Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:00
Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money-sucking ads? My name’s Laryssa Wirstiuk, and I’ve learned in 7 years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya takes a holistic approach, leading with laser-focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million-dollar company, and now I’m sharing these systems and tactics with you. Here’s to standing out in the Sea of Sparkle.

Welcome to Episode #285. Today, I’m diving into the must-knows of managing your online store. I’ll chat about what you should understand about your ecommerce setup and why it’s essential to seek help if you’re unsure. I’ve been chatting with some jewelry business owners who have their online store on Shopify but aren’t fully familiar with all of Shopify’s features and capabilities. Maybe they relied on a developer before and never fully got the hang of it themselves. If you don’t have a dedicated ecommerce team for your online shop, it’s vital to grasp some basics. While I’ll focus on Shopify, the same principles apply to other platforms too, like Squarespace and Wix. Think about it like this: running an online jewelry store is similar to running a brick-and-mortar one. Just like you need to know how to switch on the lights and open the display cases, understanding your ecommerce system is crucial. Even though it’s online, it’s just as important. Take some time to understand it, and I’ll explain why in this episode.

But before we get to the solid gold, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video – so you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching “Joy Joya”. You can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Okay, let’s get into today’s episode, my Sparklers! This one’s all about what you absolutely need to know about your online ecommerce platform. Again, I’ll just be talking about Shopify in this episode, but as I said, the same advice can apply to other platforms. So why is it so important to be super comfortable with some essential functions and features about your ecommerce platform? Getting intimately acquainted with the essential must-know aspects of managing your jewelry ecommerce store is vital. Understanding these fundamentals empowers owners to effectively navigate their Shopify backend, optimize their online presence, and ultimately drive success. From mastering product management and collections organization to fine-tuning SEO settings and analyzing website analytics, each aspect plays a crucial role in enhancing the store’s visibility, user experience, and profitability. By familiarizing yourself with these essentials, jewelry business owners can confidently make informed decisions, troubleshoot issues efficiently, and capitalize on opportunities for growth. Additionally, this deep understanding enables you to communicate more effectively with developers or third-party service providers, ensuring that their vision is accurately translated into their online storefront. Ultimately, investing the time and effort to become proficient in these key areas sets the foundation for long-term success and sustainable growth in the competitive landscape of online jewelry retail. These are the 10 essential things that you should feel pretty comfortable knowing how to do: 1. Product Management: Understand how to add, edit, and manage product listings, including product descriptions, pricing, and inventory management. Also understand what makes an effective product description page, because that’s the one step between shopping shopping and checking out. Study other product pages to see what works and doesn’t work, and if your theme doesn’t allow you to make a change or improvement, then at least you can effectively communicate what you want to a developer. 2. Collections: Know how to create and organize collections to group similar products together, making it easier for customers to navigate your store. A collection isn’t just about a named collection, but it’s also a way to create groupings of products, like by product category, by price point, by theme, by color, by gifting occasion. The possibilities are endless, and you need to know how to use it to boost your merchandising and make your marketing easier and more fun to shop. 3. Image Optimization: Learn how to upload high-quality images and optimize them for web display to enhance the visual appeal of your products. Know the correct sizes for your theme and size all images accordingly, so the user is getting a great visual experience. 4. Adding and Editing Pages and Blog Posts 5. SEO Settings: Familiarize yourself with Shopify’s SEO features, including meta titles, descriptions, and URL structures, to improve your store’s visibility in search engine results. 6. Shipping and Payment Gateway Settings: Configure shipping rates, methods, and zones to ensure accurate shipping costs are applied to orders and set up shipping rules for different regions. Set up and integrate payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, or Shopify Payments to securely process customer payments. 7. Order Management: Understand how to process orders, fulfill customer requests, and manage order status updates, including handling refunds and cancellations. 8. Analytics and Reporting: Utilize Shopify’s built-in analytics tools to track sales, customer behavior, and website traffic, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to improve your store’s performance. 9. Theme Customization: Customize your store’s theme to reflect your brand identity and enhance the user experience for visitors, including adjusting colors, fonts, and layout options. You should also know how to change the navigation, including adding and removing menu items. And you should understand how to swap out elements of the homepage, since those should be kept updated semi-regularly, like the hero image and featured collections/products. 10. App Integration: Explore and integrate third-party apps from the Shopify App Store to extend your store’s functionality, such as email marketing, customer reviews, or social media integration. Manage your apps, so knowing which ones aren’t useful anymore, and which ones you no longer use, so you can regularly decide to remove apps that no longer serve you. Knowing how to set up basic integrations with Shopify, like Shopify to your email marketing platform. As you probably noticed, I didn’t say anything related to website customization and code because unless you’re very familiar with CSS and hard-coding, then there’s really no reason to be messing with it. That’s when having a good developer on hand comes in handy. It would be like having a trusted plumber or locksmith on speed dial for your jewelry store. These are reasons why you’d want to have a developer in your back pocket, ready to help you at a moment’s notice because any one of these issues can become urgent at any given time, and the technical support for a lot of ecommerce platforms isn’t outstanding, at least from what I’ve encountered myself. You don’t want to find yourself in a bind when your income depends on it, and these issues happen more often than you think! Technical Issues: Websites can encounter technical glitches, such as page errors, broken links, or functionality issues at any time and without any notice. A developer can quickly troubleshoot and resolve these issues to ensure your site runs smoothly and maintains a positive user experience. Customization: As your business grows, you may want to customize your website’s design or functionality to better suit your needs or differentiate yourself from competitors. Most Shopify themes will need to be customized in one way or another. A developer can implement custom features, design changes, or integrations to align with your brand and business objectives. Optimization: Developers can optimize your website for performance, speed, and search engine visibility. This includes optimizing code, improving site loading times, and implementing SEO best practices to enhance your site’s ranking and attract more organic traffic. Security: Cybersecurity threats are a constant concern for online businesses. A developer can implement security measures, such as regular software updates, SSL certificates, and firewalls, to protect your website and customer data from breaches, hacking attempts, or malware infections. I literally have a client who’s dealing with this now, and needed to consult a developer to help. Scaling and Growth: As your business expands, you may need to scale your website to accommodate increased traffic, transactions, or product offerings. A developer can advise on scalability strategies, optimize backend processes, and ensure your website can handle growing demands without compromising performance or user experience. How to find a trusted developer to have on call when you need them Usually you’ll want to start your search with a small project in mind, so you can test their responsiveness, professionalism, communication skills, and make sure the price feels comfortable. Maybe you’ve always wanted to change the color of something on your site, and you’re not able to do it through the theme customizer. Test them with something small. Pricing for developers varies widely, so you’ll have to poke around to get a sense for what people are charging for what you’d like to accomplish. Fiverr and Upwork are great places to start looking for talent. Shopify also has its own Partners directly, filled with people who are trained specifically on Shopify. Read reviews and ask questions. Reach out to other ecommerce business owners in your community or network and ask them for recommendations. So what do you feel you still need to know about your online store? Let me know in a comment on YouTube or DM me on Instagram. I’d love to chat about it!

Okay, let’s get into the GOLD MINE. Welcome to another edition of THE GOLD MINE – a segment where I get personal and share insights on entrepreneurship, mindset, success, growth, and all things business. THE GOLD MINE allows me to share topics and insights close to my heart. In this week’s GOLD MINE, I want to share a fun tip about AI tools for storytelling. Writing can be tough, especially when you’re crafting things like product descriptions, social media posts, blogs, and website content. Facing a blank page can be daunting, and there’s pressure to get it right because written words seem so final. Plus, it can be tricky to maintain your authentic voice. So, here’s what I do to make it easier, and it saves me from typing or handwriting everything out. I use a voice dictation tool like Otter or Google Doc’s voice-to-text feature. If you’re comfortable talking about your jewelry, this method will feel natural. Sit down with the tool and start talking about what you want to convey. For instance, if you’re writing a product description, spend 5-10 minutes discussing the product. Set a timer to push yourself to say more than you might initially. Whether you’re drafting an email or a blog post, just start talking without worrying about being concise or making perfect sense. Afterward, take the transcript and input it into ChatGPT, specifying what you’re aiming for, like a social media caption or email copy. You can provide ChatGPT with a sample of your brand voice or a reference from another brand you like. Share how long you want the output to be and any other details, then drop in your transcript. This way, ChatGPT can generate content that feels less generic because you’ve already provided a solid draft. You can also repurpose this storytelling in various creative ways. If you struggle to talk about yourself and your jewelry, ChatGPT can help there too. Use this prompt: “Imagine you’re interviewing a jewelry designer about a specific topic. What questions would you ask to get interesting and detailed answers?” You can use these questions as a starting point to kickstart your writing. It’s a helpful approach that removes some of the terror of staring at a blank page. Give these two tricks a try and let me know what you think! Reach out via Instagram DM or leave a comment on YouTube.

Did you have any questions about today’s episode? You can always email me Laryssa at laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you loved this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’re completely new to digital marketing, then you’ll want to purchase and read a copy of my book JEWELRY MARKETING JOY. Visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai