August 2022 | Lab Grown Magazine

August 2022 | The Lab Grown Diamond Resource Book 20 To advertise call (888) 832-1109 | August 2022 21 -commerce has evolved dramatically since Amazon and eBay launched in 1995. Both companies reached one million transactions two years thereafter. PayPal debuted in 1998, followed by the launch of Amazon Prime in 2005. Now, Amazon boosts an average of 2.2 billion monthly visitors resulting in daily sales exceeding $140 million. Many debate the e-com tipping point arrived when Apple introduced mobile payments and a digital wallet (Apple Pay) in 2014. That move sprung major mobile phone carriers and Android smart phone makers, like Samsung to step-up their e-com game. Welcome to Part 2, and the closing segment of a recent NorthAmerican jewelry retailer survey on LGDs focused on e-commerce sales. This article focuses on who this shopper is, which LGD-related consumer sites they are visiting, what they are doing when there, and how you may benefit from this research. I was hoping to include independent retail jewelry e-commerce examples, but frankly, even at their best, I couldn’t find any that truly utilize and leverage the numerous free and affordable modern software packages or topical ways to engage their online shoppers. Many sites look and operate on an average level. Most are over three years old and the majority has never run a site analysis to find flaws and current ways (often free) to attract, maintain and convert their traffic. Many don’t realize they have a robust and free audience monitoring tool via Google Analytics at-the-ready to provide deep insight into their traffic flow. This story should help fix that. Conversion starts with conversation Most independent retailers don’t have a dedicated person or small staff to properly support their e-store. Typically, one person (a marketing manager) takes on the content strategy, responsibility to update the site, and cross-pollinates content through their social media channels. Many must act as a ‘web master’ interfacing with a technical person or third-party tech team to address online errors and keep them compliant. This person is usually responsible for online advertising, promotions, contests and the managing a mailing list ala a weekly or monthly newsletter. That’s a lot for one person, or even a small team, especially when they have significant and often dominating brick-and-mortar responsibilities to boot. If you don’t view your e-store as mission critical, or perhaps even more important than your brick-and-mortar store (s), you could be leaving a lot more than money on the table. In fact, you could be risking the future of your actual store (s) and future years of sales success if you don’t show your 24/7 global sales entity the right respect. We’ll address online LGD stats from a recent study based on North American independent jewelry stores that operate an e-store, the largest players in the game at present and why they are so profitable. It all starts with first impressions. The global leader of domain name registry services, and a mega-internet infrastructure giant is Virginia-based VeriSign. They created the iconic padlock e-com icon and credit card verification system we see on e-com pages worldwide. Beth Tilson, EVP of e-commerce strategy, had this to offer: “Lab-grown diamond e-commerce sites should do many things, but at the core, these e-stores should be built to create and capture a rapid means of online sales conversion. To get to conversion, you need conversation.” With LGDs online, this category begs for conversation. Why then don’t the majority of small-to-mid sized LGD-focused e-com sites offer a live chat option? Those that do think it’s acceptable to have their online chat be bot-driven. These inexpensive off-the- shelf AI systems do nothing more than take your pre-loaded frequently asked questions/ answers and feed them into an automated bot. Key words typed into a chat box triggers robotic responses. These responses are easily identified as automated by the shopper, and are not well received. Bots rarely address the real question at hand. Hiring third-party live individuals to handle online chat only works when those people are properly trained, and repeatedly. The only thing worse that a canned, unhelpful automated response is an incorrect or unknowing response from an ill prepared live customer service person. Consider a one-click call button on your e-store, which obviously only works during business hours, but could help ensure proper answers for at least a portion of the day. Why sell LGDs to consumers online? Polling nearly 100 North American jewelry retailers who offer consumer e-commerce sites, each were asked why they made the decision to offer man-made diamonds online, and why they continue to sell them. Here’s what we found... 67% of respondents noted their LGD e-com decision was based on margins with the ability to offer lower suggested retail price (SRP)s comparatively to mined stones. This group was separated into two sub-sets, one being focused on lower than natural diamond SRPs and the other citing consumer concerns over sustainability issues as a second layer to the lower price component. 25% listed LGD specialty cuts as an important factor, while 8% cited LGD colored stones drew shoppers interest. This was especially the case when comparing the by-and-large unaffordable price of rare, fancy natural diamonds above one carat to LG yellows, pinks, blues and even red stones above 1.5 carats. The Top 5 LGD e-stores Even the strongest independent jeweler selling LGDs online can’t hold a candle to the qualified high traffic volume and strong conversion of the top five e-com players. Of these, only two have national brick-and-mortar locations tied to their brand. The leader of this group, with no actual store and the highest traffic and visitation duration was: brilliantearth.com Getting the drill-down on competitive traffic, page views, time spent on the site, and more, are all accessible through a few trusted sources. Operating an agency allows me access to these sources and I’m sharing much of those where those visitors came from, the time spent on the site, and other critical online visibility and marketing insights allow companies to understand their ROI while gaining an inside track on competitors. To see a snapshot summary of howdetailed these up-to-the-second analytics can be, please visit www.facebook. com/LabGrownDiamondMagazine/ or visit us on Instagram, @lab_grown_magazine. Here's the top five e-com sites with monthly traffic numbers and page views from June of this year as based on vetted monthly reporting data.

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