Keeping Your Website Up to Date During The Pandemic

by Charles Pobee-Mensah, Director of Digital Marketing Your website is probably more important now than it ever has been. People are spending more time online and less time visiting brick and mortar stores. But website visitors aren't coming for quite the same reasons as before. So let's talk about keeping your website up to date and making it more useful to your customers.

Things to Keep Up to Date

Hours

One of the biggest reasons for customers to visit your website right now is to figure out if you're even open. One of our go-to options for communicating that to our clients' visitors is a sitewide text banner. This banner has a bright red background and clearly states where our client is on the open/closed/temporary hours spectrum at the current moment during the pandemic. It also links to a page with more info and information about how they're keeping all of their customers safe. In addition, it's important to remember that website hours can often appear in many places. It might be easy to remember to have the hours updated on the contact page, but they're often in the website footer as well and on places like Facebook and Google.

Alternative Shopping Options

The website should also clearly state alternative ways for your customers to shop. Do you sell online? Are you offering curbside pickup? How about virtual appointments or online chat? Many jewelers are willing and able to do these things, but making it front and center helps visitors know that it's available. For this information, we may use a sitewide text banner, a homepage banner, or even a website popup.

Website Inventory

Even people who would normally prefer to come to the store to see what's available are spending more time looking at your inventory online during the pandemic. Keeping the website inventory accurate and up to date will make their experience much much better.

Website Resources

If you don't have a company that's managing your website, some of these changes can be more difficult to implement. Keep in mind that many website platforms have support services. There is also often support for the particular website theme that your site was built on, support articles, and Q&As. Leveraging these resources makes website updates much more doable. To all of you in the jewelry industry, thanks for keeping the world of memories and celebrations going, even during these trying times. The world is a better place when your businesses find ways to continue to offer your services even when it's tough or the conditions are not ideal. And for that, we thank you.