by Charles Pobee-Mensah, Director of Digital Marketing
Online wishlists are a modern-day miracle for holiday shoppers. And for retailers, what’s not to love? Customers spending time creating a list of things to buy from you. It’s magic. But a wishlist on a jewelry store website is especially powerful. Let’s talk about why, and how you can promote your website’s wishlist this season.
The Power of a Fine Jewelry Wishlist
Great fine jewelry is not an impulse buy. It takes time and consideration. A wishlist on Amazon is probably filled with lots of low ticket items. It’s a hard place to sneak in a $5,000 diamond necklace. But when someone creates a wishlist on a jewelers website, they’re changing the conversation. They’re making it clear. “Go here and buy one of these.” Very different from an Amazon wishlist filled with tons of different, low-cost items, the jewelry is likely the main gift this year.
As the retailer, you benefit from the fact that every item in the wishlist is from your store. A customer isn’t likely to create a jewelry wishlist on multiple jewelers’ websites, so this is a great way to increase your chances of making the sale. The more people fill out wishlists on your site this year, the higher the chances of increasing sales.
Promote Your Site’s Wishlist
For many jewelers, the wishlist is something that sits on your site and receives little attention. But with a little time and attention, you can give your wishlist its best shot at success this holiday season. Here’s what we recommend.
Turn off the Login Requirement
In order to save a wishlist long term, customers need to create an account and login. But creating an account is almost always an impediment to taking action. That means fewer people creating wishlists. The solution is to turn off the login requirement. Most wishlist systems will let you do this. The wishlist can be saved temporarily. It will be available as long as the user always visits the site using the same browser, which most do. They can always create an account later after they have created the list. Then they’ll be more incentivized to create an account.
Create a How-to Page
It might not be immediately obvious to your customers how the wishlist works. To help, consider creating a page with screenshots and an explanation. A simple step like that can help to make sure that even the tech-impaired can still create and share their wishlist.
Promote
Now that you have a how-to page created, you can promote it! You can use email and social media to encourage people to check out the page and get started creating their wishlist in time for the holidays. We like the message, “Get the gift you really want this holiday season.” That’s the whole point of a wishlist after all. If someone wants jewelry, there’s no reason not to create one.
Track Your Success
How do you know if your wishlist promotion was successful? There are a few ways to get an idea. First, have your staff keep track of how often customers are referring to a wishlist. They might show it to your team members when asking to see a specific piece, or even mention it in passing.
Second, see how many new wishlists have been created. You can likely only do this when a person has opted to create an account, which we recommended against requiring. But you should still expect to see an uptick in new wishlists and accounts created even if it’s optional.
Finally, watch the wishlist page traffic. Even if you don’t know the exact number of wishlists that have been created, you’ll see an increase in people visiting the wishlist page in your analytics. The only thing to do there is edit and share your wishlist. Increased wishlist page traffic is a good sign that people are taking advantage of the feature.
Do you want to work with an agency that knows how to promote your jewelry store website? Contact suits@fruchtman.com.
