Jewelry making as an art and a hobby has gained tremendous popularity over the past decade for many reasons. Every full-time jeweler and artisan started at home with little or no investment and used the mundane, everyday objects that were available to them to create jewelry.
When transitioning into creating jewelry professionally, a craftsman has to learn various jewelry-making techniques and skills, and practice their art with unfaltering devotion. Because in today’s market, the most unique one-of-a-kind pieces are the ones that have the highest value.
Even when a jeweler is creating common pieces of jewelry, they will try to make each piece stand out by getting creative and experimenting with their style.
How To Start A Jewelry Business
As with most other industries, the jewelry industry values artists who have the ability to consistently come up with one-of-a-kind pieces, without having to compromise on the intricate details and quality of each.
Therefore, the first step towards creating a successful jewelry business is to refine and develop your technique and ability to maintain a reasonable production flow, by procuring resources and a having sufficient workspace. While there are innumerable tutorials and tools available on the internet, these skills end up coming naturally to most successful jewelers due to their dedication, practice, and inherent love for the art of jewelry making.
Furthermore, the jewelry industry has been transformed in the sense that traditional stores and showrooms are not the most popular place where people buy jewelry anymore, the internet is! Due to the rise of online marketplaces and websites, people are able now to look for the best deals on certified pieces without ever having to leave the comfort of their own home.
Nowadays, most successful businesses garner a majority of their profits through online retail and sales. In many cases, jewelers do not even have tangible stores that people can walk into, instead opting to sign exclusive deals with existing stores and franchises to sell their products. Again, this can only happen due to the jeweler’s successful online presence.
The key to building a successful business lies in the the strength of its online presence.
Yet, needless to say, there are thousands of other online jewelry stores posting content and products on a daily basis. The swell in numbers is continuous as it tries to match the ever-increasing demand. Last year alone, jewelry items and accessories made up about 30% of the total online purchases, which means that creating unique pieces of high quality is not the only thing that will matter. The quality and regularity of the content you post online are also of paramount importance.
Prospective customers should be able to find your business easily, with your content ranking high inside database search results. The website that you create should be user friendly, with seamless cart and mobile viewing optimizations. Common marketing gimmicks such as promotional campaigns and discounts are also extremely useful in attracting internet traffic.
How to Stand Out from the Crowd
Due to most people buying jewelry online nowadays, there is a steady flow of online sales that your business can grab a piece of. But, in order to do that, the necessary groundwork needs to be laid out and done first.
While it is not difficult to create and launch your own website using the various online services and tutorials that are available today, due to the high amount of competition, it is recommended that you do the proper research on professional services that you could potentially employ and make use of. After all, creating a truly good website is a difficult task due to various aspects such as readability, visual value, and navigation that need to be considered.
Furthermore, there are various website functionalities such as mobile optimization, social media integration, and payment and security features that need to be considered as well as just the general layout of the website; and even that often need weeks of work worth spent working on it. With someone else taking care of all of that for you, you can focus on the real business that you as a jeweler need to take care of, such as the creation of designs, garnering of stones and metals, and the maintenance of your machinery.
In the same way that you as a jeweler give proper consideration to each piece of jewelry that you make while going about your work, professional web designers create personalized fully functional websites that continuously attract prospective customers from around the world within your target user-base.
Now, towards the beginning, most of these professional services might appear unaffordable, considering the limited profits that new businesses tend to make. In this scenario, finding the right professional team which takes care of each and every aspect of your business’s online presence at affordable prices can become quite a challenge.
At ITJGroup, the lack of practical solutions for jewelers looking to start and refine their online presence is the very problem that we seek to solve.
We provide high quality, online solutions to jewelers irrespective of their size, technical knowledge, or location. By getting in touch with us, we are able to tailor everything to each brand's specific needs and circumstances, fulfilling every prospective need that a client has.
How to Sell Jewelry Online
While a personal website is the best place to sell your products online, various businesses will something post their pieces on large online portals in order to gain customers. However, this is not recommended. While it can be a good short term approach for jewelers just looking to get a foothold in the market, it generally does not work and has negative results in the long run.
Customers who buy jewelry from larger online portals hardly ever notice the individual seller, and in most cases, do not even bother checking the original website. Moreover, having a distinct online presence and fully functional website allow jewelers to keep track of real-time internet traffic and the respective popularity of their products.
Integrated payments means that you will not have to pay any transaction fees on sales that bigger portals often charge to sellers.
Having integrated payments allows for a better, more competitive pricing on your products, as well as better marketing campaigns and promotional discounts, all of which further incentivize people to buy your products over someone else's. As such, having an integrated payment system, with a variety of available payment methods as options, is extremely important if you want your business to attract customers from all over the world.
Lastly, once the website is set up and the payment methods are made available, the delivery of the products becomes your next focus and is the final step of the process. Here, factors such as the size of your team, product catalog, and orders are considered. Smaller businesses tend to prefer to employ the services of existing shipping carriers rather than creating their own in-house shipping team for completing deliveries.
Regardless, a good team will not only result in a substantial online presence, but will also free up your time and energy so that you can focus on the everyday duties of your actual business.
How We Can Help You
Selling jewelry online can be as tedious as creating the jewelry is, and there are various technical skills that you would need to learn in order to create a solid web presence. There is a lot of work that goes into the creation and maintenance of having a functional online presence. Professionals also employ SEO tools and services that help in the creation of content that ranks higher on online databases.
As such, the creation and maintenance of a successful jewelry selling website requires both time and skill, and as the jewelry artist, your time and skills are best employed taking care of the tangible aspects of the business instead. At ITJGroup, we want to help you start, or ever further, your business with a really solid online presence. We use the same technology and techniques employed by larger corporation such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, while keeping our prices at one of the best in the market. The bulk of the work required to transform your jewelry hobby into a full-scale jewelry business will happen on the internet. So let us help you with that aspect, while you work on other matters, and together we can create a successful business that you can be proud of.