Established a website for jewelry and no sales. Help

[tinman47]

I've established a website to sell jewelry for my mom: Tulip Jewels (http://tulipjewel.com)

I've worked tirelessly on the website but we are getting no sales.

I examine Google Analytics, and it seems that people would log on to the page, but they wouldn't click into categories,
they seem to just view the home page. What am I doing wrong? Is the website unattractive? My mom was able to get sales
on Ebay, but lately eBay sales have halted completely.

I'm currently promoting with Adwords and Twitter,
I even created an app: Tulip Jewels Online Store Android App (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wTulipJewels)
, but to no avail.

Please help guys, my mom has been working with jewelry for 6 years and shes great at it, shes just not
getting any sales, I want to help but I don't know what to do. :( I don't want my mom to fail.

[vangogh]

I don't think the website is unattractive. it actually looks pretty good to me. There are a lot of reasons why a visit may not lead to a sale, but since you say Analytics is showing people leaving after visiting the home page, I have a feeling the problem is in where and how you're getting traffic.


You mention AdWords and Twitter. Are there other large sources of traffic or is it mainly those two? I'll focus on AdWords for a moment. I don't how you're writing ads or what phrases you're bidding on, but what might be happening is a mismatch in what people expect when they click on your ad and when they land on the page. Could you provide some details about your keywords and ad copy?

Here's an example of a possible mismatch. I dug around in the site and found a product for Leyla Lariat Quartz Necklace. Say you bid on some keywords related to that necklace and wrote ad copy about that necklace and then clicking the ad took someone to the home page of the site. Where's the Leyla Lariat Quartz Necklace. That's what I clicked to see. I don't see it on the home page and I don't know instantly where to look. So the option I choose is to leave and click something else at Google.

If you don't mind sharing some of the details about how you have AdWords set up I think we can help. I would imagine a similar thing is happening with the traffic from Twitter.

[MyITGuy]

If you build it, they may not come =D

Unfortunately you have a lot of competition on the internet and its going to be hard to compete on adwords and twitter alone.

Does your mom do any local art/craft stores? Not only will this help spur sales, but will also lead to repeat customers if you market the website properly.

I would also suggest looking at other storefronts like Amazon as people have the tendency to find what they like, then go there to price match it or buy it from someone they have a history of...although read into the seller agreement carefully (There is a thread here that discusses some concerns).

[JacobPhillips]

If I had a single piece of advice to give to you it would be to follow what Vangogh said. Give us some more information to work with and we can most likely help you!

If I had to give you a second piece of advice however it is to get on Pinterest and get active. It's an exploding social media platform and has the option to really boost your traffic if done correctly. Jewelry is a nice visual product and could get some pins. I might suggest adding a "pin-it" button to each of the products on your website as it makes it easier for visitors to share your product. The code for it can be found here (http://business.pinterest.com/widget-builder/#do_pin_it_button)

[KristineS]

Adwords may not be the way to advertise. When I went to the site, the first thing I noticed was the price of the jewelry. It's not overpriced, and it's lovely, but it's not something a casual buyer is going to purchase. I may be willing to drop 25 dollars on a pair of earrings I find in a random search, I'm not going to spend $425. Your site and products cater to a more exclusive clientele, so the best way to go may be to narrow your net. Figure out where people with the income to buy your pieces go and advertise there. Be prepared to spend some money to make money.

You also might want to look at Etsy. I know there are jewelry designers who sell there and do quite well.

[Harold Mansfield]

I've established a website to sell jewelry for my mom: Tulip Jewels (http://tulipjewel.com)

I've worked tirelessly on the website but we are getting no sales.

I examine Google Analytics, and it seems that people would log on to the page, but they wouldn't click into categories,
they seem to just view the home page. What am I doing wrong? Is the website unattractive? My mom was able to get sales
on Ebay, but lately eBay sales have halted completely.

I'm currently promoting with Adwords and Twitter,
I even created an app: Tulip Jewels Online Store Android App (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wTulipJewels)
, but to no avail.

Please help guys, my mom has been working with jewelry for 6 years and shes great at it, shes just not
getting any sales, I want to help but I don't know what to do. :( I don't want my mom to fail.

I want to mention what you did correctly. Product images. Nice job! Most people take this for granted.

Assuming your ads are driving the right traffic, here's what I see when I get to the page:


The website is not bad, but it's very plain and doesn't reflect the creativity of the product. In this instance, there is actually too much white space.
There is no personalization, or introduction to the product or the artist(No tagline, slogan. Nothing) . Remember, you are trying to sell to strangers who have never heard of you before. A backstory can go a long way. Your Mom is a pretty lady, you should promote her more as the artist/designer on the home page.
Your "About" page needs some work and doesn't do justice to the story of who she is as an artist and designer.
Looks like you have a sidebar there, but it's empty and makes the site look even more sparse. This would be a great place for self promotion of featured products, specials or sales.
You have "Terms of Use" ( for the website) and a "Privacy Policy" but no terms dealing with orders, support, returns and refunds.
Your sales copy is non existent, Yes, you have the specs, but there is nothing there that sells the product. Makes people want it. "Perfect for a night on the town" kind of stuff. There's a real art to sales copy, so do some reading before you just dive into it.
Additionally some images of the product in use can go a long way. Images of people that look like your target demographic wearing the jewelry. You know, like on QVC..smiling face with a hand up wearing the ring. That kind of thing. It stands out that there are no people on the site. Even lawnmowers show people using the product.
You are doing nothing to promote gifting. Which brings up the next point...
It looks as if you are targeting just Women, and you should also be targeting Men. Men buy jewelry as gifts for birthdays, Valentines day, Anniversaries and so on...which brings up the next point...
I don't see any gifting options...gift wrapping for one.


There are also few additional ideas that you could implement to help get natural traffic, such as a few articles on buying jewelry, you know, the "How to buy the perfect gift for her" kind of thing. "How to make this anniversary special", "How to get her ring size without her knowing", "How to pick out the perfect necklace" , "Tips on accessorizing" and so on.

That's what I see so far, just casually looking at it as both a customer and a web designer.

[Wozcreative]

The photos are a little fuzzy, un-focused. I also see that the styles vary a lot. instead of grouping by category or color, i see everything slapped together on the home page. Other than that the site is nice. The jewelry seems to cater to older people, maybe you need to figure out if you are hitting your target audience with the visits?

The text also seems to me very very small to read. If you are catering to elder people then you may need to make the size bigger.

[Harold Mansfield]

Also, you mentioned an app. Yet it is not mentioned or promoted anywhere on the website.

Basically it looks like you've gone through all of the technical motions, but none of the marketing motions.

[Betty]

The jewelry is beautiful. You might be really successful if you start using Pinterest to show off the jewelry and direct people back to the site. And make it easy for other people to "pin" images from the site. I heard an expert on Pinterest speak and the stats amazed me: 20% of Pinterest users buy something because they found it through Pinterest. Average purchase is $170.

[Harold Mansfield]

I just happened to take another look and I see that you are using an AOL email as the company contact? That is bush league amateur. If I were considering a purchase, that wouldn't inspire confidence in you as a company.

You have your own domain. Use company email addresses.

[MikeAppleton]

Maybe you need some assistance with your adwords ads, they might not be specific enough. i.e. "jewellery" might get you more visitors but how many people are at the end of their buying process but searching for "jewellery"? "hand made, personalised silver pendents" would get you less traffic but the traffic will be more inclined to buy.

Now when you say they log in and you lose them, do they actually log in or do you just lose them from the first page without actually logging in? *I do see you have a log in button so was wondering whether they do or not*. If it's after they log in, check your scripts because there could be a broken link sending them to a page that doesn't exist. If they don't log in but don't look further than the first page, ask yourself why you are losing them, is it quality, design, price, the website feel? Maybe play around with it, run some split tests and see how your visitors react if they don't see a price, if they click through to see the price but then browse away from your site then they have issues with the price, you can do the same with the images.

Analytics will be invaluable in seeing exactly where they lose interest.

As a last resort you can have an exit script pop up as they leave which can ask them what they had an issue with.

[vangogh]

Maybe you need some assistance with your adwords ads, they might not be specific enough

I have a hunch this is a big part of the problem. I have a feeling that while traffic is hitting the site, it's not traffic geared toward making a purchase or if it is, it's being directed to the wrong landing page. The site and product is nice. I would think targeted traffic should result in some sales so I'm thinking the traffic isn't being targeted well.

[inexpensivelogo.com]

Hi. I've read out your post and I have few ideas with which you can increase the sales. You've stated that your mom is 'in the business' for over 6 years and that previously she was selling on ebay.com. Why not making an usage of the previous experiences and for example extract the mails from ebay's buyers to create a mailing list? It's a perfect opportunity to engage yourself in internet marketing. Remember to advertise that you've moved to a new site, that the products are all the time updated, new things arrive. Don't forget to mention about rich experience in jewelery and make the receipients of your emails interested in what you have to offer (for example give 5 - 10% discount on particular products or add earrings for free to each xx amount of people who will place an order at your site within xx to xx date).

I'm surprised that your google adwords campaign doesn't result in conversion. I would suggest you to always change your keywords and ad campaigns according to this link : How to Run a Google Adwords Campaign : Basics For Newbies | Search Engine Journal (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-run-a-google-adwords-campaign-basics-for-newbies/5960/) . Always remember that if an ad campaign doesn't result in good conversion then it means that it's wrongly advertised. Use your local newspaper or even tv magazines to advertise in good spots. It doesn't cost that much and can be even more effective than advertising on the web.

Another thing is technicial stuff. I didn't have much time to review your site due to the amount of work we have here in office but maybe there is a coding error on some step of ordering process on your website. I saw that you are using paypal. Learn what is Paypal Sandbox if you don't know yet, put the website to mainteance mode for 1 hour and check the payment system. Check does it work well, do you receive notifications through Paypal's IPN (again learn what it is if you don't know yet) etc. Maybe customers wanted to buy something but they couldn't.

Last thing - Some niches are changing rapidly according to the current global or even local trends. In my opinion jewelry is one of them. Who knows if currently ethnic style of jewelry is not more seeked than silver one. Of course this is just an example but you get my point i hope :).

Trully last thing - Expand your product list on website and remember about two things - continue selling on ebay (at least for very cheap advertising of your company) and focus on SEO of your website. Especially aim for organic visitors and referral visitors.

Good luck!

Bruce Ditmars

[Roundcone]

The products you're selling on your website are perfect for Pinterest. Create a board there and see if you can generate traffic to your site.

[BNB]

Facebook Advertising may be interesting. Or even Plenty of Fish. I'm sure these would make great gifts for a significant other, and Facebook/Plenty of Fish are cheaper than Google Adwords. On Facebook, consider the type of person that generally buys these projects and advertise to them. A few different types of ads would be useful, maybe one geared towards men where it shows a great bracelet or necklace for $29, "A special gift for under $29" or something to that tune. Then maybe another ad geared towards women who may just like to purchase jewelry themselves.

[Marketech]

Hello,

Been a lurker for some time and felt compelled to write my first post to this thread :-)

As others have stated, the site is well done and I commend you for getting this part right. Sure there can be tweaks made but it appears that you have the bulk of it behind you. I wanted to add that it looks like there is not a lot of local marketing being done from what I see by doing general searches. I would imagine that your Mother has a reputation in the local community and this is what I have found to be the building blocks for further growth. Let me walk through a couple of things I see:

1. Tulip Jewels does not show up when searching for jewelry in your area. (Coconut Creek, FL jewelry, jewelry stores in coconut creek fl). There are lots of business listed, just not yours. Look at what they are doing and mimic it.

2. Not registered with Coconut Creek Chamber of Commerce (free backlink) : Coconut Creek Chamber of Commerce - Membership (http://www.creekchamber.com/membership/)

3. No link in your business listing with Google or on your G+ page : https://plus.google.com/106732637830618897591/about . This is the first link people see when they search for "tulip jewelry coconut creek fl". I'm also curious as to why tulipjewel.com isn't even on page one of Google. The very same search term is number one on Bing though and that is excellent.

I say these things because a lot of folks tend to focus on world domination and forget the baby steps needed in order to achieve that domination. I like to take a business and look at it's progress like a tornado. It starts out as simple gust of wind that is swirling around in one particular spot. As the momentum grows and the swirl becomes larger, it starts to get noticed by others who are not even near that original spot. From there things just simply grow and grow.

Businesses are needing to engage more and more on a local level in our socially connected world these days (FB Fan page?) so don't forget about all those customers who could/will/do walk in the door of the showroom.

Good luck and please take the advice of others by changing your email address and putting up a Pinterest page.

[vangogh]

I say these things because a lot of folks tend to focus on world domination and forget the baby steps needed in order to achieve that domination

Great point. I think people do forget and sometimes fail to understand you just aren't going to dominate a large market out of the gate. It simply takes time and a great strategy to put into place during that time is to go after smaller markets with less competition. It's easier to become the big fish in lots of little ponds until one day you realize all those ponds have joined to become a single big pond and you're still the big fish.

[SWAMP80]

We would recommend an Etsy strategy if everything is handmade. Then you probably want to look into some SEO - make sure your website is tagged properly for your goals. Definitely post things on Pinterest, but not only your products - make sure you aren't only sharing your products otherwise people will get bored and not want to follow you. Pick out some bloggers and engage with them! [Link Removed]

[billbenson]

Staying on top of things harold :)

[vangogh]

He's feasting on my leftovers. :)

[Gabe]

If you look at most of the comments here you'll notice that nobody knows your target market, so we're all guessing at it. Because your mom actually owns a store, she knows the answer to that question more than anyone; she sees and interacts with them every day. What kind of people come into the store? More importantly, which ones buy? Focus on those people. If you focus on your primary 20% of customers you'll have higher conversions. Because they're your most targeted, passionate customers they're also more likely to spread the word. A suggestion from a friend is worth a thousands times more than an ad...and it's free.

Once you identify your market ask them questions like where do they hang out online? How did they find you? What 'problem' does your jewelry solve? Is it for them? Is it a gift? For whom? You see where I'm going here. Once you figure out who they are and where to find them online you can target your efforts (this works for offline as well). Once you know what problem you're solving for them, you can craft your copy to show them that you're what they need. If you're not focusing on a segment you're just flailing...throwing off money and wasting time. That's why businesses fail.

As the others mentioned, if women are your target audience then Pinterest is worth a shot. Jewelry is ultra-sharable and Pinterest is perfect for that. I've never used it, but I assume it doesn't take too much time either, or at least could be mostly automated.

Stop wasting money on AdWords. At most, AdWords should be used for keyword discovery, but not for advertising at your stage, with your type of business. You need to work on content marketing to build a foundation first. As mentioned before, you need to take advantage of the fact that you have a physical store. Write articles about finding a last-minute Mother's Day gift in Coconut Creek, FL...and Valentine's Day...and anniversaries...you get the point. When some someone searches Google for "jewelry coconut creek" (and the occasions I mentioned) you should be there, but you're not. Do you offer a certain type of jewelry? Maybe start there. You don't even have a Google+ page so you don't come up with your address and contact info when searching for "jewelry coconut creek". How many sales are you losing because of that? Are you on Yelp? You should be. Focus on local, that's the shortest to sales. Let people look online and come into the store, that's your funnel.

Hundreds of thousands of people sell jewelry online, but only a handful sell in Coconut Creek, FL. Once you master local, then you can try to reach a national audience. Your solid local position will give you a leg-up on the online-only sellers because you're a 'real' business.

What CMS/hosting do you use? Your site seems a bit slow. I haven't played with too much ecommerce stuff, but I'd check out Shopify. They seem to have some nice looking layouts. As with all marketing, you'll never know what works until you test and measure. I’m not a marketing guy, but I hope this helps.

[kewleo]

It's a beautiful website, but I don't see why people should buy from this site as opposed to one with more name recognition. I think people tend to be concerned a lot about quality and security when buying jewelry online. Maybe you could explore some sort of free shipping return to address this. I like the idea of targeting men (I would imagine they search online for jewelry more) and perhaps thinking through the event they are buying for as opposed to the product you are selling, i.e. push presents, valentines, birthdays etc

[ksnazel]

I only got to step two of the shopping cart but from what I can see this payment gateway is not secured? I for one will not touch an online shopping cart unless I am on a secured https website. Although you have the words "secure" on the cart it does not look secure to me.

Your shopping cart in it's current form would deter me from ordering. Sorry.

[Harold Mansfield]

I only got to step two of the shopping cart but from what I can see this payment gateway is not secured? I for one will not touch an online shopping cart unless I am on a secured https website. Although you have the words "secure" on the cart it does not look secure to me.

Your shopping cart in it's current form would deter me from ordering. Sorry.
Many websites use 3rd party check out like Pay Pal, Authorize.net, 2CO and so on. It is on those final transaction pages where the security protection is. I agree that you shouldn't shop where there is no SSL, but I think in this instance had you gone to the pay page, you would have seen the SSL.

[ksnazel]

Many websites use 3rd party check out like Pay Pal, Authorize.net, 2CO and so on. It is on those final transaction pages where the security protection is. I agree that you shouldn't shop where there is no SSL, but I think in this instance had you gone to the pay page, you would have seen the SSL.

This is a bit of a conundrum for the small business who wishes to sell online. On one hand you get the cheaper all-in-one shopping carts which can be purchased and dropped into an existing website vs a full-on custom cart with proper SSL certificate for your domain but I suspect this second solution is beyond the price range of a small business.

[ksnazel]

This is a bit of a conundrum for the small business who wishes to sell online. On one hand you get the cheaper all-in-one shopping carts which can be purchased and dropped into an existing website vs a full-on custom cart with proper SSL certificate for your domain but I suspect this second solution is beyond the price range of a small business.

Actually the site owner could buy an SSL certificate and just encrypt the whole website no? Cost about $100 one time and would address shoppers concerns about using what looks to be an unsecured shopping cart.

Sorry to hijack your thread tinman47 but maybe you might want to look into buying an SSL certificate for your website. Harold Mansfield is probably in a better position to comment on this.

[Gabe]

Actually the site owner could buy an SSL certificate and just encrypt the whole website no? Cost about $100 one time and would address shoppers concerns about using what looks to be an unsecured shopping cart.

SSL certs are recurring, typically annually. They vary widely in price with standard certs between ~$50 and ~$1,000/yr. to EV (more security, green bar) certs for between ~$250 and ~$1,000+/yr. Though they vary in price between companies, they're all the same. EV (supposedly more secure, yet more expensive) helps conversation when people know what it means, but a small percentage (if any) of your customers will. I'm not sure if they're still on sale, but for site I completely recently I bought a 5yr SSL cert from GoDaddy for a little under $30 total ($5.99/yr.) which is insanely cheap.

When putting a whole site under SSL you can have minor issues, but it's doable...though unless you're a bank or financial site I'm not sure why you'd want to. I'm not sure if delivering a whole site via SSL is still slower, but if you deliver items (i.e. images) via an unsecure domain (i.e. http vs. https) it could throw warnings and worry customers. When in doubt, just put it on your checkout pages. Though like Harold said, if checkout is off site or something similar it doesn't matter. Though, the real measure is what makes your customers feel safe. It doesn't matter where the transaction actually takes place if your customers feel insecure without SSL. For example even though all of my transactions happen offsite or via token I still use SSL on checkout and account pages just to give a warm fuzzy. For $6/yr, why not?

[Harold Mansfield]

You can get an SSL pretty easily from your hosting company. Most for under $100 a year.
As Gabe said, there are some minor issues if you want every page to be 100% secure. You just need to go through your content, footers, sidebars, and header and make sure that there are no unsecure URL's ANYWHERE on the website.

It doesn't slow the website down. Or at least it doesn't have to.

[ksnazel]

I can confirm SSL site are not slower than regular http. I have setup a number of very large corporate intranet sites that needed to be SSL encrypted and there was no noticeable performance hit. I would recommend anyone selling through a website to invest in the $100 SSL certificate as it allays the fears of shoppers like me that won't buy online unless the site is clearly encrypted.

[Jim Briggs]

Your site and jewelry look great, but it may be time for a channel pivot--the channel being where you sell and a key element in your business model. You want to sell where the customers are going to buy.

Have you considered selling on Etsy? Etsy is more of a jewelry channel than Ebay (isn't it?) and its web site ranking is 153 globally and 56 in the U.S (from Alexa).

Its possible that customers will be more likely to find you stuff there. Having said that, that might completely be the case (better to contradict myself than let others do it ;) You will still have the challenge of driving traffic. Perhaps the bigger issue? Which means, try growth hacking (google that).

The advantage of Etsy, however, is that you don't have to be in the online store business (and maybe you're more findable--you may be more likely to be indexed by Google if you're Etsy vs your own site). Also, you can focus on more important things like creating jewelry and marketing.

What are the key activities to engage in to succeed in your business; not dealing with a web site and technology.

How is your value proposition enhanced by having your own web site store? I imagine that adding distracting concerns and increasing costs of maintaining a site, you're decreasing your value proposition by not focusing on your core value-creating activities and maybe passing on costs to customers? Wouldn't you be better off with a cool blog that promotes and links in to an Etsy store (or something similar)?