How to find the best Jewelry Ecommerce Software for you

Whether you’re selling ultra-fashionable costume jewelry and accessories on an overnight delivery basis or retailing bespoke fine jewelry with a personal touch - your jewelry ecommerce software needs to be able to cope with the day to day running of your business alongside scaling up with you as your business grows to ensure that your customers are never disappointed.

With 18% of diamond jewelry being purchased online, even the most exclusive jewelry options are now likely to be found in jewelry ecommerce stores. This is primarily due to the sale of engagement rings which still make up the largest sector of fine jewelry sales online.

What to look for in jewelry ecommerce software

Web design and development - the bottom line essential for any jewelry business is that the site, its products and its processes must look good. With all too many inferior software solutions there are failures to achieve this absolute necessity, for example by allowing suppliers to upload their own images without any quality check, leading to poor visuals, uneven experience across the site and a sense that there is no unifying idea behind the brand.

Look for software that makes it easy to design and launch your store, but ensure that your chosen software supplier goes further than just creating a good looking shopfront. You need to see evidence of great business management tools too, so that you can develop your site, build customer relationships and engage the best designers and manufacturers in working with you.

Develop the uniqueness that supports your ambitions - some software offers little scope for customization. While it may create a great website, each of those websites is virtually identical, making it difficult for you to differentiate your business from all the others using that software. That’s okay if you’re happy to pick up customers on a random basis, and lose them again just as easily, to a site that looks just like yours, but if you want a business that stands out from the crowd and has a distinctive appeal, you need jewelry vending software that is endlessly creative.

Shopping Cart Elite knows that for jewelry ecommerce every piece of content on your site tells the customer who you are, what you care about and what you promise to deliver. That’s why SCE designers are trained to respect the images of each website owner, and to design their brand identity into their website themes to offer a consistent, one-of-a-kind identity built into the DNA of your site.

Price yourself into profit - jewelry is a fascinating, complicated area when it comes to profit. In 2016 it was esteemed that successful online jewelry sites were making between 25% and 75% profit, substantially more than many other retailing sectors. Three things make profitability more probable in this marketplace:

• Jewelry is a non-comparison business. Unlike electronic goods, where you can easily find the cheapest price for a specific model, jewelry doesn’t allow such direct comparison. People buy on the beauty of the jewelry they can see, on its investment value and on its intrinsic value (in other words, by spending more they feel better about themselves especially if they are buying special occasion jewelry like wedding rings).
• Jewelry is a delivery and return dream. It’s generally sturdy, it’s small in scope and even when ensured, it’s a cost effective shipping item. Because shipping adds little to the overall cost and because returns are usually immediately ready to ship out again, jewelry has one of the lowest cost centers for delivery and returns.
• Jewelry is customizable. Nothing ties in a customer like having an item of jewelry embossed or engraved or otherwise personalized so that it is theirs and theirs alone.

Your software needs to offer unlimited price point options and a simply, preferably automated, pricing facility that allows you fingertip control over your inventory. This can be particularly important in some niche jewelry sectors like Indian jewelry where carat pricing for gold can influence the price at which you offer items on a day to day basis.

Project management is your jewelry ecommerce site’s DNA - so, we’ve talked about how profitable jewelry e-retailing can be, but that’s not the whole story. Underpinning any successful jewelry site are a range of processes that are essential. From simple sales to marketing, from customer relationship management to help desk queries, your software needs to be able to handle a range of tasks that allow your site to function seamlessly. This means ensuring that your chosen software can define and track:

• Preparing for trade shows or exhibitions
• Creating new PPC advertisements
• Handling PPC bid management
• Social media relationships
• Crafting social media advertisements
• Special campaigns
• External SEO
• SEO within site article page creation.

A great shopfronts is clearly an essential start, but it’s only a start. Selecting jewelry ecommerce software that supports you in every aspect of business development is crucial.

Be channel responsive - finding the ideal theme to support your jewelry store’s unique features is important but being sure that your chosen theme works across all possible channels, especially mobile is vital. Your marketing tools need to function underneath this responsive thematic approach so that regardless of which channel your customers access you on, they receive the same swift, clean response, the same high quality graphic interface and the same confident, friendly customer service.

Working through many platforms may not be your first choice, but it’s vital to have the possibility to expand your jewelry business whenever it makes sense to do so: Shopping Cart Elite integrates with Ebay, Amazon, Walmart, Jet, Become, Bing Shopping, Google Shopping, Google Shopping Local, Nextag, Pricegrabber, Pronto, Shopping, Shopzilla, Smarter, Etsy, Houzz, Newegg, Overstock, PriceFalls, and Rakuten and this list is not exhaustive. Wherever you think your business might develop, being able to move in any direction that allows you to grow gives you the peace of mind that you can seize every opportunity.

What separates the best Jewelry Ecommerce Software from the rest

Promotional tools - you need to understand what makes a jewelry site successful, in other words, what sells jewelry. Marketing jewelry effectively means that potential customers like to see how items can be worn. It also requires sophisticated marketing on social channels such as Facebook and Instagram to reach large audiences. Making your advertising shareable and attractive is important, as is creating special promotions like Black Friday, Valentine’s Day etc. Rewarding loyal customers by offering them special deals via email or newsletters or using codes to gain discounts for repeat purchases.

Emotional engagement - whether it’s costume jewelry or a diamond ring, jewelry purchasing is always a decision that combines a high degree of emotional content alongside hard-headed price considerations. While the time taken to chose fashion jewelry is limited - in fact purchasers now take half the time to decide on their purchases to five years ago, the time taken to select ‘lifetime’ jewelry such as engagement, wedding and maternity rings hasn’t changed at all. What has changed though is the amount of research people do into fine jewelry … now those seeking a special jewelry purchase are likely to explore as many as a dozen sites in great detail, comparing prices and exploring offerings on a point by point basis before eventually deciding on their final option. Jewelry is much more than a purchase, it helps define the individuality and personality of the wearer which means that your site needs to have the ability to create emotional engagement and maintain a sense of relationship that gives the buyer a sense of satisfaction and self worth. Paradoxically this is even more important when buying jewelry as a gift - because the nature of a jewelry purchase is always intimate and part of a relationship-creating activity, it carries greater weight than almost any other and needs to combine simplicity in site design with emotional responses to content.

In conclusion, it’s important to investigate your chosen software to be sure that it will work for you in the long term. Don’t fall for flashy promises, dig deep into the information available to find out how well the software will support you as your site grows and expands, examine how well it will allow you to promote your business in many channels and ensure it gives you the ability to balance elegant storefront options alongside rich emotional engagement to optimize your opportunities for success.