What’s the key to jewelry business success on the web?

Is it a pretty website? Nope.
Is it pretty pictures? Nope.
Is it lots of Facebook friends? Nope.
It’s not lots of Twitter followers, or Etsy hearts, or lots of shop or website traffic either.

How about profit margins?  Well… we’re getting closer.

Give up? It’s conversion rate. Yup, it’s about actually getting sales.

What’s a conversion rate?

Your conversion rate is your visitor to sales ratio.

So how do you calculate your sales per visitor?

Here’s the calculation:

(Sales / Unique Visitors) = Conversion Rate

For example, if you had 100 visitors to your web shop, and 1 person bought something from you, that’s a 1% conversion rate.

Why Focus on Conversion Rate?

Increase that rate, and you increase your income just like that – without increasing traffic!

All those other things? The pretty website?  The pretty pictures?  Facebook?  Twitter?  Getting search engine traffic?  Of course they’re important too, but you need all that traffic and all those pretty graphics and photos to bring in sales. No sales, no success.

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I want to make this one point crystal clear though before you think you can drop prices to increase sales conversions.  That’s a recipe for disaster.  Make sure you make a profit.  In physical product sales you need a sustainable profit margin.  Don’t ever think it’s about getting sales at all costs.  Making a profit after your labor and supplies is important too.

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The best part about increasing your conversion rate is that you get more sales with the same traffic levels.  This means your income goes up even if your visitor count stays the same.  So when you do get more visitors, your income automatically increases that much more too.

I found this great blog post by Alice Seba that perfectly matched this jewelry marketing principle:  Conversion: Less Volume, More Results. It’s a great article on how to figure out your sales conversion rate.

Once you know what your conversion rate is, you can start improving it.

Questions?  Comments?  Whatcha think?

P.S. Focusing on results exactly matches what I teach in Handmade Results Weekly.  Throughout the training program we discuss different ways to get more traffic, increase conversion rate, and just do better in less time.  We’re reopening to new students soon, so if you want to get some handmade jewelry business training and learn how to make the internet work for you, get on the notification list, and I’ll let you know when we reopen.

Handmade Results Weekly is closed just for a few days more while I revamp the order page. I thought it would just take a day or two, but it’s taking longer than I expected.

We will re-open shortly, so if you want to be notified when we do (I know some of you are chomping at the bit to get your jewelry businesses revved up!) you can add your name to the notification list and I’ll let you know when we’re open again.

Best,

Christine Gierer

P.S. I’ve made some updates to the Handmade Jewelry Results Report. It’s a primer on how to get started improving your jewelry marketing strategy today, and it’s absolutely free so go check it out if you haven’t already.

(It’s for Handmade Results Success News Free Newsletter Subscribers so please signin or signup to get it!)

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Here are the resources I mention in The Handmade Jewelry Results Report

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Your handmade jewelry descriptions have to persuade someone that your jewelry is worth buying…

And just making a list of materials just doesn’t go very far.

That’s why spending time to hone your description is so important to your ultimate longterm success.

Here are some tips for making those product descriptions more likely to make the sale.

Tip #1: Think of the Title as a Headline

A great description has to first catch your readers attention. Make sure the title of your product is something that catches the eye and makes someone want to read further. You’ll want your title to be both descriptive and representative, and not vague and “artsy”. Remember, your title won’t always be seen with the photo of your work. In search engine listing for example, the title and brief description is all the reader will see. Artsy titles will appeal to the reader more when they actually see the item on your product page.

Here are some examples Read the rest of this entry