[real life] 3 easy steps to sell handmade jewellery online by designer jeweller Carin Lindberg

We love sharing real life business stories from our creative client! Designer jeweller Carin Lindberg is one of our Business Club members and last year she took part in The Design Trust Business Club Email Marketing Challenge to get more people signed up to her email list and drive more traffic to her website. She did so well in this Email Challenge that we asked her to share her experience of online marketing and how to sell handmade jewellery online.

In this real life guest post, Carin shares with us the 3 steps she uses to get more online sales by driving traffic to her website with social media and emails, and how she converts web visitors to buyers.

Carin Lindberg creates naturally elegant jewellery with a strong focus on stones. She works with unusual or particularly interesting gems, and combines them in unexpected ways e.g. a humble beach pebble with a precious diamond. She uses simple metal shapes to complement and showcase the gems, with subtle brushed finishes, organically textured surfaces and patina, all inspired by the Cornish coast and her Swedish heritage. Her work has been described as ‘Scandinavian meets Cornish’.

Since 2008 Carin has been selling her handmade jewellery online and through a few selected shops/galleries, and exhibitions. She sells one-of-a-kind jewellery and collections, as well as commission work online. She uses email marketing and social media to reach customers and next year she’s looking at adding a few well-chosen events to further raise her profile and increase her customer base.

Carin says: “I’ve been selling handmade jewellery online via my own website successfully for over 10 years. In that time I’ve narrowed down what seems to work for me and settled on my own way of working. Selling online is a vast area of expertise and the goal posts shift quickly, but for me it really boils down to 3 steps:

1. Get people to your website
2. Keep visitors on your website
3. Make it easy to buy!”

Step 1: Get more traffic to your website

“Always send people to your website, not away from it. I often see creatives who seem hell bent on trying to get their visitors to leave their website! Displaying your Instagram feed at the top of your website encourages visitors to leave. You don’t want visitors to click across to Instagram and be tempted off to someone else’s account.”

Combine well written text with key words for better SEO.

“Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can seem complicated and the recommendations to add key words can sometimes make copy sound more forced and unnatural.  Don’t forget you are writing for people, not for search engines! If your content is beautifully written, describes your product well and explains its benefits to your customer, Google and other search engines will likely find your content worthy of sending visitors to.

I try to keep my content simple by using relevant keywords in page names, headings, images names (and alt tags), and product descriptions. I try and use different ways to say the same thing e.g. ring stack, stacking ring, stackers, ring set, set of rings etc.”

Use specific descriptive words as your key words. We often forget simple things like what colour something is or what materials or processes are used.

Online craft & design directories are great for referrals & commissions

“Online directories are often ignored as a means to drive traffic. One of my biggest referrers is an online arts and craft directory. So, it’s worth researching a few good ones. Maybe join an industry body who has a member register where customers can find and contact you etc.

Also don’t forget about networking sites such as LinkedIn that can work well for certain target markets.”

Blog to find new potential clients

“When you write blogs about specific topics or commissions and use the right keywords, then potential clients might find you.

Also search engines favour websites that publish blog posts and not just product pages, so your ranking will go up and the chance that you can sell your handmade jewellery online will increase.  

Blogs don’t need to be long, they can be as simple as an image and a few lines about the image. Mix short blogs with some longer ones and cross-promote them on social media and in your newsletters too. I delve a little deeper into blogging in the content creation step below.”

Use newsletters to stay in touch and drive traffic

My top 8 email marketing tips are:

1. If you don’t have a mailing list already, start one today! A small one is better than none.
2. Write newsletters regularly and consistently, and make sure you add specific links to your website pages.
3. Be personal and write as you would speak. Use your brand words or values in your language.
4. Keep the content short and relevant and simplify your language. Don’t say “in order to purchase” when you can just say “to buy”!
5. Use high-quality images, they are always better than words at selling your work.
6. Get to the point quickly and always add a call to action (CTA).
7. Make sure you add the benefits for being on your newsletter list. For example: early access to new products, VIP tickets to events, announcing news to them first or giving them special discounts.
8. Don’t get offended or upset if people unsubscribe. See it as a good thing, it improves the quality of your list and makes sure only those who really want to hear from you are on it.”

For more ideas on growing your email list read our blog post here and for more email marketing ideas to sell handmade jewellery online read our blog post here with jeweller Emily Nixon.

Carin’s social media tips FOR drivING traffic to your website

“Don’t worry about using all the different platforms, pick one or two, where your customers are likely to be, and do them well instead of trying to spread yourself too thinly. Consistency and quality are more important than frequency.

Decide on how many times a week you’re going to post and stick to it. If it feels overwhelming, cut down on posts per week and/or start scheduling the content in advance.

Use your social media statistics and insights to work out when to post or do a search for typical industry specific best days and times.

As well as highlighting products, use social media to tell your story, show processes, in progress work, and ALWAYS offer an easy way for your audience to find your website. e.g. link in your social media bio/profile, Linktree or similar, use product tags etc.

Use video and multi-image posts where possible and if you use Instagram don’t forget to use stories.

Add your product catalogue to Facebook and Instagram so you can tag your products to drive traffic.

Also mention your newsletter and make it clear what the benefits are, to earn you signups.

Pinterest is not a social media platform, it’s more akin to a search engine and unlike social media platforms the content you pin has a very long lifespan. You can use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website very successfully.

People make boards on Pinterest for shopping inspiration for a loft conversion or kitchen refurbishment, a holiday get away, a wedding gift list, a Christmas shopping list, an autumn/winter wardrobe purchase list and much much more.

Be strategic in creating Pinterest boards. Mix up your own content with quality content by others to create a cohesive collection of useful “pinnable” content. Use your website content to link from Pinterest direct to your products, blogs and ultimately shop!

If you want to use social media advertising to drive traffic, and ultimately sell handmade jewellery online, you will need to know what you’re doing! Simply boosting a Facebook or Instagram post now and then is most likely a waste of money.

You need to be very targeted and really know your audience to create an appealing offer that is going to get them to your website and buy. Done correctly, I believe it can be a really good way to get new potential clients to see you as this is increasingly harder just relying on organic reach. Unless you want to spend some serious time learning how to use social media advertising properly, you might be better off paying a professional for this service.

Analytics are crucial for finding out where your traffic comes from and to see where you can improve and expand. This is a huge topic in itself so I shall leave it to the experts. Just make sure your website is hooked up to Google Analytics or similar and learn the basics of how to use it to get invaluable information on your site traffic. It may seem complicated at first, but analytics is your friend really, without these insights you’re essentially fumbling in the dark!”

Step 2: Keep visitors ON your website

“Keeping content interesting, relevant and up-to-date is crucial to get visitors to stay and go on to buy from you or sign up to your mailing list. Also search engines like to see new content regularly. Even just updating existing content will help keep your website fresh and the search engines happy.

How to add new and fresh content to your website?

You’re probably already using your product listings as content on social media. So how do you create content apart from adding new products? Well, you can add new pages of course, but I’m a huge fan of blogging as a means of adding relevant content.

You can showcase new products, announce events, write case studies, testimonials and reviews, feature your stockists, show video or photos of your workspace, work in progress, your processes and your inspirations, offer up tips and tricks, shopping guides, style or styling tips etc.; the list for useful & creative content is endless!

If you, like many, break out in a sweat at the thought of having to write hundreds or even thousands of words, don’t worry! Blog posts don’t have to be long, they can be as short as just a great image with a sentence or two about the image and a link to buy or some other useful content.

These type of blog posts needn’t take more than 15 minutes each to write, especially if you already have an image you can use. Mix this up with some longer posts now and then e.g. a case study or a shopping guide.

Oh, and you do not have to call it a blog! You can give it a more inviting name if you like, something that fits your brand values and target market. All it is at the end of the day is a way of publishing your great content.

Write once and use again!

You’re probably already creating content all the time for social media. A lot of the content that we take great time and effort to create is consumed within minutes, to be forever lost in the black hole that is social media content. Such a waste!

So why not put it to much better use by publishing the content on your own website first, then share it on social media to drive traffic back to your site?

Basically, you write the content once and re-use it, letting it spread across the internet like ripples on water.  At one point I went as far as writing my daily social media posts (complete with image, caption and hashtags) as short blogs on my website, then copied and scheduled them out to social media linking back to my website.

Publishing all content on your website first means that the content is evergreen and totally within your control. If Instagram or Facebook decides to close your account, the content you’ve been painstakingly creating and posting could be lost, and there’d be nothing you could do to get it back.

So, keep control of your own content, don’t just give it away for free. Make it work harder for you and point people back to your website to read more, to see more product photos, and ultimately buy from you.”

Update your website content regularly

“Nobody wants to come back to a website time and time again and see the same old content, in fact they will soon stop coming altogether.

However, if you keep the new and relevant content coming, visitors will come, stay a while, hopefully come back again and eventually buy from you. They might even link to you and spread the word to their friends. The search engines will like you too so everyone’s happy!

Once it becomes a habit to do updates and additions, they become quicker and easier and it becomes second nature. I’m on my website most days and there is usually some little tweak or addition to be made.

This does of course assume that you can change and add to your website yourself.  My advice to you would be; if you can’t easily do this, then change your platform, get training, or hire someone to do it for you on an ongoing basis.

I think it’s crucial to have full control over your website and the content on it.

You would never have a bricks and mortar shop where you couldn’t change the window display whenever you wanted, add new products to your shelves or change your prices without bringing in outside help! The same goes for your online shop.”

Don’t be a perfectionist!

“Make planning content and updating your website part of your weekly routine. Then you’ll get quicker and better at it, and that can in turn stop you from procrastinating.

Make sure your content is just “good enough”, don’t try to make it perfect. I don’t mean that you should publish substandard content, but don’t strive for perfection.

Do a spell check, give it a quick once over to make sure there are no glaring mistakes and hit publish. If needs be you can always go back and edit.”

Step 3: Make it easy to buy

“In a previous work life, I read a web design book called “Don’t Make me Think!”. The point of that book was that a website visitor shouldn’t have to think about what to do next. It should be obvious and easy to see the next step. You do this by putting the information you think a user would most need at any point, right in front of them.

A few things to think about to make shopping and browsing your content easy:

• Make sure the navigation menu tells people where to find things and where/how to buy. Use “shop” or “buy” to highlight where they can buy from you. Use product types or categories for your menu items. In my case that would be “necklaces”, “earrings” etc. There’s nothing stopping you also putting in collection names if you have them, for those return customers who want matching items. This way both new and repeat customers can find what they want – easily and quickly.
• Make sure you have a site search and that it can be found easily, so they don’t have to go looking for it. Top right-hand corner is a common place and where people usually expect it to be.
• Give them your contact details! Add your email address as well as a contact form and add your telephone number. If a customer can’t find the information they need and there isn’t a quick and easy way to contact you then they might leave and buy from someone else. Be prompt with replying to queries.
• Add a chat functionality; on a lot of website platforms you can add a chat functionality so that customers can contact you quickly. Many people like communicating via Facebook Messenger for example, which can be integrated into your website.
• Make sure your products have a good description that outlines the value of them, but also add in details such as dimensions, sizes, colours and materials.
• Use good quality images to really showcase the product, preferably from different angles. You can even add video here.
• Make sure the checkout process is simple and straightforward. Stay away from too many steps and superfluous information gathering and make sure you use a reputable payment method. Also make sure the customer gets an order confirmation email summarising their order and setting an expectation on delivery time and method.
• Put shipping and returns information right next to the ‘add to basket’ button, preferably with a popup or rollover, so they can check those things without coming off the product page. This will reassure them that they will get the item in time and what they need to do should they want to return an item.
• Putting “stickers” on best sellers shows that others have liked them and bought them too, removing some doubt about the choice, especially for gift purchases. You could also choose to keep some out of stock products visible but with a sticker to say “SOLD” so they can see that you have sold things. This can help create a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out) which never hurts!
• Typically, your About Me page is one of the most visited pages of your website. Spend some time making sure it really tells your story and what you, your brand and products are about. Don’t forget to add links to your shop, your contact page and perhaps also your feedback page.
• Make sure you have a page with feedback from real customers. Also scatter relevant testimonials across the website; the about page, the contact page and your product pages. For example, on a ring product page, add a testimonial from someone who has bought a ring from you. It instils confidence and makes it more likely that visitors will buy. Also add in a general testimonial somewhere prominent e.g. home or about page. Some feedback on what it was like to work with you (for commissions and customisations), how the shopping experience was (ease of use of web site, shopping and payment process etc.) and reassurances of delivery on time and to budget.

Making things easy and obvious will help remove any doubt and resistance to hopefully make the buying experience a smooth one!

My final tip to sell handmade jewellery online …

“Although it doesn’t have to do with your website directly, my final point on how to sell handmade jewellery online is very important and very effective:

Follow up!

Once customers have bought from you, follow up with them.

Make it part of your weekly or monthly schedule. Get in touch with them asking about their purchase, if you can help with anything or tell them about a new product you’ve launched that might interest them.

Keep it personal and you’ll be surprised at how often this will result in more sales!

It’s important to remember that everyone’s creative business is different and there is no ‘one size fits all’ marketing solution.

Try things and see what works for you.

Look at what others do, adjust it to fit your needs, try it and see how it goes. Tweak things, rinse and repeat.

Finally, remember that your website is ever changing and evolving; it’s never “finished”, it never ceases to need care and attention, and driving traffic to it is a never-ending job!”

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Thank you so much Carin Lindberg for sharing our own experience on how to sell handmade jewellery online, how to drive traffic and get more online sales. What do you do to get more online sales or sell your creative products or services? Let us know in the comments box below.