(recorded June 6, 2021) - 1 hour, 19 minutes
In this episode we’re comparing and contrasting the differences between being an ecommerce jeweler and a retail store jeweler. You’ll find out what it takes to sell with emotion online like you would in your store, the differences between online and offline advertising, conversion rates, goodwill, and staying relevant. You’ll also get some insights on how to tie both online and in-person efforts together. That’s all in this episode number 55 of the RethinkYour.com Podcast. Let’s dive in.
Emotional sales…
In-person:
You can easily sell the emotion with a story, body language, and information about the jewelry. You can connect with the buyer and play off how they react to what you tell them.
How did you learn to connect to the in-person buyer emotionally?
Online:
The person never sees you and you never see them. They are interlopers on your website, but they still come to your website with the willingness to connect to the emotion that is motivating them to look for jewelry in the first place.
Since you can't play off how they react, you have to plan for a few different scenarios and create some type of visual story that will connect with the website visitor.
In general, people are not art directors or cinematographers with the skills to capture emotions in photos or video.
Video is a challenge for a lot of people who don't want to be on camera, or don't have the skills to direct people on camera.
How can we overcome the lack of experience with creating emotional visual storytelling?
Video, Photos, and now Web Stories
Advertising
In-person:
You always have to advertise to get people into the store
Do you have a way to calculate how effective your advertising is?
Do you know which local towns bring you the best customer?
Online:
You have to advertise to get people to your website
You can easily calculate how effective your advertising is.
You can easily find out where your best customers are coming from.
Advertising Costs for In-person vs. Online
With traditional advertising you spend money and hope for customers to walk in the door. You never know if the advertising is going to work until you spend the full budget for that ad you are running.
With online advertising you can spend a little bit of money and figure out what method is working best for you before you spend your full budget.
Conversion Rates
In-person:
When someone walks in your front door you have to rely on your in-person sales skills to close the sale. It's up to you and your staff to close that sale. Your conversion rate is only as good as your sales skills. If you want a higher conversion rate you need to better train your staff or get new staff.
Online:
According to IRP Intelligent Commerce, the ecommerce conversion rate for the Fashion Clothing & Accessories market 2.19%.
https://www.irpcommerce.com/en/gb/ecommercemarketdata.aspx?Market=3
If you search for "ecommerce conversion rate" in Google you'll find that different report say that ecommerce conversion rates are as low as 1% and as high as 11.45%.
Your website conversion rate will only be as good as the training you put into your website. That training takes on the form of different story telling through photos, videos, words, and web stories.
What makes the website the same as selling in-person is that you can training your website until your conversion rate increases.
What makes the website the different than selling in-person is that, once you figure out the best training method, you can let your website work for you 24/7.
Conversion Rates for In-person vs. Online
Conversion Rate = Number of Sales / Number of Visits
There are far more people who visit your website than will ever visit your store in person. Your in-person conversion rate could be through the roof, yet you might only have 9 people come into your store on any given day. Meanwhile, there are probably at least 100 people going to your website.
Inevitable Goodwill
In-person:
Word of mouth builds up over time. You can network with people, ask for recommendations, and recommend yourself whenever the opportunity arises. Building your goodwill is a never ending task.
Online:
Online reviews can be your word of mouth. Other websites and blogs that link to you are your word of mouth. As the number of online reviews and links to your website increase over time, your online goodwill will increase. Building your online goodwill gets easier over time.
Staying Relevant
In-person:
When was the last time you remodeled your store to bring it up to the expectations of store design that customers will find fresh and inviting?
When was the last time you changed your physical inventory to be more relevant? If you have money tied up on physical inventory it can be difficult to change.
Is your store more inspiring, inside and out, than your competitors in the area?
Online:
The cost to remodel your website will always be less than remodeling your store.
It's easier to swap out your inventory online because you only need the photographs of the items. You can work with your vendors to get those photos instead of tying your money up in the physical inventory.
You can create interesting and inspiring stories that can be told online to make people remember you and keep people coming back.
Marry your in-store to your online
It's called omnichannel.
Do you feel like you are wasting money promoting your in-person sales without any way of knowing if it is working anymore?
Do you feel like you are spending money promoting yourself online without knowing if what you are doing is working?
If your online strategies are not tied to your in-person strategies, then you probably are wasting money trying to drive in opposite directions at the same time.
The combination of both is the winner. You do not need to have sales through your website for your online activity to bring in sales. For people in your local area, the website is the starting point on that journey to that emotional close of the sale. The more information you give them online, the easier the in-person sale will be.
How long does it take you to sell a diamond in-person? How many times do you talk to the customer? How many diamonds do you show them? Many jewelers will complain that they spend too much time writing emails and sending photos to customers that seem very interested in buying, but then they will complain about that wasted time when the potential customer ghosts them. On the other hand, it's rare that we hear a jeweler complain when they spend many hours over the course of 3 months to help someone choose a diamond, only to have that customer also disappear. The lost time is equivalent, but it seems that jewelers haven't correctly equated that equivalency yet.