Friday, June 30, 2006

Diamond Buying Guide Video

If you're the type of person who likes watching the movie instead of reading the book, then this diamond buying guide video is for you.

For a whole 50 minutes, Kim Shaffer of www.freediamondvideo.com takes an in depth look at the 4Cs.



More information, including a written copy is available at www.freediamondvideo.com.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

A Reminder For Fellow Google Advertisers

Earlier this year, Google settled a lawsuit brought against them due to click fraud.

Anyway, the settlement web page is now accepting submissions for a part of the US$90 million available in the class action (money will be credited to your Adwords account).

Of course, we remain skeptical that we will see much compensation, if any, and taking part precludes you from any further action against Google.

Over the last year, many diamond merchants have advertised on Google, and whilst Google have taken enormous steps to reduce click fraud, we have spoken to fellow merchants who say they are still victims of click fraud.

Some well known steps to reduce click fraud are:

  • Don't advertise on the content network. This is where 90% of the fraud occurs. If you want your ads on the content network, limit them to certain sites.

  • Track your clicks and establish fraud deterrents. Who's Clicking Who seems to be popular, but the same effect can be achieved with a few lines of code, and no monthly fee - but it's only $30 a month anyway.

  • Know your ROI and what keywords are producing the best ROI.

  • Google recently introduced time based ads, whereby you can start and stop your ads at various times of the day. Whilst we don't believe this will reduce click fraud, for some it may increase ROI.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Feedback On The Gemex Website

As a member of the Gemex trading floor, we'd like to give our friends at Gemex some feedback on their website.

1. Don't claim W3C compliance when your page has 67 errors.

At the time of writing Gemex's Forum claims it adheres to web standards, however, it contains 67 errors! No doubt this also undermines their creditability with regards to their valuations being ACCC compliant. We suggest a trip to W3 Schools for a good XHTML tutorial, as well as our home page for a good example of a compliant page.

2. Get rid of the advertising, or at least tone it down.

Currently, the advertising really detracts from the site. We aren't really sure of the motivation behind all the advertisements, except for the fact that they may bring in a few hundred dollars a month, however some arguments against are:

  • Gemex claims to be independent. How can the do this when they are accepting advertising money from merchants (including us)?

  • Life insurance, flowers and accommodation have no relevance to jewellery or diamonds. The revenue generated from these ads must be a few dollars (if that) per month. On the other hand, more relevant ads will bring more revenue from ClixGalore.

  • They are detrimental to the user experience as they are distracting, use more bandwidth and may cause "banner blindness".

  • It is spam. In the users' eyes but also in the eyes of Google. Matt Cutts of Google uses the example of a real estate site: "Linking to a free ringtones site, an SEO contest, and an Omega 3 fish oil site? I think I’ve found your problem. I’d think about the quality of your links if you’d prefer to have more pages crawled.". Therefore, linking to sites not related to jewellery may affect Gemex's search engine placement and thus, long term popularity.


3. You have an RSS feed for the forums, why not the trading floor?

Currently, trading floor members have to manually add diamonds. In addition, they have to login to the Gemex site to view diamonds. It would be a lot easier and add a lot more value to the site if merchants could:

  • Submit an XML or comma delimited feed of their stock.

  • Access an RSS feed that would allowing them easy access to updated stock.


4. List only one instance of a chain store in the "Recommended Jewellers".

The "Recommended Jewellers" section is overrun by chain stores. Why not just list one instance of a chain and mention their locations?


Hopefully Gemex can act on all, if not some of this feedback and make a better site for all.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Internet No Silver Bullet For Diamond Merchants

The past year has seen an increasing number of Australian diamond merchants advertise online.

However many may well be under the impression that selling diamonds online is as simple as selling computer parts - set up a website, post diamonds on the site, advertise on search engines and people will come to the site and buy a diamond.

Unfortunately, like most things in life it isn't quite simple.

Firstly, you have to set up an easy to use, user oriented site with unique and useful content that makes people want to buy a diamond from you. You then have to maintain it, keep it up to date and add more features to it (a website should never be considered complete).

Secondly, you have to manage your marketing on a regular basis (daily or several times per week).

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising has the power to create very little "wastage", and produce extremely high return on investment - if done correctly.

Newcomers to the internet marketing game tend to make the same mistakes we were making 3 years ago, ending up with large bills and very little sales. Hiring a professional to manage your PPC campaign may seem silly and unnecessary at first, but the few hundred dollars spent has the potential to decrease your advertising spend whilst dramatically increasing your sales.

Lastly, and most importantly, consumers like viewing and comparing diamonds before purchasing. Thus, you need either a full time presence in all Australian capital cities, which is pretty much unviable for internet based diamond merchants, or establish a virtual presence in cities other than your own, travelling only a few times per month. A few of the more established internet merchants (including us) have a virtual presence in cities other than their own, whilst for others, it doesn't seem to be part of their business plan.

Friday, June 02, 2006

The Benefits of Creative Commons

It would seem that by not copyrighting our diamond education articles, but instead, using the Creative Commons License, has paid off.

Why? Because it gives us free advertising! This page from Bela Diamonds, designed by SurfPacific, is an exact copy of our diamond glossary. If you scroll down to "J", you will see the our name, along with the blurb: "The Home of Beautiful Diamonds, Serving the World through the Web.".

We don't know yet whether the web designer's intent was to strictly adhere to the Creative Commons License, or it was just a copy and paste job, but we certainly are flattered to have our name promoted on a competitor's website.

Maybe someone should tell Bela Diamonds and SurfPacific? Or maybe not?