These days, you might be thinking that nobody is buying jewelry, but that’s not apparently the case. Sotheby’s recently held an online auction, with exquisite pieces from Verdura, David Webb, and Tiffany and Co offered for bidding. 97% of the jewelry items was sold for $12,000 and above.
Frank Everett of Sotheby’s told Stellane Volandes of Town and Country Magazine that it was the best sell-through they’ve ever had in an online jewelry sale. Half of the items exceeded their estimates, and the bidders have come from 32 different countries. There were even items that had six bidders going after them at once.
Suffice to say, people who could afford fine jewelry hadn’t let the pandemic affect their desire to buy. According to Everett, we all needed the distraction during this difficult time, and nothing could provide it better than beautiful jewels.
But how were the bidders able to enjoy the auction from their computers? Everett said that their buyers could bid confidently in their sales, thanks to their detailed catalogs, photographs, and condition reports.
Therefore, if you’re about to start an online jewelry business, you must remember — as Frank Everett has said — that your product catalogs, photos, and condition reports should all be available for your buyers’ benefit. Indeed, how will they have a good experience in your website if you don’t provide the important details?
That said, here’s everything you’ll need to have an optimized online jewelry shop:
1. E-commerce Website Builder
If you’re selling authentic designer jewelry, your personal social media page won’t suffice as a credible store. You’d need an e-commerce website builder to establish your “headquarters” in.
An e-commerce website builder lets you create and customize an online store. You don’t even need to learn coding to get started. If you’ve chosen a sophisticated website builder, it would already provide the basics that you’ll need, such as inventory tracking, real-time shipping quotes, SEO, and more.
Unlike e-commerce platforms (Amazon, eBay, etc.), an e-commerce website builder won’t require you to pay listing fees. As such, it’s more cost-efficient in the long run.
Some examples of e-commerce website builders are Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and WooCommerce. Note that they aren’t free, so you have to budget for the plan you’ll choose. Study their features thoroughly, because you might discover that a cheap plan doesn’t allow other content, such as blogs.
Other considerations you have to make include web design and customer support. Your choice of a website builder should offer appealing templates and themes, and customer service options that’ll allow you to engage with a web visitor live.
2. Domain Name
Your domain name should be related to the products you’re selling. For a jewelry store, a suitable name would be one that includes the word “jewelry” in it or the specific jewelry piece you’re selling. For instance, if you’re selling rings, then you can launch as “www.poshrings.com”.
It would also be wise to state in your domain name whether you sell brand-new or preloved jewels. However, choosing a long name like “www.prelovedauthenticjewelry.com” may not optimize your website, because the URL could be hard to remember. Hence, consider removing the word “authentic” to shorten it and make it easy to memorize.
3. High-quality Product Photos
If you’re selling authentic designer jewelry, your buyers would still not tolerate photos that are taken straight from the brand’s official website. Even more so if you’ve used stock photos.
Present your jewelry pieces differently from the rest. You may still get inspiration from the brand’s official photos, but don’t make your style closely similar to them that it would look obviously copied. Hire a professional product photographer, and avail jewelry photo retouching services to enhance your shots and have any flaws removed.
Before uploading your photos, reduce their file size without sacrificing their quality. This is crucial because slow-loading sites are sometimes caused by large file sizes. And if your product photos take too long to load, your SEO will be affected, bringing your ranking down.
In addition, use the right format; PNG produces higher-quality images but comes with bigger file sizes. Hence, consider JPEG when uploading full-page photos.
4. Link Building
Another strategy that boosts your search engine ranking is link building. It lets search engines determine your online jewelry shop’s popularity through the number of high-quality links directing to its website.
The websites carrying your link should be trustworthy and relevant to your industry. They should anchor the links to make them more easily recognizable. However, unnatural-sounding keywords, generic texts, and spamming keywords shouldn’t be the link’s anchor word, or else, your search engine ranking will drop.
These are just a few samples of web techniques that help optimize your online jewelry store. As your business grows, you’ll discover more sophisticated strategies, and ultimately take your website to the same level as the big e-commerce sites. But as a beginner, these four techniques should already enable you to reach your goals.
