 

There are several types of schemas you can take advantage of in optimizing your own content, including: 

• Reviews and Ratings (show ratings in the search results)
• Price Schema (show pricing in the search results)
• Product Availablility (show availability/stock remaining)
• Video Schema (show a video in the search results) 

Finally, just having the content is not enough. You also have to promote it. There are several different channels for this purpose, including 

Social Media

By participating regularly in social media (namely Facebook and Instagram -- use Twitter to share educational tidbits), you’ll be able to leverage a full suite of tools, including:

• Instagram stories
• Instagram shoppable posts
• Instagram TV
• Facebook Live and
• Facebook Shopping

Items under $500 tend to do better, and this allows you to consistently keep those accounts active and engage users no matter what stage they’re at in the buying process. 

Email Marketing

One of the oldest methods of marketing is also one of the most reliable -- because although not everyone has a social media account, nearly everyone online does have an email. Plus, with email marketing you can diversify the messages that you send, such as: 

• Setting up abandoned cart emails to notify users who have given you their email address that they’ve left an item in their shopping cart
• Send out discounts, showcase what’s new or otherwise provide value to your subscribers
• Create lead magnets to help encourage more people to subscribe. A lead magnet can be any kind of free guide or information your users would find useful. 

Google Shopping

Last but certainly not least, Google Shopping is a type of marketing outreach that you don’t want to forget about. Google Shopping campaigns by themselves may not lead to many conversions, however they do open the door to Dynamic Ads, which can follow your users across a massive chunk of the internet (there are thousands and thousands of sites in tihe Google Display network). 

This, in turn, can lead to improved retargeting, and the ability in your social media accounts to set up “lookalike audiences” which are audiences similar to those being retargeted across Google. As you can see, it’s a sort of cycle where every advertising channel feeds off of each other, creating a complete picture of who your users are, where they’re coming from, and what they’re looking at. 

As you can see, the roadmap to successfully selling jewelry online is full of a variety of points to take into consideration as we adapt ourselves to the “new normal”. However, with the right digital agency supporting you, many of these tasks can be handled in a way that helps to grow your business while keeping your brand message consistent across every channel. Contact us to learn more about our comprehensive advertising and social media marketing solutions, as well as our website development and e-commerce options.