620. "My jewelry business does well in-person, but I need help increasing my online sales- help!" | Coaching Session

I've launched lots of lots of products and that's something I've done in the last three years. What I've not done a good job is, is putting a plan together of how to promote it or design the site or the content to promote it either.

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses and even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into successful business and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's. Hey. Hey friend. Welcome back, Product Boss, to another awesome coaching session. Now I'm really excited about this episode because it's with Brian of the Freshwater Pearl Company and he is a multi stream machine student. He has actually been coached by me. He actually invested into a coaching session just like the one you're going to hear here where we coached a few months ago. And we didn't air that episode because there was a lot of work that Brian wanted to do. He wanted to get it implemented and then through that implementation, through, through the coaching session, through being a multi stream machine and then he decided he was loving all of the everything he was getting. So he joined our inner circle mastermind. He is really starting to make some really big changes and shifts in his business. And so we're like, let's come back, let's have a chat now let me coach you. Let's get it on the podcast. Cause I think it would be so incredibly helpful to not only hear the growth that he's taken and the changes he's made, but also same for you, right? Or same for him actually that he was able to kind of get some new things into place and then see where they went. So. So Ryan's incredible. He started selling his Freshwater pearl jewelry in honor of his mom's 19 year journey with breast cancer. And like I said, I'm so lucky that he's in my inner circle, Mastermind. But he and his company hold such a special place in my heart because I absolutely love his mission of donating over 2% of all of his online sales to help women, men and their families that are experiencing and going through cancer. He's in fact been able to Give back free $40,000 so far over the last few years towards cancer and or not towards cancer, but towards donations in the name of his mother to cancer organizations. And his total goal is a hundred thousand. And so it's just incredible what he's able to do now. While he's been doing really well selling his jewelry, he has a physical store in Mexico where he has like a resort town store. He's having a bit more difficulty growing and scaling his business online. So that's exactly what we're going to figure out today. Oh, and by the way, I've been getting a lot of messages from those of you there that are listening to these episodes and you're like, hey, I'd love to work with you. I'd love to get coached by you one on one. Some of you are like, yes, and let's air it on the podcast. Some of you are like, can I just get coached one on one? Well, I have two options for you. I am opening up a handful of spots and when I say handful, just a handful of spots for over the next month where I am going to open up time in my calendar where I can work one on one with a few of you. So if this is something that you feel called to and you can opt for the absolute lowest price that I will offer one on one coaching with, we're going to drop a link in that which would be to air it on the podcast. And if you're like, you know what, I don't want to air it on the podcast, but I'd love to work with you again. It's the lowest rate that I've ever offered one on one because I really am trying to dig in to helping as many of you as I can, whether it's one on one, whether it's through the podcast, whether it's through my programs like Multi Stream Machine or Standout Society, whether it's in my mastermind. So if that's for you, we're going to drop a link in the show notes for you to take a look at both. And like I said, there's just a handful of spots. So if you'd love to work one on one with me, click that link and hopefully you're one of the lucky ones that can get in and we can get you scheduled and working together. All right, so you ready to dive into Brian's session? Let's do it. Where you're at right now, you want to walk away. Three key strategies to execute that will improve your online business revenue and your current struggle feels like it's growing and scaling the online part of the business is that.

So I think my main thing would be is how to grow and scale an online business. Right.

Okay, so let's start with some numbers. What? How many people are on your email list?

So total email list I have just over 5,000. I have 5,115 in the list and I think it's like 2/3 of them are subscribed.

Okay, alrighty. So the 5,000 people are on the list because they purchased from you. So you just have their data.

So I have, yeah, 3400 is subscribed. So it's exactly two thirds. And most of the people are people who have purchased. I've done a couple campaigns out there where we might have done a giveaway or a donation or something like that, but I think a lot of those people have kind of opted out of the list now. So I would say the list is about 90 plus percent clean.

Okay, and then how often do you email this list?

I email about once a week.

Okay. And then do you have, what do you know your open rates or like what's the response to them?

Yeah, so open rates are around 30 to 33%. Click through rates are about 2.7 to 3%. My revenue per purchase is like 0.12 which Klaviyo says is is really, really good. So the open rate's decent, the click through rate's really good and the purchase rate is really good. So I have a very engaged customer.

Can I just say your open rate is not decent. It's exceptional.

Oh really? Yeah, for Klaviyo it says decent but.

Yeah, but like it's over 20% so that's big. So all of your numbers to me seem very good. Go ahead, keep going.

Yeah, so we implemented like every week emails about four or five months ago. So the open rate has dropped. It used to be closer to 35 to 40% open rate, which I was like woohoo, that's exceptional. But I know the more frequency that you send people opt out a little bit more. But you're really getting down to your core audience. So I don't look at as opt outs as necessarily a bad thing. I Look at the people who stay. That's your target customer.

Totally. So every time you send an email, how many people do you think by.

Yes, so for email last month, let's see, we had 16 purchasers from email last month.

Okay, so if you sold, if you sent one about like once a week, then it's about four a week that you're getting from the emails about that.

Yeah, that is correct. Yep. And on average I'm doing roughly 15amonth. So the 16 is pretty consistent month over month. Peak in February at 29 and then a dip in May at 6.

A dip in May at 6. Okay. And then I'm just trying to look. So you said out of the 3,400 people that open that are on the list, technically that you're doing, I'm gonna say 30% open it. So that means about a thousand people at any given time are opening your emails.

Yep, that's about right.

Okay, so you're at like 0.4% of conversion rate in your emails. Usually 1 to 3% is. It's hard to convert people. So like if out of your entire list you can convert people as one thing, but like you're at.041, 1 to 3% of like a conversion point would be better. But you can just see, you can calculate it and say like it's gonna, it's gonna show you like if the more you grow your list, that percentage rate of people opening. Cuz every time, every week different people open. Some people might open every week and. And then otherwise it's a variation. I might not open it this week, but I might might open it next week, but it could be. Here's the deal. Even though you said you haven't launched anything new, you have so many products.

I do.

What means that you're not pushing anything new. Right. Like I want you to imagine your brick and mortar store. Okay. How do you have your brick and mortar store set up? Is everything that you offer online in your brick and mortar?

There's more in my store than there is online.

Okay, how does it look? Is it a big store? Is it. Are there racks and racks and racks of necklaces hanging? Like, what is the setup?

So it's pretty cool. It's a decommissioned school bus, so they took out all the seats. So we have kind of the, you know, the property swag with T shirts and hats and stickers and stuff like that. And then we have the jewelry and then we have some kind of tables that are made, some from local wood and trees that we display the Jewelry. And then outside, we have a tree that we hang some of our apparel on. And then we have tables where we lay out all the jewelry so everything's on display for someone to see, feel, and touch.

All right. So, you know, your store is hard to reference. It's a little bit different because you're kind of like a vacation travel store that you have all this other stuff plus the jewelry. So when we're talking about how well the store does, a big question to ask you is, between your other products and the freshwater pearl jewelry, what's the bulk of your sales?

So on a. On a product basis, it's about 60% jewelry and 40% apparel. On a revenue basis, it's like 2/3 jewelry and one third apparel.

Okay. But let's just look at the 60% buying jewelry. So I want you to start to analyze it based off the jewelry. Because the clothing doesn't make sense on your website, for example. Right. It's. We're just thinking, like, locationally what people are buying. Those bags and the hats, whatever. It's like, oh, I need a hat. Oh, this is cute. You're like a gift shop versus the 60% of the jewelry that they're buying, they're seeing physically in person. So I want us to pull from that pool when in comparison versus the brick and mortar outperforming the website because you have other things you're selling, it's got a different customer base in a way. Okay, then when it comes to your website, you. And I'm glad, like, you have like, your summer collection. Right. So right now I'm seeing a lot of summer go on sale. So you could potentially, if anything is like, very summery, that you want to run a promotion or a sale around, you absolutely could. But what happens is, like, you. You actually have a lot, a lot, a lot of product on your site. So what's different is when I'm walking around a store, I can immediately feel, touch, interact with stuff and live. And I know how much time I'm gonna spend in a store. It most likely is not gonna take me more than 10 minutes to really, like, scope a store. If I'm really, like, slow shopping, wanna kind of. And I'm saying your store not like a Target. Right. So I'm slow shopping. I wanna walk around. I wanna just kinda like, take a look at everything. I'm gonna try that on. Right. Because it's a little bit more curated in terms of online. We have to keep curating in that way. So if you were not to think the Way that your store is where you're like, everything's out. But you were to think, what do I want people to buy? I think that's gon unlock even with your emails, because I want you to not assume that everybody has gone through every page of your website. So just because you send me an email doesn't mean I'm gonna go find other stuff I haven't bought yet.

Yeah, it makes total sense. And I was just gonna say I have a spreadsheet here, so I know. So in the store, I sell 60, 61% bracelets, 20% necklaces, 13% rings, and 7% earring. Okay. For my online store, since I started its necklaces at 43%, I'm going to.

Go with necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings.

Correct. Those four. Yep.

Did I get it right?

Yep. Nailed it.

It's like, I know necklaces, earrings, bracelet, rings. Okay.

All right. And then online is totally different. It's 43% necklaces, it's 40% bracelets, it's 15% earrings and 2% rings.

Okay. I got earrings wrong. I thought earrings was going to be your number two.

Yeah. No. So necklaces, then bracelets, and they're almost, you know, exact the same. Where at the store, it's 61% bracelets and 20% necklaces. So, you know, three bracelets, every one necklace.

Okay. So I kind of a little bit feel like you should stop selling rings, but. Or way less of them. That's just my first thing, especially online. A big reason why people would buy more of them in person versus online is because they can actually physically put them on their fingers and they can try them on and they can ask for sizes. Anything that's sizing online gets complicated, so they might need to know their ring size. But then there's always like, is it going to make my finger fat? Like, is it going to feel uncomfortable? Rings are very much something that somebody wants to try on. So it's not the strongest product category you could have. You know, you could have your stretch rings.

So what I have online are stretch rings and adjustable rings. So the ones that are metal, you can open or tighten to make it fit your. Your finger. And then the other rings I sell are all pearl stretch rings. So no sizing. Actually, I don't even have any sizes on the website, which maybe that is a problem. But, yeah, because they're adjustable and stretch, I didn't size them because they're also similar between 6, 7, and 8. Predominantly size.

Okay. Earrings, to me, is interesting because earrings tend to be Something that people can easily buy online. Like a lot of times it's one of their top categories because you can kind of see an earring and buy it. So with yours online, I'm not sure it's a. It's a smaller category. It could just be that the earrings are a specific look that they're not attracted to. Do you know which earrings are your best sellers? Like, is it your studs?

So online my best selling earring is the Oceana and then the Amaya, the bigger pearl studs.

Okay. Which isn't easy for me to find. So whenever it's like a bestseller, let's make it easy. So they're kind of like a, you want to complete the set sort of thing, but not the full accessory. I think you have a lot of pearl earrings, so maybe there's just less. Maybe you just have like three to five earrings that kind of encompass what they need. They're kind of telling you like, so studs and we like simple earrings are another thing that, you know, they need to be hypoallergenic for a lot of people, especially if you're going to go at this price point.

Yeah. And everything here would be hypoallergenic. I don't think I've had any person reach out yet in a three plus years with, with an issue, with an allergy.

You know, it's telling you, the data is telling you that even though you can have earrings, even though you can have rings, you have two pages of earrings, like one and a half pages. So you're asking me to like scroll the next one. Did you see what we were able to figure out there? Now Brian is really good at knowing his numbers, which is super helpful when it comes to trying to grow your online business because you need to know your data to know what your next step is going to be. For Brian, we were able to figure out what while he sells jewelry and apparel when it comes to his online store. But he needs to be focused on how he is going to sell the jewelry because he is selling to a different customer online compared to who he's selling to in person in the resort town in this beautiful space that he has. And when it comes to having a successful online business, knowing what your online customers are buying is huge because it allows you to hone in and focus on those products so that you can keep it simple by telling your customers what they want to buy. Yes, customers want you to tell them what to buy. Now that we know what products Brian will be focusing on selling online, let's Dig a bit deeper into his website and what changes he can make there to improve the customer buying experience. So before when I was, I was going to bring up Julie Boss for you just because I've talked to you a lot about that brand. Because I just feel like there are some similarities. There's differences, but there's similarities. It's really calling forward like a chic avatar, like a chic customer avatar. And while I feel like her stuff a lot of times can feel like it's you've rescued it from like a pirate ship. Like it's like treasures. They are very much the feeling is very much like a East coast or Connecticut woman. A little bit of the David Yurman mix. It's not necessarily your customer, but you could just kind of identify really quickly and say, I know who that customer is. And if you opt in. I just got a text message about this, I got the email and everything that their cuff, which is one of their best sellers, is coming in all these colors. So they actually sent me this picture with like the rainbow of colors. And that's what they're marketing right now. That's what's kind of their secondary marketing thing. Plus they've got this new collection that they're launching and then you're being able to shop by category and then hand picked for you, whatever that means. They're just kind of showing me some stuff and then there's like these different collections. So with your product lineup.

So one of the things to thinking of simplicity because you just said make it easier for them to buy. I was looking at potentially and considering a mega menu in the mega menu within, like if we just look at the earrings. The earrings. So you'd have a product page for earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings. And then over to the right, you'd have these subcategories and the subcategories would be hoop earrings, stud earrings, dago earrings, huggy earrings. And so you could shop by whatever it is that you're looking for. That might make it easy. And it can also separate things like you're talking about here in terms of collections or different styles. That makes it easier for someone to shop.

Right? So if we look at this, okay, so we're going to do the same thing. We just, we just kind of went over, okay, so I go here. I either have a very quick. This is a new way that people are doing navigations. They're not always having them up top anymore. So this one is like they're just very quickly, they want me to either go Shop this collection that they're showing me or it's actually visually they're giving me this like visual navigation of earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, delicates. That's like a specific one because their stuff is kind of chunky. So maybe delicates is a big deal for them. So they're doing this here versus if I click their shop, it goes the same way. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces, rings, by styles, by featured, by signature. Because they have like a signature, like categories that people know them for and then gifting. And then if we go to new arrivals, they're kind of like, you know, they, they have different collections that they launch. It looks like or colors. But for you, what I wanted to show you is like you told me that online for you, necklaces do really well. So once I click on necklaces, if I click shop all for the necklaces and I click here, they have this other visual navigation that's all necklaces, which means I can just scroll the pages or what am I looking for? They've got pendants, statement necklaces, delicates, links, and station necklaces. And what they're doing though is they're giving me a visual of what I'm looking for. So that way if I'm like, no, no, no, I know kind of what I want. I want this one. I can click on it and it's going to curate what I'm looking for. And just. And look, I don't have to go past a page. Like they have a ton of product, but it's like it's made it very easy for me to shop. Because when you get to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 pages, that's why on Google, people only look at the first page on Google. So we do need to keep honing in these collections and making the customer user experience and the navigation easier. The same way that in your store she walks in and you said to the left there's the apparel and that gifts, and then on the right there's the jewelry. And then as she's walking past the jewelry, it's still curated. And I want you to figure out how to greet that as a user experience online. Because I think you know how to grow a list. I mean, we can keep talking about this other stuff, but once we get them to your site, we need them to convert better. And when you're marketing to me, I need you to have more of a specific marketing plan so that you're. You're telling me what to buy this week.

Yeah, that actually is super logical. That's really good. Thank You.

Yeah. So we can't. We don't just abandon our websites and think our websites are going to, like, just do the job. You're already starting to do it. It's already different than before we started working together. Where I have the summer collection here. Right. I think. I personally think there's too many words here. And I think even here, I'd rather just like, get and not even shop by type. You just like, get rid of that and just have bracelets, necklaces, earrings, rings. But you can still change these images based on the season of what you think people are buying. Right. And the image can change based on the season. So if we're rolling into fall or rolling into spring or whatever, we don't want it to always look like summer. Right. We need to kind of. Your images have to go get updated with what's happening in the world around them because we need to connect for our customer how and when she can wear your jewelry and how it would make sense in the season. So if it always looks summery, she's going to be in a winter sweater or coat and be like, well, this isn't for me right now, but you can wear pearls all the time.

I think this is the first time I've ever done a collection. Like, the summer collection is like, the first time I've done that in three years. So I think if I understand correctly, I should be rotating images. I should be rotating collections based on the season and then driving the consumer to the point of what I want to promote for whatever the season is.

Yeah. So they're doing this meet me on Madison. This is Julie Boss, new tortoise shell, iconic. But if you look at this imagery, it does feel like fall. She's wearing a suede jacket. Right. So she's wearing a jacket on top of this. Her sleeves are down, but they're not. She's on a winter coat. She's still outside. And the feeling feels. It doesn't feel summery. Right. It does kind of feel fall. It feels more sophisticated. It feels like you're, like, rolling into being more ready. So versus if you were to just see her jewelry, see how it's like. Feels very kind of tropical. So they're in your. They're in the customer's brain. They're marrying. They're visually showing you how you can still wear this brand in all these different ways according to the season. Like, so if we looked at their summer collection, she's wearing a tank top and she's got bright colors on. And, you know, it just Feels if we were going to look at like the imagery around it, it might feel very different. And so whatever you want to sell, the website changes, sometimes the images change and you're calling forward. You're like you're hand picking for your customers, you're curating collections and you're putting it in front of them. And then the emails you're sending are directing them to exactly that. So now you've got unlimited content, it just takes you curating it.

And I remember you sharing with me too in another conversation is ideally the email and the website. And then I don't do a ton of social media, but they would all be consistent. So the content, the colors, the layout, the products, you're promoting something similar across all the channels, correct?

Yep. So, and it feels of the season and it, and it connects for them why they want it. So if we were to go look at Instagram right now and look up Julie Voss, it's new arrivals and then that same video we just saw with kind of like this tortoise shell, but darker tortoise shell. So it does take on that like fall feeling. They posted this a week ago. What I just showed you on their website is top of their grid. This is their whole fall collection. So they've just been posting this. So that's really, I think for you with your site, like you've got the numbers there, you've got the people. It's continuing to grow. Your email list, which we can get into, and then to that email list you get better marketing plans together and you plan ahead and then you have all your, your marketing moments that you send to them.

Yeah. I would say if I be honest and give a fair assessment of what I've done, I've launched lots of, lots of products and that's something I've done in the last three years. What I've not done a good job is, is putting a plan together of how to promote it or design the site or the content to promote it either. So it's up there thinking, oh, the customer would want to click and scroll and shop and whatever. And maybe that's kind of a, a misunderstanding of mine and it's make it easier, make it more streamlined and show them exactly what it is for each individual season. Like that's a big lesson learned from this conversation.

Yeah. Take their hand and guide them to where they need to go. Like what you think that they should buy. And confused customers don't buy an overwhelmed customers. Don't you and I had this conversation when you were buying those Jeans and they were like, they brought you the je jeans versus sending you to like a rack of jeans. You're gonna be like, I have no idea what to buy. So I think it's coming back to that in curating, curating, curating and then pushing it out, leading them back and pushing it out. So do you see where I'm leading Brian? If he wants to grow his online store and get more sales, then he needs to create better offers and more specifically, better offers that relate to the season. From there, he can start creating complete market marketing plans around those offers and continuously update his website to reflect each season or each sale or each promotion. Right? Remember, your website is your digital storefront, which means just like a physical store, you need to constantly be curating your website to the season or whatever you're selling to what you're promoting. And yes, that includes updating your images, adding in new arrivals, and really highlighting your bestselling products to align with that season. Like I always say, a confused or overwhelmed customer doesn't buy. So you need to continuously tell your customers what they should be buying. Right? Just connect the dots for them. Plus, one of the most important parts of being able to consistently update your website and tell your customers what to buy is having good photos. Right? Photos that represent the brand and the season. Which is what we're going to talk about next. Hey, product boss. Okay, so we all know that building a product based business isn't easy, is it? But here's the truth. It also doesn't have to be so hard. In fact, when you have the right systems and support in place, you can skyrocket your sales and finally create the product business that fits your life and your lifestyle. So that's why I'm so excited to announce that the doors to Multi Stream Machine are officially open. And we have a killer 500 off discount for a limited amount of time. So if you're a product based business owner who's ready to build a sustainable and thriving business that can support itself and pay you the salary that you deserve. And if you want a clear roadmap that shows you exactly how to create a plan to sell more so that you can stop guessing and start knowing, I want you to know that this program is in place and you can go through this course at your own pace. And my friend, your satisfaction is guaranteed. Our thousands of alumni can tell you there's no other program like this for product based businesses in the world. Now, I've taken my 20 years of experience experience in building product based businesses, including my own business, which we've, we've created this completely turnkey system to help you scale your business and create the revenue you've dreamed of or if you're looking to get more customers. Right. Customers to find you easily and to buy from you. And I want to do all of this without you spinning your wheels. And also I teach you how to do this without being stuck on social media or spending money on paid ads. So that's why you're going to want to head to multi stream machine and grab this really special limited time offer. And I'll see you inside.

How do you feel about launching new products? So I have probably 20 or 30 new pieces to launch. I've been sitting on it because the summer's been a little bit slow, like the J months. And so I was thinking of doing it in the fall. But I guess from this conversation, if I launch it and it's not applicable to a fall look, then maybe I shouldn't launch it at all. Like just kind of talking through what we just spoke about new product seasonality and then where it fits with the content plan.

So do you have the products produced yet?

Yeah, I have them all. I have half of them shot in the white box and processed and I have the other half that I just, I just got them about two weeks ago. So I have to shoot them, process them, and then get them ready to upload and shopify.

Can you, with your products thinking in this new way, do. Do you have the ability to do a photo shoot?

I do.

So it's not just a product.

I have a couple photographers. So typically every time I have new product, I do a photo shoot. So what I was doing was three or four photo shoots a year and that was supposedly kind of our content for social media. But I don't know if I tied the picture to the season to what I was promoting. Right. I don't think I did a good job with that. I was promoting pieces and yeah, I was gaining followers organically, but it wasn't really converting because I don't know that there was a plan associated with how I would promote the pieces and then what around it was was going. So I think I could definitely do a better job of that for sure. But to answer your question, yes.

Okay. So what I'd like you to do and depending on how long it takes because you've got those pieces, is you can kind of think in this way. Start to curate like a museum curator, go through your products and think what are these categories? And then if you want to come out with. You can either from this current collection, think through and say, some of this could be fall collection, you're just going to gather it into a different way of looking. Or your fall, the collection you do have coming out, you could think which ones of these are good for fall dressing. People buying themselves stuff, getting dressed up more because they've got more holiday parties, Thanksgiving parties, what's going to look good on top of a turtleneck or something like that. And then what would you hold back for the Christmas collection or giftables? And so what would somebody give to somebody else or buy for themselves to wear at the holidays? Probably I feel like it might be more gifting and it might be gift sets. And you could think out of your stuff, is there stuff you want to hold back or not? And then you can just think about drops. So you're going to curate them behind the scenes and then you're going to think, what do I want to drop and bring attention to in the fall? And then what do I want to drop and bring attention to in gift giving season, Fall needs to happen sooner than later. So in the month of September would be ideal. And then you start marketing. Christmas in the month of like gift giving really should start before November, like mid October. So if you can go do a photo shoot where you can, you can have her kind of dress fall, like even though you're in San Diego. I get it, it's lovely weather. It's like the perfect weather in the whole world. But we'll just pretend it's, you know, you're cold there and have her put on like some sort of like thing that feels more wintry. Like a lot of times people love to do like the bundled up sweater. So think about your ideal customer, what she would be wearing. She's probably not that New York sophisticated vibe we just got. Not that there's any right vibe, it's just that's that vibe. So maybe hers is more like sweaters and soft or Jenny Keen's a good example of like a very LA brand that wears really expensive cashmere sweaters. Probably not your vibe either. So you'll just kind of find your vibe, dress them in that way and then you could just quickly take it to then doing a little setup where there's like holiday gifts or like you set up a fake Christmas tree behind them or something feels like, or it's more sparkly or something like that. And you can talk to a photographer about that. You could nail all your content in one or you could break it up and Then you're just thinking through the drop. So I don't think it's a bad thing to bring out the new product. I think bring out new product when you know it's a season where people are going to be buying more from you. So for you, it would be be this season. It would be maybe a little bit of Valentine's Day. Very much Mother's Day. Right. And the rest of the time you do, until you start to really get like a bigger list and following, I don't think you need to be dropping links. I mean, eventually you could do a spring collection, a summer collection, a fall collection, a winter collection, you know, and it's curating. And so long term, you're going to hold your bestsellers or core collection, the things that are always going to be there and then you're going to rotate out all the other stuff. Doesn't. You don't just keep adding and then holding, adding and holding. You're going to want to get rid of stuff.

And I think I need to scale back. Some of the things that if I. And I do, I have a list here that shows every piece sold on my website. So if I've only sold two of those earrings, they should just be off my site. Like, probably not worth it if it takes it to a second page, for example.

Yeah. And so when you look at like any of them, Julie Boss, like David Yurman, you look at apparel collections, you look at bag collections, you're going to go there because there's certain styles that are going to be. They're going to have tried them, they become their best sellers, and then they start to bring them back out in drops, in color variations or. So you might do like, you've had your leather ones and your letters have black or like brown leather. Maybe you do a bright blue leather. I don't know. So there's a point where you have core collections or bestsellers that will always exist. They always know they can come to you for it. And like those bracelets I showed you, she's like, new colors available. They're not getting rid of those bracelets. They're just adding colors. And there might be some colors that are seasonal that they drop or they sell out and they don't bring back. So you better get them when they're there, there. Then there's going to be like, let's say they did a seashell collection. The seashell collection might have been their summer collection. They brought it out, they tried to sell it to you a lot, sold some didn't it went on sale. It's gone. Because the next summer, there might be another. It might be the seahorse collection, but their bee collection, for example. People are loving the bees. They're always buying the bees. Maybe they started with, like, five pieces. Now maybe they come out with way more bee versions of stuff because they know people are, like, collecting the bee bracelets from them. Does that make sense?

It does. It does make sense.

Okay, so what are you hearing me say? Or what do you think? Like, for you, your implementation is going to be after this? Because we were talking about how to grow online. So what do you think you want to do with this info?

So I'll try to recap as best as I can. I would, one, decrease my product. So I think that's the first thing I would do. The second thing I would do is sort the product pages based on bestsellers, so the ones that sell the best put them in the top five or top ten so it's easily searchable. I would start to think about, like, a content or a product plan where I would start to pull in pieces that would fall into particular seasons. And then I would find ways to drive the customer to the site or to social media or through email marketing that's around those curated collections, whether it's by season or whether it's by piece. And wherever they go into my site, it's easy for them to find as simplistically as they can find. And I think the last thing we'd do is can we rework the site to make less words, put it into more pictures so people can see and shop by the categories based on the content and the piece plan that we talked about. And then also maybe adding that mega menu. So it's now you have the core categories of the earrings, necklace, bracelets, and rings, and then you start breaking it down. So I could have the natural collection, which is leather and suede. I could have the evening collection, which would be kind of the more formal, kind of more upscale pearls. I could have the casual collection, which would be maybe the more affordable pearls that you can wear throughout any season of the year. And then the product pages would be designed again to show the best sellers, so they can see that right off the the bat. Did I summarize that hopefully correctly?

You sure did. And you were smiling, which means I feel like it's sticking. Do you feel good about that?

It is sticking. Yeah, I feel really good about it. Yeah. I mean, the key concept that resonated the most for me is like, I. The store I'm not going to say it's easy because it's not. But it's easier to merchandise because you people come and they can see it with their eyes. They can touch it, see it, pick it up, and whatever. And that's the part that I find a little bit more challenging online is jewelry is. Is personal. And if you want to gift it to somebody, you want to give them the best representation of what it would be. Like, how far does it hang, dangle, and I'll put that. Or how big is the pearl? How heavy is the pearl? So I. I try to put as much content in there as I can, and I don't have many returns, which is great. But at the end of the day, it's hard to show them when they can't see it, feel it, and touch it.

Right.

That they can only see it. That I see as a key differentiation. The way I can overcome that is by all the things that we just talked about at the store. I find it much easier to do that online. I haven't adopted that same strategy and merchandising my online store as I've had my physical store.

Yeah. And because also, like, our online stores are just like, load up, load up, load up product products, and like, move them around. And it's like, okay, there it's up. I did it. But it is exactly that. And because you have the physical store, you already have such data for this. And another thing you can do, like, if people are asking for like the same size or whatever, you know, you could always put it. Not saying that you should put it by a quarter, but the reason or how people can technically usually see. And for you, this is kind of important, make a decision, is that there's always a picture on a face or a head. So it's not about her smiling directly at camera, but it's like me seeing the stud in her ear so that I can see what it would look like in my ear. Because women tend to, when they get jewelry, bracelets, they'll put on, they'll usually look at their hand, but if there's a mirror, they'll step back and look at their hand. Earrings and necklaces, they walk up so that even if they can't put it on, they'll hold an earring on. Like the earring back thing, they'll hold it up to their ear. Or a necklace will kind of like hold up to themselves to see what it looks like. People always need to see themselves almost from like a third person visually, like into a mirror to reflect back. So that's why, like in your store, I'm sure you have mirrors.

We, we have full length mirrors. We have handhold mirrors. Yeah. There's mirrors on a table. Yeah. And literally sometimes I'll hold the mirror and to your point, like, I'm laughing and smiling because they're putting on an earring and they're like, yo, this close to the mirror right here. Bring the mirror closer. And if it's a necklace, I'm standing six feet away. Right?

Yeah. So we need to think of that way that when I'm shopping on your website, I can have a similar experience. It might not be my face, but I have somebody's face, head, neck, ear, wrist, that I can visually see what it looks like because it's that reflection back. So you might also see some of your products do much better online because there's more photos to them that show more. I also don't love you just showing like your product images. I feel like it might be better to even have like. Well, eventually you're going to want just like a consistent photo way of doing things.

Yeah. So everything's on a white background. And I hired a VA about six weeks ago and one of the things that he's doing for me is he organized all my photos from all my photo shoots. And then every product on my site, other than a few I think that I might have to shoot now has at least one, if not two or three lifestyle shots associated with it.

It.

And three years in, I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't have that done. But when you have 120something pieces with as many color variations as I do with 400 SKUs, that was a bigger lift. And so as a solopreneur, I just had to grow the team to say, help me in ways that hopefully the things that they do elevate the sales online because, you know, I can't do all the things. I can only focus on the core things.

So tell me, what if I show you this? I'm sharing a screen with you of a bangle and you're looking. So I went to click on it and now you're looking. So the first image in this product, when I looked at it was the bracelet on a white background. Right. But tell me what you see about this photo versus maybe the photos that you offer. Or like if we look at these photos as a whole, so the one.

To the left of it, you know, you kind of looking down so you can see the whole thing. You can see the toggle clasp, you can see the hole for the clasp. You can see the pearls and everything associated with it. The Catalina bangle is kind of more like in line with it, where I'm shooting eye level. So there must be something up front that they want you to see, because you can't see the whole picture of the bracelet the same way that you can on the. Like, the overhead one shooting down.

Yeah. There's also shadow. There's consistency in color and clarity of the photos. And you can see here that some of them, they'll just drop on a. Like, on a background. You know, they like, cut it together. But if we think if we look at that versus yours, yours are cut out of some sort of. Right. Like, you have the photo, but, like, it's been photoshopped out the background, you know?

Yeah, there's no background. So I. What I do is I create a frame, like a whiteboard frame, and I hang the necklace. So I take the picture of the necklace through the frame, so there's no background. So it's a clear, transparent, white background on what it is right now.

Correct. But that's not necessarily the best version of the photos. So I want you to look at companies. So you want.

You want to see the shadow is what you're saying. You want to see the background?

Yeah, not a background, but I want to see the photos just have to be elevated in an E comm sort of way.

Because the bracelets will have a shadow because they're taken down on. Right. They're taken down on a white background. So those. You probably will see a little bit more of the shadow similar to one you showed. But the necklaces won't have it because there's literally no background. And currently, how I've taken it, no.

Matter what jewelry company you look at, we have examples of she's looking away, but we're seeing her wear it. She's enjoying it. She's living her life. Right. We're looking at these hands, but they're not. They're not like, smiling at camera for me. And then these are just like really clean photos that were probably shot in a studio, so you can still see it on the body. And so when you're looking, what I want you to also do is look at these and say, okay, what are they looking for? So, one, it's the product shot. Two, how does that bracelet go on? This just happens to be the video they're using. They're showing it worn now. They're showing you the inside of it, and then they're showing you look it comes in a gift box. Here's less images, right? It's. Some products have more to it than others. This is just like the ring on the finger in the gift box, but they kind of have a consistent. Everything kind of feels consistent. Some things are going to have more images than others because they believe in it more. It's like more of something that they're.

Pushing, you know, well, in the Less is more. I think I listened to one of your podcasts and sometimes less is more is the important concept. So if I shrink my products on my website and I do higher quality with more of the high top sellers, then you know, everything could increase as a result of it. But when you're looking at everything, it's an overwhelming, daunting task to go back and reshoot all those things, product and lifestyle.

So if you start to curate, you can kind of curate and then you can start to think, okay, whatever I want to launch for fall, I'll just start there. Or maybe I'll throw some other things back in. Did you see that aha moment Brian had when it came to his photos? Wonder if you're having one too. When we're talking about photos on your website, it's all about quality. It's about what you're expressing visually and making sure that these photos are creating a visually appealing experience that, that shows them why they need your products, plus how the products may fit or look in real life. So in Brian's case, his photos aren't necessarily portraying that right now. Right. Like they're, they're fine, but I think he's got room to elevate them. My friend, your photos are so important. Right. They have the ability to either make or break your sales online. That's exactly why photos are something that I dive deeper into inside of my signature program multi stream machine. This is where I even go through the types of photos you need to have on your website or if you're selling on Amazon, what you would need for line sheets if you're going to sell on social media. Right. You need different types of photos. So now that we've discussed ways for Brian to improve his offers and website, let's see if there's anything else I can help him with. So to kind of move to the next phase of this conversation, which is the idea, I think, where you're like, I want to get more people to my website. I think we've talked about ways to clean up your website right now so that when we do get the people to your site, they convert better and That's a number. I do want you to track how many people land on your page and what your bounce rate is and where people are coming from. So that way you could just see when you start to get better quality leads. Because people are going to bounce if they find it through something, they're like, oop, this isn't what I was looking for. Right. They might be looking for freshwater pools and they find freshwater pearls and they bounce off. Okay, that's fine. But what we need to pay attention to is people who come to the pearls and then they bounce or they leave. They, like, thought that it was there, but then a lot of times they'll leave because that first landing page just isn't what they thought was going to be. They may not trust it, they may not like it. It may not have the user experience that they want. Then we have to see how many people, like, actually start to add to cart, how many people abandon cart, what your success rate in getting them back is. But for like, the last kind of 10 minutes of this call, what is the next part that I can support you in in terms of getting people to shop from your website?

I think what we talk was exactly what I was looking for.

Okay, amazing. And then we'll. We'll keep working on your stuff over the next few days too. So. All right, so if somebody wants to buy from you, buy gifts, buy for themselves. Where can they shop from you, and how can they support you?

Yeah. The freshwaterpearlcompany.com and to date, as we mentioned, I've donated 42,000 to charity nonprofits helping women, men, and families experiencing cancer in honor of my mom. And 100,000. That's what I want to do. So I continue to ask for that additional support. I want to do everything I can to give back. And just I saw my mom and her journey, and I want to help others going through that same journey. And I think I've shared with you too. You know, all the necklaces are named after influential women in my life and many who are cancer survivors through the partnerships and the affiliates and the bloggers and the influencers. And so I want to continue to do that, create this community and find ways to just build a brand with a heart. And that's something that's gonna. That's gonna continue to be my main core message as I continue to build a business.

I love it. And, you know, just really quick, like, the way that a pearl is made, I know we've talked about that, is there's like an irritant there's something that ends up in there, and then it's like how you grow from it. And I think from cancer, cancer survivors, family members who go through it, life in itself. We need those kind of. Those things that kind of change us to grow into something beautiful as well. So I love just all of the synergy and all your stories.

Thank you.

Of course. All right, thanks, Brian.

Thanks, Jaclyn.

Brian's amazing, right? And I'm so grateful to have him in my inner circle, mastermind and really inside of this product boss community. He's so supportive and giving in so many ways. His products are beautiful. They're well made, they're designed incredibly well. Right. And I think he's on a really great path to reaching that next level in his business, but he just needs a few tweaks when it comes to his on online store. The main theme here is that if you want to make more online sales, you need to simplify your offerings and relate them to the season. Your website needs to be constantly curated and updated throughout the year, and your product photos are the first thing someone is going to look at when they're deciding whether or not to purchase. So they need to be good. If Brian is able to make these changes to his online store, I have no doubt that his sales will continue to increase and he will be able to grow. I believe that the same can happen for you, my friend. So as long as you take action, right? Brian's all about taking action. I want to see you take action, too. You need to go and look for the help, the courses, the information, the education, whatever you need to make your business better. And if you feel called, you know, if you're like, oh, my God, I want to see these beautiful pearls. Because as I referred to them, they're not your grandma's pearls. They're just. It's a gorgeous. This real pearl freshwater pearl company. And you want to do this and buy it from Brian and contribute to his mission of donating to those who are experiencing the terrible terribleness of cancer and supporting cancer research. You can find his website in the show notes. All right, my friends, I hope that you love this episode as much as I did. I hope that I get to work with you, with some of you one on one, if you're able to grab those spots. And I will see you in the next episode.