Jim Kohm, Associate Director of the Enforcement Division of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified that the FTC supports the proposed Guarantee of a Legitimate Deal Act, which would strengthen the FTC’s ability to protect financially stressed consumers.

According to the testimony, the FTC has seen an increase in complaints from consumers selling gold jewelry, watches and other precious metals online. People are complaining that some online jewelry buyers provide a price quote only when asked.  In some cases, people mail in their items and receive payment only after buyers have melted their items, leaving dissatisfied consumers with limited options.

The proposed legislation would make sure that consumers have a chance to consider and reject a specific offer to buy their precious metals before an online purchaser melts or resells the items.

It also would require businesses that offer to buy consumers’ jewelry or precious metals to insure items they ship back to consumers who decline their offers. In addition, the measure would give the FTC the authority to seek civil penalties, which would serve as a deterrent and make it easier for the agency to take action against buyers who violate the law.
 

EBay Creates Social Networking Neighborhoods

EBay was recommended the following neighborhoods on its eBay Neighborhoods portal page:

"We are thrilled to be able to offer our international customers the opportunity to purchase jewelry and watches online," said Peter Lai, Director, Amazon.com Jewelry & Watches.

"Customers love Amazon.com’s outstanding selection and low prices, and we know our customers in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan will too."

Amazon’s second quarter jewelry sales saw a solid increase with diamond sales increasing 260 percent, color gemstones sales increasing 169 percent and sterling silver sales rising 107 percent.

Women’s watch sales rose 100 percent and Amazon added several new watch brands including Avirex, Marc Ecko, Natuica, Elle, Penguin and Technomarine.

The conventional wisdom at the start of e-commerce was that online sales of jewelry would never be a major factor. Online shoppers now buy a wide range of merchandise online besides books and CDs. They also spend more per purchase.

With the current growth rate, sales will represent over 8 percent of the industry total by 2010, up over 100 percent from 2006.

Around half of the average specialty jeweler’s sales are diamonds. Blue Nile, the largest online jeweler in the U.S. sells about 90 percent diamonds. In 2006 their sales totaled $ 252 million. They also sell more than double the engagement rings as most off line jewelers.

Online jewelry sales took off in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to comScore Networks. The online sales growth rate of jewelry purchases surpassed all other retail categories during the 2006 holiday compared to the previous year.

ForeSee Results examined consumer attitudes about free shipping promotions using the methodology of the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Web sites that did not offer free shipping had an average score of 84. Sites that offered limited free shipping did slightly better receiving a score of 85. Sites that offered unrestricted free shipping did the best earning a score of 89.

Consumers view free shipping as a definite incentive when it comes to making an online purchase.

Along with Melissa Chaika Sobel, marketing manager, Yahoo! Small Business of Slidell, LA, Filo posted about the experience in New Orleans helping local businesspeople get back in business.

The workshops conducted during the event attracted some 200 entrepreneurs, according to the blog. Yahoo assisted them with domain names, web site hosting, and tips on launching a sponsored search campaign. “The majority of attendees launched new or improved online presences — like this one from Syble Fine Jewelry,” the blog said.

Filo credited event co-chair and fellow Yahoo! Carol Lynn Martens, the support of BellSouth and website developer Solid Cactus, along with the small business development centers of Louisiana and Mississippi with helping make the sessions successful.

Yahoo’s Back to Business event followed the company’s post-Katrina assistance. With the Red Cross receiving overwhelming web traffic to its donation site, Yahoo managed to keep it available and accepting donations totaling $55.5 million from 390,000 donors, a report by The Hosting News said.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

… study of how major jewelry retailers are prepping their web sites for Valentine’s Day by using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies to attract online visitors.

Top-level findings indicate that Blue Nile, a leading jewelry company, has a more balanced Search strategy, achieving high search positions in both organic and paid search listings. Blue Nile enjoys an overall Visibility Percentage* almost double that of the second most visible site, Diamond.com.

The search positions of BestGem.com, BlueNile.com, Diamond.com, Ice.com, JewelryTelevision.com, Mondera.com, Tiffany.com, Zales.com and two other jewelry retailing web sites were analyzed using WebPosition Gold.

WebPosition examined the visibility each web site has achieved in both organic and paid search results on Google, MSN, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo! Web Results for a sampling of keywords identified by Wordtracker as popular terms for the category, including:

“jewelry,” “jewellery,” “diamond,” “diamonds,” “diamond rings,” “earrings,” “rings,” “engagement rings,” “necklaces,” “bracelets” and “watches.”

Organic Search Remains an Opportunity Area for Jewelry Retailers

Data from WebPosition shows that online retailers are leveraging both SEM and SEO to achieve greater search engine visibility, but paid search is typically relied upon more to achieve higher positions within search engine results pages.

When WebPosition analysis included paid search listings in addition to organic listings, the overall Visibility Percentage for the entire group of sites nearly doubled, indicating they are relying more on paid search strategies.

The most visible site in organic search listings for the targeted keywords was Blue Nile with an organic Visibility Percentage of 23.79%.

The next most visible site in organic search listings was Zales at 16.89%, with Diamond.com at 14.77%, BestGem.com at 9.17% and Ice.com at 7.73%, rounding out the top five.

While Diamond.com had the most first place positions, Blue Nile had nearly twice as many top-20 and top-30 paid and organic search positions than all other sites examined, resulting in an overall Visibility Percentage of 79.09%.

Diamond.com was the second most visible site when analysis included both paid and organic search listings, coming in at 45.08%, followed by Tiffany & Co. at 32.58%, Zales at 16.52% and Jewelry Television at 10.61%.

While leading jewelry sites are aggressively using paid search to improve visibility, recent research from JupiterResearch estimates that 87 percent of commercial search engine referrals come through organic search listings (Search Engine Optimization: Taking Advantage of Organic Search, December 2004)-highlighting a significant opportunity for jewelry sites to obtain more customers from search engines.

Additionally, when WebPosition analysis included key search terms for Valentine’s Day such as “valentine’s day,” “valentine day,” “valentine jewelry,” “valentine,” and “valentines”, visibility for the group of sites dropped, indicating an opportunity for retailers to target seasonal or cyclical terms for which paid search strategies are particularly suited.

“Most retailers experience seasonal or cyclical spikes in their business, which can represent a significant percentage of revenue,” said Jason Palmer, vice president of products, WebTrends. “By incorporating these events into web site landing pages, merchandising efforts and paid search campaigns, which can be turned on and off at the marketer’s discretion, retailers can significantly boost their search visibility during these critical times and improve their ROI.”

Two out of the ten web sites examined have an overall Visibility Percentage of zero, precluding their mention in this study. While there are a variety of factors that may impact search engine visibility, these sites were using quite a bit of JavaScript, which tends to push the main content lower on the page reducing its relevancy for the targeted keywords. These sites also have an opportunity to increase search visibility by optimizing their HTML tag structure with appropriate tags, as well as by acquiring related external links.

Methodology

This study shows how leading jewelry retailing web sites are using SEO and SEM techniques for 10 popular keywords identified using Wordtracker, the leading keyword research service integrated with WebPosition Gold 3. WebPosition produced search rankings for the 10 keywords for each of the sites examined using the manual query setting in its Reporter module.

*Visibility Percentage reflects a site’s visibility within the first three pages of search results for all the keywords and search engines examined, providing a higher-level understanding of search effectiveness than search rankings alone. A data snapshot was taken on February 7, 2005 to compile these findings.

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