As a jewelry store owner, the purpose of your website is to attract potential buyers. This will be the main purpose for both an online-based store and physical-location only store. Not having a proper website could put you at risk of missing out on potential sales.
Why do you need a website for your Jewelry Store?
Many years ago a website wouldn’t have been necessary, especially if you only had a physical store. However, nowadays, potential customers do their research on the web and make decisions after looking for more information online. Some customers even consider this more comfortable and efficient for them. This means having a website for your store has become very important, since this is a great opportunity to showcase your business and the products you craft or sell.
Also, having a website is one of the most –if not the most– efficient and convenient ways for a customer to find information about your business before they decide to visit. This is why a website can be an excellent tool at converting regular internet surfers into buyers. Even for physical, local or small stores, this medium can help point customers to you, by providing them with operating hours and directions to your business.
What is the importance of your web design?
Many studies have shown that we process images at a faster rate than we process text. This means our brains can be heavily impacted by the way something looks, rather than the information it contains.
A Jewelry Store website also communicates the professionalism of that store and the quality of their products. We might not realize it, but the way we perceive a business can be affected by visual elements, such as images and graphics, and the message being used to market the product. That being said, if your website looks poorly done and lacks organization, a customer might think your business isn’t serious.
Design Guidelines to Follow
After recognizing the importance of web design, there are certain design guidelines or tips you will want to follow. Using these tips can help you design a great Jewelry Store website, which would influence potential buyers to have a positive perception of your business, brand and product. And who knows? They might become your next recurrent customer.
1. Focus on the Jewelry
In order to be able to convert online viewers into buyers, all focus should be on your product: jewelry. In other words, for this business type, no distractions should be available to the customer. Excessive advertising (not related to your business) could drive away a potential customer.
The design should be clean; this means light background colors such as beige or white. It should have a minimalist layout, with clear navigation, text and, as mentioned previously, free of excessive advertising.
Images of your product should be large and detailed, but most importantly, they should have high resolution. If a visitor or potential customer clicks on a product, the landing page for said product should include a high quality image of the jewelry, as well as product details. However, make sure the text and information don’t take the attention away from your product image.
2. Appeal to emotion and call to action
This isn’t strictly a catalogue, which means you shouldn’t include only images of your jewelry. Calls to action are a useful tool to convert “I’m just looking” into “I’ll take this, please”.
One of these tools is an image that appeals to emotion. Some websites approach this by using large banner ads or featured images on their homepage. Depending on the line of jewelry you want to promote, choose an image depicting a happy couple on their wedding day, showcase two best friends with matching friendship bracelets or lockets, or simply present a model exhibiting a unique piece. Pairing these images with a call to action, turns your product into an emotion, a moment, a sentiment. And this is priceless to customers.
3. Make your website mobile-friendly
Many people use their cellphones or tablets to browse the internet and social media, to look up information and most importantly for our case, to shop online. This means that designing your website only for computers might be making you miss out on many more customers. If your website is a hassle to visit via a mobile device, you can be sure that those users will simply go back and you might not get another chance to attract them again.
4. Coherent structure and navigation
Last but definitely not least, your website design should have a clear structure and navigation. Is it really a good idea to have a completely unique website (so unique that people don’t understand how to navigate around it)? Of course not, this is why it’s important to make sure that everything seems logical to your target audience.
Also, important information such as phone number, operating hours, physical location or address, etc., should be easily accessible from every page. Rarely will a customer navigate through multiple pages just to find contact information, they will just navigate on to the next Jewelry Store they can find.
Additional Tips
Aside from the tips outlined above, you’ll notice that even if your website looks good there has to be something to help people find your website and convert the occasional visitor into a recurrent one. This means you should also look into posting quality, well-written content through a blog and optimizing your website for search engines. Search engines, such as Google, read websites different than we do, which means your website should be optimized if you want to be found when potential buyers search using very broad terms.
If you believe your current website just isn’t enough anymore and you might be losing out on potential business, or your website simply doesn’t transmit the quality of your product and service, it might be time to think about redesigning it. If you’re thinking about this, follow the guidelines above and then take the first step by reaching out to us and getting professional guidance. We can help transform your current website into a website that really showcases your brand and attracts customers to you.
