Should You Set up a Jewellery Website – or a Blog?

by Rena Klingenberg

One of the main things people want when they buy handmade items is a connection with the artist.

But when customers shop from you online they don’t get that face-to-face interaction with you. So you’ll need to find another way to provide a personal connection with them.

I highly recommend having a blog instead of a website for your main online jewellery business presence. Here’s why:

• A blog is an interactive place, where you can converse back and forth with your audience and make a personal connection with everyone. In contrast, a website is just one-sided communication – you talking to them.
• People are far more likely make regular visits to a blog than to a website. That’s because blogs tend to have fresh content posted regularly, whereas a website might remain unchanged for months at a time.
• You can help your online customers get to know you by using your jewellery blog as an artist’s journal, providing an inside look into what’s currently going on in your jewellery studio. Customers love this opportunity to connect and understand you as both an artist and as a person.

But How Can Customers Buy Jewellery from Your Blog?

Easily! You can enable customers to purchase your jewellery via your blog in either of these simple ways:

• Use the shopping cart or “buy now” features of PayPal or eJunkie.
• Or set up a shop on a third-party storefront like Artfire, Dawanda, Etsy, etc. – and then post the feed or widget of your products on your blog.

Either way, your customers can see what you’ve got and purchase it easily.

How to Make Your Customers Totally Addicted to Your Jewellery Blog:

Involve your target audience by making your blog an interesting, pleasant, or entertaining visit into the life and studio of a jewellery artist, at least once or twice a week. Think of your blog as a cool TV show or magazine; what would make your customers want to keep tuning in to for more?

People who visit jewellery blogs want to see photos – LOTS of photos! So include images in every post if you can.

In your blog, journal about your creative process and inspirations. People find this very interesting, and they like to ride along for the entire journey of the creation of one of your pieces (and after experiencing the birth of this new piece, there’s a good chance someone will be interested in owning it!).

Build the buzz about your jewellery. Discuss how it’s created, what’s unique about a particular piece or component, what the piece signifies to you, what happened while you were creating it, etc. Basically, give the piece of jewellery a history and an interesting story.

Let the tale unfold over a few blog posts. Stories sell jewellery. And stories told in episodes gain more readers with each new episode.

Use your blog to build up anticipation for each new piece of jewellery or new design you’re working on. Build suspense and desire – and then unveil the piece. Launch it with a bit of fanfare. Invite readers to comment.

You can put a “buy now” button from PayPal or E-junkie right there in your blog, directly beneath the photo of a newly unveiled piece of jewellery. Many artists are able to sell each new piece they make, directly from their blog, with these techniques.

Remember that your jewellery blog visitors don’t just want to purchase; they want to be entertained. And the better you entertain them, the more they’ll bring other people to your blog – and to your jewellery.

Sign up Subscribers

One of the most important things you can do for your jewellery business is to have a subscriber list, so you can contact your customers and let them know whenever you have new items, an upcoming event, or a sale.

You can use one of the email newsletter systems.

Or, since you have a jewellery blog, you can simply ask your visitors to sign up to be notified about each new blog post. Then they can read about your new items, events, and sales in your blog posts.

Leveraging Other Artists’ Blog Traffic

Once you’ve gotten some experience with publishing your own jewellery blog, you may want to consider group blogging – doing a separate blog together with other artists or businesses who are also targeting the same niche market you’re aiming for.

It’s a great way to leverage each blogger’s unique appeal, marketing, and following to benefit everyone in the blogging group.

By working together, you share the work of blogging, and share your individual followers to create one huge audience for all of you.

More About Building Your Successful Online Presence

See Rena Klingenberg’s top six ways to build your professional presence on the internet in Sell Jewelry Online.

Be the first to know the newest jewellery business success secrets – subscribe to Rena’s newsletter.

Thanks again to Rena for supporting Jewellery Business Week, look out for her blog about selling offline tomorrow!