Imagine consumers buying – or browsing – jewellery online in the same way as they would go about making a purchase from a big shopping centre. They might be looking for something specific, like a particular brand or product, or they might have a vague idea of what they want; they might be thinking ‘necklace’ or simply ‘gift’, for example.
What is the first thing these consumers are likely to do? Review the store directory, of course.
If they want a specific brand they could find a brand-only store by looking at the index. Alternatively, if they only have a rough idea of the purchase they wish to make, they could browse the store categories until they find ‘jewellery’ before selecting a few options so they can shop around.
Online purchasing habits are not all that different but, compared to a shopping centre, the internet houses a myriad of businesses.
Search engines, such as Google, function as a store directory for retailers, but with so many competitors vying for customers’ attention, making sure the business name is visible when people search for products has become crucial.
Importantly, recent studies indicate that the jewellery industry – which has traditionally been slower to embrace online marketing strategies – is taking note.
Generating traffic
The Watches & Jewelry: Search Insights report by business intelligence firm L2 analysed the search engine practices of 66 jewellery and watch brands, including Tiffany & Co, De Beers, Alex and Ani, Pandora, Cartier and Citizen.
The study found direct website visits accounted for 20 per cent of traffic and 17 per cent were the result of referrals from other websites. Only 3 per cent of traffic came from social media platforms.
Searches, on the other hand, accounted for 60 per cent of the brands’ website traffic. This, coupled with L2’s projection that e-commerce sales in the global luxury industry would double, from 6 per cent of all sales to 12 per cent, over the next four years, helps to emphasise the importance of increasing visibility on search engines.
The fact most people go to jewellery websites via searches is something the marketing teams working for the industry’s big names have clearly not overlooked. According to another L2 report, Watches and Jewelry: E-Commerce, just 10 brands, including Tiffany & Co, Alex and Ani and Pandora, control 75 per cent of all traffic to jewellery and watches websites – this is despite a “highly fragmented” global market in which the 10 companies with the largest market shares together represent only about 40 per cent of global sales.
SEO vs SEM
The Search Insights report investigated two main methods employed by brands to push their websites to the top of Google’s results: search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) – an online marketing approach involving components like paid searches and advertisements.
Traffic generated by SEO is often referred to as ‘organic’ because it comes as a result of relevant search terms as opposed to users finding the webpage through advertising or a link appearing artificially high because of a paid search.
The research indicated that jewellery and watch companies were demonstrating increased SEO and SEM efforts, with many relying on paid search leads to drive website traffic.
It is common practice for businesses using SEM to purchase specific keywords in order to increase traffic to their websites. These words can be both branded, like ‘Cartier’, and unbranded, such as ‘engagement rings’.
This often involves bidding on a specified figure each time someone clicks on their ad as a result of that search term – also known as ‘pay per click’ (PPC).
L2’s Search Insights study revealed distinct SEO/SEM practices being used within the watch and jewellery categories.
“Among watch brands, an average of 90 per cent of site traffic from both organic and paid search results is driven by branded terms, eg, ‘Rolex’,” the report stated. “In other words, watch brands are almost exclusively focused on customers in the latter stages of the purchase funnel.”
Jewellery brands, however, appear to have a different focus. Only 7 per cent were using SEM for branded search terms, compared to 27 per cent of watch brands.
The report found four distinct online marketing strategies at play within the brands analysed: brand-oriented SEM, used mostly by watch brands struggling to increase visibility via paid search terms; category-oriented SEM, comprising a mix of jewellery brands paying to cultivate unbranded visibility with consumers in the early stages of a purchase; category-optimised SEO – only six brands used this with Tiffany & Co by far the leading example; and brand-optimised SEO, employed by established companies depending on their names to boost traffic numbers.
Unbranded SEM
To set themselves apart from their closest competitors, jewellery brands have been actively bidding on unbranded terms that are more likely to be used by affluent customers, as L2 associate director of European research Reid Sherard explains.
“Jewellery brands playing in the bridal category have been the most successful on search,” he told Jeweller. “Forevermark and Van Cleef & Arpels pay for SEM results on a lot of terms for engagement rings, while Harry Winston is investing in SEO and SEM for particular cuts of diamonds.”
Sherard explains that other brands have targeted specific categories of terms and “aggressively” gone after that category. He cites Tiffany & Co as one example, where terms related to silver jewellery have been given strong focus.
“However, Tiffany is by far the category leader in terms of SEO optimisation, appearing on jewellery terms as frequently as bigger retailers like Zales and Kay Jewelers,” he adds.
In the L2 study, Tiffany & Co dominated both the estimated monthly organic and paid search traffic, meaning it has SEO down to a fine art but also uses SEM to consolidate its lion’s share of jewellery and watches web traffic.
Visitors to the Pandora, Alex and Ani, Rolex and Cartier websites also came through a mixture of paid and organic searches, while brands like Swarovski, Bulgari and Forevermark were lagging far behind in terms of organic traffic but brought in a comparatively high number of visitors through paid searches.
Is money the answer?
Although jewellery brands have been using SEM for unbranded search terms, spending money to increase online visibility is not necessarily the best strategy. L2’s Search Insights report noted jewellers could generate more long-term return on investment by optimising their organic visibility instead of ‘bidding up’ expensive SEM keywords.
Debra Templar, founder of The Templar Group, which offers retail consulting and training often with an online focus, agrees SEO has its advantages over SEM.
“PPC is quick and easy to set up, but because of this, the competition and ‘bang for buck’ is quite low. Consumers also know PPC is ‘paid for’ advertising so they tend to ‘switch off’ – a bit like TV ads,” she comments. “SEO is long term, which can be too long for some small businesses. The upside to SEO is its clicks – generally 8.5 times higher than PPC. SEO adds lots more value than PPC with its higher return on investment.”
Level playing field
The importance of SEO has levelled the playing field in many ways but what should independent jewellers be doing to make the most of this?
“People tend to search for solutions to their problems on Google,” Templar explains. “It’s amazing how many businesses forget this – they get fixated on their services and how brilliant they are. They need to be writing good original content about problems/solutions their potential customers have.”
Templar adds that smaller retailers will always dominate local SEO but says, “Most don’t do anything about it though. Performing SEO will help with Google maps, directory listings, citations, etc.”
Sherard also offers advice on how small jewellery businesses can make the most of SEO in light of the L2 research.
“The most important thing to be doing is focusing heavily on optimising websites for search, making sure pages are tagged correctly, text can be indexed by Google, etc,” he says.
What keywords are particularly beneficial for local retailers? “The more specific the better. ‘Engagement rings’ is too broad. Think long tail (more words), so ‘custom engagement rings Bentleigh’ or ‘watch repairs Brighton’,” Templar concludes.
With the competition as fierce as it is in a highly fractured online marketplace, it is understandable why companies with large budgets would choose to spend money to get even the slightest advantage over rivals.
L2’s data shows this strategy is having mixed results when it comes to attracting web traffic, but encouragingly for small businesses, good old-fashioned, free SEO is still as good, if not better than paying to appear at the top of search results.