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Filter Gold Nuggets By Tag: "E-commerce Websites"
Friday, September 15, 2017

Retailer Future: First Steps Towards Online Catalog and Ecommerce Websites

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Retailer Future: First Steps Towards Online Catalog and Ecommerce Websites daily-golden-nugget-1574-57
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...
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AT: 09/15/2017 07:11:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 01, 2017

Ecommerce is More than Selling; It's Retail Business Evolution

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Ecommerce is More than Selling; Its Retail Business Evolution daily-golden-nugget-1572-39
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...
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AT: 09/01/2017 11:27:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 14, 2017

Ecommerce Inventory: The Never Ending Update Saga

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Ecommerce Inventory: The Never Ending Update Saga daily-golden-nugget-1565-84
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," ...
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AT: 07/14/2017 11:56:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 16, 2017

The Ecommerce Business Plan

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The Ecommerce Business Plan daily-golden-nugget-1561-22
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.

Why Bother With A Business Plan? VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET



AT: 06/16/2017 11:08:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 19, 2017

Watch, Learn, Change, Adapt, or Just Die

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Watch, Learn, Change, Adapt, or Just Die daily-golden-nugget-1557-54
Many small businesses, not just retail jewelers, are caught in a tight monthly financial cycle. Those businesses teeter on financial ruin because the only thing needed to send them over the edge is a bad week of sales, unexpected loss of the star salesperson, tax penalties, medical bills, or the wrong choices of inventory. Each of these could be an unrecoverable setback.

According to the Jewelers Board of Trade, there was a total of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/19/2017 08:03:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 17, 2017

Shockey Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Shockey Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1544-43
This is the Friday Flop Fix website review. The goal of this review is to examine the mistakes a random website is making and suggest ways to fix it. I do my best every week to take on the role of a typical internet savvy consumer as I search for a review candidate. I also use the Google Chrome browser set to incognito mode so my previous browsing history does not influence the search results I see.

For today's search, I used the phrase "jewelry stores Elgin, IL" and saw these results:

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AT: 02/17/2017 09:59:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 09, 2016

The Jewelry Source Website Review

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The Jewelry Source Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1534-15
Record breaking ecommerce sales have been in the news this week; in fact, online sales have been higher this year than ever before. One of the headlines from comScore this week was "Eleven Consecutive Billion-Dollar Days of Online Desktop Spending from Thanksgiving through Cyber Week Mark the Longest Streak Ever". It's importan...
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AT: 12/09/2016 12:11:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 14, 2016

Jeweler's Choice #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Jewelers Choice FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1526-70
In honor of the jewelry shows taking place in Miami this weekend, I've chosen a Miami Beach jeweler for this week's website review. It all started with a Google search for "jewelers miami beach, fl" and these search results:

Jewelers Choice FridayFlopFix Website Review 1526-jewelers-miami-beach-fl-serp-49VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/14/2016 12:16:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 14, 2016

4 Ways To Prep Your Website For Eventual Ecommerce

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4 Ways To Prep Your Website For Eventual Ecommerce daily-golden-nugget-1471-33It seems like only yesterday when it was thought that email addresses would become more important than telephone numbers, and now a website address is more important than both a telephone number and a physical address. A website is the most important representation of your business, yet most jewelers don't treat it that way, and many still view it as an online brochure that needs to be made once, and then forgotten about.

The local retail jeweler is losing a lot of business to the internet. The younger gen...
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AT: 03/14/2016 01:21:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 18, 2016

Local Business Suffering? It's Time To Think About Your Global Audience

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Local Business Suffering? Its Time To Think About Your Global Audience daily-golden-nugget-1435-33
I realize that over the last 12 months, I've spent most of my time talking about Google to the exclusion of the other search engines. Many SEO professionals, myself included, feel that if you can achieve high ranking in Google then you should easily be able to achieve high ranking in any search engine. It seems only natural since Google is the de facto search engine, right?

While Google might be the most popular search engine in the U.S., it's not the most popul...
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AT: 01/18/2016 12:22:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 11, 2015

What Is A Money Site?

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What Is A Money Site? daily-golden-nugget-1274-3
This is the Throwback Thursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today I'm jumping back to Nugget number 55 and the topic of money sites.

The topic of marketing funnels came up during the 2015 JCK Talk on multi-channel marketing. The original idea of a marketing funnel was that you would reach a lot of people with a broad scope...
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AT: 06/11/2015 08:44:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 15, 2015

John Tolle Jewelry Website Review

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John Tolle Jewelry Website Review  daily-golden-nugget-1255-82
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":

John Tolle Jewelry ...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/15/2015 11:24:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 12, 2015

E-Commerce Isn't The Answer for A Declining Business: Learn Who Your Customer Is First

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E-Commerce Isnt The Answer for A Declining Business: Learn Who Your Customer Is First daily-golden-nugget-1252-91Last week, Rob Bates, News Director for JCK wrote an interesting article with theories of why the jewelry industry is in a funk.

You can read that article yourself, but in brief, the 6 theories posed were:
  1. 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...
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AT: 05/12/2015 11:10:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 13, 2015

The Push and Pull of Hardware, Software, and Customer Service Technology

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The Push and Pull of Hardware, Software, and Customer Service Technology daily-golden-nugget-1231-21
When I first opened my business in 1994 as a computer consultant, the drivers of new technology were a lot different. In the mid 90s, it was typical to first buy a computer before figuring out what software you could use on it. Many of my customers wanted their own programs written, too. Those were the days of DOS and Windows 3.1, and the options for software were limited to what you could find in your local Egghead Software store, or you ha...
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AT: 04/13/2015 07:13:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Can One Blog Be Used to Promote Two Websites?

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Can One Blog Be Used to Promote Two Websites? daily-golden-nugget-1222-74
I received an interesting question the other day from Suzie, a jewelry designer. Well, her name wasn't actually Suzie, but let's just say that it was so it makes this story easier to tell.

For several years, Suzie had an Etsy account where she sold a line of baby toe ring jewelry. This was her fist line of jewelry before she started making gemstone jewelry necklaces. Realizing how different these two lines of jewelry are, instead of using Etsy to sell the necklaces, she opened an e-com...
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AT: 03/31/2015 07:24:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 18, 2015

You Should Fear Mobilegeddon

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You Should Fear Mobilegeddon daily-golden-nugget-1213-17
Over the last two weeks, I've been detailing why it's important to have a correct mobile setup for your website. Google's decision to use mobile friendliness as a ranking factor has a lot of people worried that...
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AT: 03/18/2015 06:49:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Modern Customers Want to See Product Photos and Product Information on Your Website

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Modern Customers Want to See Product Photos and Product Information on Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1192-17
The internet has become a very visual place, especially on social media. While blog content may thrive with well written information, as of today, on Facebook and Google+ you won't get noticed without some type of visual. This is especially a complete change for Facebook because in 2013, they lowered the visibility of status updates with images because they were combating meme over usage.

Product photography posts...
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AT: 02/17/2015 08:30:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Understanding And Establishing Your Own Content Curation Channel

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Understanding And Establishing Your Own Content Curation Channel daily-golden-nugget-1182-1
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I proposed a few scenarios on how you could create content needed to attract customers to, and convert customers on your website.

Content marketing is a large part of the modern day business strategy, but the creation process is so long and expensive, that many business owners are ready to give up after t...
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AT: 02/03/2015 12:59:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 12, 2015

2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Jewelers, Jewelry, and Jewelry Stores

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2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Jewelers, Jewelry, and Jewelry Stores daily-golden-nugget-1166-83
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm exploring keyword data collected between November 1 and December 31, 2014 from many retail jeweler websites.

I collected a large amount of keyword data from people using Google's desktop search, mobile search, and image search. The mobile search data is very interesting. Last week, I presented th...
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AT: 01/12/2015 10:02:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 08, 2015

2014 Holiday Diamond and Engagement Ring Mobile Search Report

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2014 Holiday Diamond and Engagement Ring Mobile Search Report daily-golden-nugget-1164-16
When using Google Webmaster Tools, you can view which search queries will trigger your website to appear in search results. In the past when we SEO guys would spew the phrase "search queries" it was just a fancy name for saying "keywords." In fact, you can say "search queries," and "keywords," and "search phrases" and mean the same thing.

Regardless what you called it, all you wanted to do was put the right words on your website that correspond to what people search for in the dif...
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AT: 01/08/2015 09:54:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 05, 2015

Regin: A Real Threat For Anyone Outsourcing

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Regin: A Real Threat For Anyone Outsourcing daily-golden-nugget-1161-87
Many Hollywood action spy movies portray government agencies with amazing computers that can access unlimited computer systems, security cameras, computer networks, and more beyond our imaginations.

You usually have to suspend belief with movies like Mission Impossible and Eagle Eye because government agencies can't activate a cell phone's camera or activate the cell phones of everyone standing around you, right?

Well, maybe they can, or someone can, and they might have been doing it since 2008.

Pay att...
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AT: 01/05/2015 08:00:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 17, 2014

Fabri Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Fabri Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1105-71
Welcome to the Friday website review, where every week I randomly review the website of a local retail jewelry business somewhere in the US. The goal is to find something good, or bad, that we can all learn from and apply to our own business.

For this week's review, I'm heading over to Washington state and searching for "fine jewelry stores bellevue wa." When doing these searches, I always use the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode. This allows me to see non-personalized search results.

In case you don't know, Google trac...
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AT: 10/17/2014 11:32:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 26, 2014

Roth Jewelers & LR Jewelers Website Review

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Roth Jewelers & LR Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1090-72
Welcome to the Friday retail jewelry website review. Every week, I select a random location around the United States in search of a review candidate. The object of this review is to learn something that might be able to help you with your own website.

I always try to write the review with an unbiased point of view, and I especially hope that the jewelers reading this will use these reviews to better their online presence.

For this week, I'm using the search phrase "jewelry stores Waterlo...
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AT: 09/26/2014 06:11:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 18, 2014

Massive Product Databases and Online Marketing of Products

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Massive Product Databases and Online Marketing of Products daily-golden-nugget-1084-11
Let's talk products.

Do you have them on your site? I'm not talking about links to offsite vendor catalogs, or even iframe widgets either. You need to have an honest-to-goodness product catalog on your website that you control.

During the days of the Internet Bubble of the late 90s, everyone would flock to your website to see what you sold. There were many early attempts at e-commerce and online shopping, but setting up an e-commerce system yourself is co...
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AT: 09/18/2014 09:46:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 11, 2014

Website Redesign Case Study

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Website Redesign Case Study daily-golden-nugget-1079-88
The other day, I was helping a business colleague of mine review a website design his customer gave him. For storytelling simplicity, I'll refer to my colleague as Joe and his customer as Sue. Although Joe doesn't work in the jewelry industry, the early steps in designing a website are very similar across all industries, and I bet all website programming companies have the same experience working with their customers.

Sue wants to open a brand new e-commerce store by December 1st. She already owns an old e-commerce store w...
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AT: 09/11/2014 08:24:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 15, 2014

Reviews of Jewelers in Arlington, Virginia

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Reviews of Jewelers in Arlington, Virginia 4899-daily-golden-nugget-1060
This is the Friday website review where I randomly look for a jewelry website to dissect so we can all learn something new. This week I'm taking a slightly different approach to locating a review candidate. I'm going to search in a county instead of a specific town.

To start the process, I always open an incognito window with Google Chrome. This step allows me to do searches in Google without any personalized results affecting what I see. Google has several ways to identify your compute...
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AT: 08/15/2014 02:06:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 28, 2014

Are Yellow Pages Bad For Your Business?

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Are Yellow Pages Bad For Your Business? 5316-daily-golden-nugget-1046
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting a seminar at the JA show in NYC. The seminar was "Should You Pay For Website Traffic? Understanding How and Why."

During the seminar, I detailed what I know about Yelp, Pandora Radio, Google AdWords, and a few others methods of online advertising that can work for or against you.

One of the online marketing methods that generally works against you is Yellow Pages. Once upon a time, it was common for everyone to "let their fingers do the walki...
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AT: 07/28/2014 09:14:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 24, 2014

Jewelry Website Programming: Jewelry Photography

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Jewelry Website Programming: Jewelry Photography  938-daily-golden-nugget-979Jewelry photography is a topic that's near and dear to my heart because I know it can either make or break the success of a jewelry e-commerce website.

Let's face it; jewelry is all about beauty and style. No one wants to buy something is it doesn't look good in a photograph or match the style they desire. Blurry photos, dirty jewelry, and gray backgrounds do not help with the e-commerce selling process.

Online buyers expect to see beautiful jewelry on your website, and nothing...
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AT: 04/24/2014 03:13:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 19, 2014

11 Potential Ways To Increase Your E-Commerce Business

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11 Potential Ways To Increase Your E-Commerce Business 5381-daily-golden-nugget-933I'm often asked to evaluate ways to increase business on e-commerce websites. In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget I'll review a few of my typical suggestions. Remember that these are just suggestions and you should consider each one individually for yourself, and if they will work.

Content Suggestions

1. Add a blog to your website. Use this blog to build a library of information that Google can index and then bring more people to your site organically...
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AT: 02/19/2014 11:41:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Three Ways To Accept Money From Online Buyers

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Three Ways To Accept Money From Online Buyers imageDo you think it's time to set up an e-commerce website for your jewelry store? Before you decide to dive into e-com you need to know the initial basics of how your customers will be paying you. There are some pitfalls that your website developer probably won't tell you until the last day before your website is ready.

For small websites with few products you should consider using Google Checkout or PayPal for their BuyNow or integrated shopping cart features. But if you have hundreds of products that change regularly you should set up your own merchant account and onli...
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AT: 09/26/2012 05:10:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Content Answers Questions

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There's an idea among first time website owners that it's best to slap up a website with perfect jewelry photos, prices, and a Buy Now button and they can sell online. At the other end of the scale there's another camp of first time website owners that feel it's best to slap up a website with basic information about the jewelry store and they will attract new customers into the store.

Both of these ideas are completely erroneous. There is no way to slap a website together and become a success. What's worse is that we know, and our staff has attended, many seminars at jewelry trade shows where both of these myths are perpetuated.

You might be familiar with the phrases "Business card Websites" and "E-commerce sites from vendors." The business card site is a basic 1, 2, or 3 page website that puts your name online. The e-c...
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AT: 10/04/2011 11:02:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
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