Nicole Barr is the brand name for a company that manufacturers gold and silver enamel jewelry. When they contacted Websites for Jewelers towards the end of last year, they were considering a redesign of their website.

Their old website was designed more like a catalog site than a site that could be actively used by their retail customers to browse and order their jewelry online. Even though they did have pages that showed all of their jewelry, the experience was like flipping through a catalog with many small images of jewelry and some basic text about each item. There was no ability to see larger versions of each image, the text details for each item was limited, and you could not point, click and order like you could in most well designed shopping-cart e-commerce enabled site.

The new website uses a streamlined navigation set to allow both consumers and B2B customers to easily navigate through Nicole Barr’s products. The navigation was developed to allow visitors to get to specific types of products much faster than before and to focus specifically on what they were looking for.

For the B2B customer, once they have found the types of items that they are looking for, they can click any item and see a large and very detailed version of the jewelry accompanied by more text details than had appeared in the previous site.

One of the most important improvements over the old site is the ability for B2B customers to order Nicole Barr jewelry using our shopping-cart order system. All items can now be ordered with a simple point and click.

The new nicolebarr.com website not only represents a tremendous improvement over their old site, it represents an opportunity for retailers to purchase and resell a type of jewelry that is rarely seen these days. If you’re a retailer and looking for something completely unique to offer your customers, make sure to visit nicolebarr.com and register to browse and shop for Nicole Barr jewelry.

Are you thinking about selling your jewelry online? Making your jewelry available to order online does not guarantee sales. Before you venture into e-commerce, consider the following steps and facts about selling jewelry online.

1. Carefully assess your jewelry to determine whether you can in fact sell online. If your business focuses on bridal jewelry (i.e. wedding bands, engagement rings, and anniversary bands), selling online will be extremely difficult. Most bridal sales are controlled by the companies on page one of Google. Unless you either have very unique bridal jewelry or extremely low costs, your chances of selling online are quite low.
2. You will need a page one listing in Google. Forget about trying to obtain a page one listing in Google under generic terms (e.g. wedding rings, engagement rings, diamond rings, etc.). I can assure you that it is just about impossible to get a page one listing in Google at this point under these types of terms. However, you can find opportunities under what is referred to as “long tail” search terms. A long tail search term is a very specific term. For example, instead of trying to achieve a page one listing in Google for “wedding rings”, you have the possibility to get a page one listing under terms such as “hand engraved 14k yellow gold wedding rings” and “handmade 14k yellow gold wedding rings”. There is still quite a lot of competition under these terms. However, you can in fact get a page one listing in Google if you follow the right steps.
3. An e-commerce enabled site requires literally daily maintenance. On a daily basis, you will need to add new products, update the descriptions, bring focus to new jewelry and items on sale, contribute to your blog, contribute to your Facebook page, make sure that your sitemaps are getting properly fed and indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing, check your Google Webmaster Tools account for any issues being identified by Google, correct the issues that are identified, and so much more. If you think that you can just build an e-commerce website and let it run itself, you are mistaken.

There are many instances where a jeweler should not endeavor to sell online. Instead, they should focus on attracting local customers, via their website, and entice them to visit their jewelry store. Many stores have far better success foregoing the e-commerce venture and focusing in on local foot traffic. If you are unsure which direction to head in, please feel free to contact Websites for Jewelers for an open discussion and evaluation.

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Everyone in the Jewelry Industry has been hearing about Facebook for the last 2+ years. Some retailers have actively started to use Facebook to promote their companies. And even though most retailers and designers recognize that adding a Facebook link to their website is a good idea, many wholesale jewelers are not sure whether Facebook can and should be used in conjunction with their business.

In a recent meeting with a wholesale jewelry company, I was asked whether it made sense to use Facebook in their business. The President of this well known company questioned the value of Facebook and how it could possibly be used for his type of business.

My advice was that he should in fact use Facebook for his business. Here are the reasons why wholesale jewelers should use Facebook for their business:

1. One of the top priorities for a wholesale jeweler is to always look for new customers. Retailers can use Facebook to find new vendors.  Facebook can be used just like Google. Type in a term such as “wedding rings” and you will find retailers who may be potential new customers.
2. Search for big name designers such as Tacori and Scott Kay and you will find that these designers have many of their retailers listed on their Facebook pages. This is a great opportunity to obtain retailer names that you can potentially sell to.
3. Facebook is a very large community of people. People become “friends” of others by seeing relationships between other Facebook pages. Someone who visits your Facebook page and likes what they see will tell others about you. As applied to the retail end of the jewelry business, one retailer may tell a few of his friends about your business after finding you on Facebook and all of the sudden, you have new customers because of referrals via Facebook.

Whether you’re a fan of Facebook or not, Facebook is a great website to advertise your wholesale business and obtain new customers.

Related articles

• Why it’s important to set up a Facebook store (thenextweb.com)

If you have a jewelry website created primarily in Flash, your website is not viewable on iPads, iPhones and most mobile devices. Flash content cannot be seen on the latest generations of most mobile devices. This means that all jewelry websites that were either created 100% in Flash, or have some elements created in Flash (e.g. a home page slideshow, an animation or movie on the home page, landing page content, etc.) need to make some changes.

For jewelry companies that have spent a small fortune on a 100% Flash built website, there may only be one realistic solution right now. This involves building a non-Flash website and either replacing the current site with this non-Flash website or simply have your developer add a script to the site to detect iPhones, iPads and other mobile browsers and have visitors redirected to the non-Flash site when using any of these non-Flash compliant devices. This means that visitors with Flash compliant computers or devices will see your Flash site and everyone else using iPads, iPhones and other non-Flash compliant devices will see the non-Flash site.

For jewelry companies that have Flash slideshows and/or Flash banners, the solution is much simpler. They can have these converted into JavaScript and the content will show on all devices. The animated effects may not be exactly the same, but this will allow you to show some kind of cool animated effects.

For any other use of Flash in a website, it can probably be replaced with different technologies. For example, a Flash navigation can be replaced with JavaScript navigation. A Flash video can be converted to MP4 format.

This may be a temporary issue as there are “rumors” that Apple will allow Flash content to appear in one of their upcoming OS releases. Then there are reports that Apple is just waiting for wider use of HTML5 which will allow Flash content to appear on iPads and iPhones without the need for the Flash plugin.

If you’re a Droid user, fortunately, Flash content does appear on your cell phone. If you’re an iPad user, this is unfortunately one of the downsides of this great device.


When most companies hire a web design firm, they take it for granted that the design firm will give them a website with all aspects of the site built to correct standards. Unfortunately, many design firms either neglect to take care of certain items in the creation of their websites or these items simply get overlooked.

Here is a list of items you should check in your website.

Q: Can you get to your website by typing into your browser’s address bar “www.your-website-name.com” as well as “your-website-name.com (omit the www.)”?

A: Believe it or not, many websites cannot be reached unless you type the “www.” before the domain name. If you cannot get to your website by simply typing “your-website-name.com (omit the www.)”, there is a very good chance that you are losing potential customers.

Q: Does each page in your website have a “unique page title”?

A: Each and every page in your website needs to have a unique page title to differentiate each page in the search engines. How do you check this? When you go to your website, as you click and go to the different pages, look at the very top of your browser’s page. In Internet Explorer, for example, there is a blue frame at the very top of it and if you look in the upper left corner, you will see some text. This text is the page title.

Q: Does each page in your website have a “unique Meta description”?

A: Meta descriptions are used by Google and the other search engines to provide a description in search results. Search results are made up of a page title and either a Meta description or the first bit of text that the search engine can read. To check this, in Internet Explorer, go to any page in your website. There are two ways to check this. Look for the text at the top of Internet Explorer that reads “View”. Click this and then click “Source”. You can also look for the text which should appear in the upper right corner that reads “Page”. Click this and then click “View Source”. In either case, in the window that appears, look at the top of the page and look for the words “meta name=”description”. You should find a unique sentence or two there. If you do not, it is possible that your pages are not showing proper descriptions in the search engines. Without proper descriptions, how can someone know what is in your website?

Q: Does each URL (web page address) in your site have a short and concise address?

A: Google loves short and concise URLs. A URL such as www.your –domain-name.com/gold-engagement-rings.html is much preferred over www.your–domain-name.com/ jewelry.aspx?dep=1&cat=26&prod=9999.

If you find that any of these items have not been addressed by either your current website design firm, or they were never taken care of by the design firm that created your site, please contact Websites for Jewelers and we will be happy to immediately take care of these.