In the Loupe
In the Loupe
The Website Facelift // Diamond Diaries
Who said building a jewelry website has to be a daunting task?
Mike is joined by Alex, Diamond Diaries, to discuss her recent website rebuild process and the steps required to revamp her website, as well as WHY she redid her website now of all times. We also take a critical look at the importance of promptness in the digital age, and why having your ducks in a row before holiday season can pay off massively.
We hope that hearing about the facelift process of someone else will allow you the foresight to begin your own successful revamp process, free of any bugs or snags.
Check out Kiefer Jewelers' new website: kvjewels.com
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Inquire about sponsoring In the Loupe and showcase your business on our next episode: podcast@punchmark.com
Welcome back everybody to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop this week. I'm joined by Axel and Wine, also known as Diamond Diaries. She's one of the co-owners of Kiefer Fine Jewelers and recently Kiefer Jewelers did a recent website upgrade with us and what they were doing is changing their homepage as well as their navigation and some of their interior pages to better fit their business goals, and for a lot of people that can be very daunting, but we wanted to highlight what the design process was, but also how she was able to look at this holistically as a way that she could tailor her business goals into her website, and it's a really fun talk. I think that Alex had a really positive attitude about going into this build and I think it really shows and is a beautiful website. Her URL, if you want to check it out, is kvjewelscom and I'll have the link in the show notes below so you can check it out, see what you think. If you have a website with Punchmark already and you want to update it, you can always reach out to our sales team and they'll get you sorted, or to your account manager. And if you don't have a website with Punchmark yet. Maybe consider checking it out and let them know in the loop sent you. It makes me look good. Alright, thanks everybody. Enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the Julie industry's favorite website platform. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business with a user-friendly, point-of-sale integrated website platform designed for growth and results. Sign up for your free demo today at punchmarkcom. While enjoying this week's episode, take a moment and leave us a star rating on the Spotify mobile app or, if you're on Apple Podcasts, leave us a star rating in a review. It's the best way to help us grow and to show that you're really enjoying the show. Thanks, and now back to the show. Welcome back everybody. I'm joined by Alex Schlinwine, also known as Diamond Diaries, and we're going to be talking all about a recent website. I guess Re-Launch, upgrade that you did with Punchmark, but the biggest thing I want to focus on is the why behind everything. First of all, alex, how you doing today.
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing very well. I'm super excited about your website. It was one that I followed pretty closely, even though I'm not as involved in the build process anymore. I used to be one of the designers for the websites and helping with the builds at one point, and now I'm not really on that team anymore, but I still kind of can peek at the updates. First of all, how are you liking your new website? How are things kind of? What is your view on your website now?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I'm literally in love with our new website. I mean, I thought our old website was really good, especially for our level and everything, but the new one is just. It looks so luxurious and I think the user experience is so elevated on it. Obviously, I visit our own website several times a day just for checking it and for pulling stuff, pulling links and all of that, but every time I go to it I smile and it's such a great feeling.
Speaker 1:That's great. The one thing I've always thought about is I think that a lot of the times, jewelry store owners they have this view of their website which is sometimes a little bit off of what a consumer's view of their website is going to be, like jewelers they want to have. For example, they're about us story Front and Center, which is definitely important. But I think it's almost worthwhile to put yourself as like a consumer and then be like okay, here it is on your phone. Maybe Let me see you buy an engagement ring, like get all the way to the last step right before you punch in your card and then like tell me how it was. And that's the kind of like litmus test that I sometimes think that we don't do enough. And if you notice any steps or you notice it's hard to find your engagement ring, so you notice the same thing is wrong. I think that that is kind of very telling, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's kind of what happens most of the time. I don't like that. It happens in that order. But I'll have a customer that's reaching out to me saying I'm looking for some gold hoops, and maybe it's a remote customer or maybe it's just someone that's not in the store right now. So I start by going to our website and type in gold hoops and see what comes up and maybe I'll sort it you know, hide a low or something like that and then I look at what's presented on the page and if there's anything I'm not liking on there, I'm going to go fix that before sending it to her real quick. But that's a good way to kind of test yourself from at least you know, from one aspect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or you know, another one is like you go to a category that you don't go to very often and then perhaps you might see a product image that's like one of your hidden edge items that you're like ah how did this end up there? And that is like one of those things that if you're a shopper and you see this photo taken through your, through your display case, oh my gosh, it's kind of a kind of ruins the mood a little bit, I think.
Speaker 2:It really does, and it does just seem to keep happening, no matter how much you really check it. I do Every morning I try to go and just check the all jewelry page because it filters by like newest items added to the website, and I'll just do that every morning and make sure nothing's on there. But and every once in a while I catch something and I got to pull that off or go fix it. So but that's just the part of being in jewelry we just have a lot of skews and it's just it's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so when did you launch your original website? I think you're one of the earlier adopters of what we call version six. That's our platform site manager. We're on the sixth version of it and you guys were launched originally on that. We're still on that version, but you guys relaunched recently, so when did you launch that original one?
Speaker 2:So I mean, we've had a website for a long time since, like the early 2000s we were kind of early on that game, so we were with a different developer for a while and finally came made the decision to come over to Punchmark in 2018. And I think our site launched in 2019, which was turned out to be perfect timing because it was right before the COVID boom, where everything was going more digital and more online and luckily, we got a lot of that done before that happened and that really paid off. But we launched that site in 2019, which in hindsight, wasn't that long ago, but a lot has changed since then. And it was actually some of my reps and everything at Punchmark that recommended that I do the Ecommerce Growth Program and at first I was like, I mean, I just made my site in 2019. What do I really need to redo at this point? That doesn't feel like that's been that long.
Speaker 2:But then when I went to the Punchmark workshop and saw some other people's websites and what was really capable with them, I got website envy and basically I was like, ok, I want to copy that from that person's website, I want to copy this from their website, and that's kind of what sparked it and honestly I'm so happy we did it. It really was way smoother than I thought it was going to be. I was envisioning like rebuilding a whole website from scratch, and that's really not what had to happen, because I was already with Punchmark. We just were able to refresh important things like the home page and then just pull in all the other supporting stuff from what we already had. So the whole thing looked elevated, but we didn't have to recreate the wheel again, which was really nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, being on the platform and going from us to us.
Speaker 1:Still, everything is in our native language, everything is already kind of formatted to be brought over.
Speaker 1:So the fact that and I mean what is actually not really discussed that much is that you already were familiar with the platform I mean the back end is going to stay the same.
Speaker 1:The difference is going to be the front end. So for the people that are listening to give you an idea, where there is in web development, we have these two terms there's front end, which is user facing, so this might be the home page or the checkout page or things like that and then there is the back end, and the back end is the content management system, which is the CMS, and that is what we call site manager, and that piece is going to stay the same because it's on the same build. The difference was we did this e-commerce growth plan which we are now phasing out, and it was the kind of upgrade a lot of our clients, our early adopters, before we had put them on this new version. I guess you touched on the one major factor, which is that some things had changed, and I remember I think you guys were actually a theme website before theme meaning one of our kind of pre-built designs, and then now I think that you guys have a more of a from scratch version. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct. And what I liked about this is because originally we just didn't feel like we were financially able to invest in like a fully custom website. So we started with one of like the templates and this was a really easy way and a cost effective way to take that template and make it feel custom without rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. So I really enjoyed that and I honestly think if you go to our website, it looks like a custom built website now.
Speaker 1:And I remember you guys also had a little bit of a shorter homepage. Shorter meaning home pages are pages in websites are built in these blocks called sections, and sections stack and over end. So there's the top section and if you look at pretty much any website you can, that is not like a social media website. If you look at any website, you'll actually see that there are sections, sections, sections, and the top one might be a banner and then the second one might be these widgets that are directing to major parts of your business. I remember your older one actually didn't have a ton of owners, a little bit shorter, but now this new one really calls out like a lot of brands and categories and things like that. How did you go about deciding what should actually be included in your homepage or just in your website in general?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, our main thing is we wanted to make it where everything was, under the purpose of getting Pete the customer to the item that they are looking for as fast as possible, and we wanted to. We know that people come to our website searching in lots of different ways. Not everyone comes to the website thinking, oh, I want a diamond necklace. You know, sometimes they're coming and they know they're just shopping for an anniversary but they have no idea what they want. Or sometimes they know their budget is $500, but they don't know what they want. Or sometimes they know that she loves Roberto coin but they don't know what to get her from Roberto coin.
Speaker 2:So our new homepage basically has all these different funnels to get people to where they need to go. So the very top, of course, we're Rolex, so we had to start with the Rolex banner and that's all based on them. But after that you can shop by jewelry type and so and it's all like very aesthetic and just flows so nicely. But you can shop by necklaces, rings, bracelets, watches, and it's just going to do it by category basically. Then, right past that is the shop by price and it's got some different buttons to filter you to the price point that you're looking at. I actually love how seamlessly that works too.
Speaker 2:Next, you're going to have the shop by designer and it highlights some of our our brands, and then it has a little about us, tells our story, and then it goes into talking about our bridal and our custom design services and then, at the bottom, one of my favorite things is we made this little graphic that kind of highlights like the services and kind of reasons to buy from from us. I guess you might say so we have, that you know we have an in-house jeweler, that we do the interest free payment plans, that we have free shipping and that we can do the free gift wrapping and that all of our team are GIA trained advisors too, where some of the things we really wanted to highlight, as well as our free nationwide warranty. And then we have a little plug-in to go to our events, our blog, and then a plug-in with our social media and reviews. So it's really like you can get a good idea from about everything that we offer and who we are right from the homepage, which I really love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always think of like your homepage is essentially a landing page, it's just the main landing page. It's like, just like how man, I'm not a, I'm not a New York City person, but just like how is it central, central square? No, what is the?
Speaker 2:main Time square.
Speaker 1:No, what does it mean? Railroad Subway?
Speaker 2:Oh, grand Central, Grand Central.
Speaker 1:Exactly Just like how Grand Central is a main hub, it's also just a stop. Actually, when you think about it, it just has a lot of different connections and different jumping out points. That's kind of like your homepage, and you're totally right about these what I have always called I'm waiting for the term to get picked up by everybody else soft categories. So there's hard categories like, like you said, diamonds and Rolex and hoop earrings. Those are very specifically what the jewelry is about. But then there's also things like gift ideas, like what constitutes a gift idea and it's like well, it's whatever you say it is. So I think that you're totally right. Sometimes you've got to lead the horse to water at some point, you know.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So I guess one thing I wanted to ask about is what was this build process like? So for a lot of people it can be a little bit intimidating to want to build a new website and or just to upgrade something on their website. They think it's going to be like this huge, all-encompassing task. They're going to have to know anything about code. Can you maybe take us through the steps of when you decided, hey, we're going to do this EGP. What was the next step after that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like I said, it was way easier than I was thinking it was going to be. I thought for sure this was going to be like a six month to a year project or something, and I think from beginning to end it only took maybe two or three months. But if it ever got held up it was because of me and not anything that Punchmark took a long time doing, which was really nice. But yeah, first it started with a call and I met with Lorenzo and we just talked to like really high level, like what's important to us. What services or attributes do we find to be important that we'd like on our homepage or in our mega menu or anything like. We did build out a couple landing pages too, and we did this. So for some of our high producing categories, we made landing pages for those as well.
Speaker 2:And I told him I literally took screenshots from some of the other Punchmark clients and said I like this on their website, I like this on their website and we could kind of like pull it all together. And then I told him you know, what brands do we want to feature, what services that we wanted are about us on the homepage? And yeah, and they. That was pretty much. It just kind of giving all the high level.
Speaker 2:And then I want to say might have been a week or two after that point, they had like the first mockup of what it was going to look like and they showed it on what it was going to look like on desktop and mobile, which I really thought was great, because I mean, let's face it, most people are shopping on their, on their phone now and it's like it. Okay, it's fine if your website looks great on a desktop, but what does that translate to on mobile? And it actually does need to be designed a little bit differently for mobile. It shouldn't just be like resizing the desktop version. You know it's not going to function the same. And they showed me both ways. I sat with that for a couple days and I did show it to a couple people like around the store and everything.
Speaker 1:Honestly, they really showed around to like different people, or was that kind of like? I'm going to open it up on my computer and just look at it every you know a couple hours and just see if I still like it. What was that process like?
Speaker 2:Now I showed other people, like I showed my parents and showed a couple other key people in our company, just to see what their thoughts were, because I like to get lots of opinions and just get feedback from everyone, and we all really loved it. Honestly, we didn't make a whole lot of changes. The one thing that was interesting about this process is they really wanted us to only focus on, like, the raw layout of the page. First, because I was getting hung up on like well, I don't like that, it says that and I don't like this picture that they threw in there, and they're like you can change all that once it's live. So, like, don't really focus on that, just focus on. You know the layout and where everything is, how it's formatted and where it's placed, and you know the flow of it. And so that did take me a second to really like overlook the things that were bugging me, I guess. But once I got over that, I'm like okay, no, let's just focus on the flow, and I liked the flow of it. The one thing that is tricky, too, is they're just sending you screenshots, you know, basically, and then you can't actually like click on anything or do anything, at least not at that stage. So so at that stage it's just looking at everything and kind of scrolling it and just doing the rough feel.
Speaker 2:So once I approved that then then they actually made it in like I don't know what you would call it, but like a dummy version of the website, and it was like another URL that wasn't public, I guess, and I could actually click on stuff and use it and play with it, and my other website was still live in the background, you know, and so that was cool. So then it honestly was a lot easier for me to really, like I don't know, wrap my head around it once I could get to that stage. So that was cool. So then we played around. We did make a couple changes at that point. I also had it to, at that point, get it approved by Rolex and make sure that they were okay with everything before we launched. And then, basically, they asked for access to the website that we hosted through, and I gave them the login for that, and then it went live and honestly it just swaps out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know it was almost so fast that I kind of missed an opportunity. I wanted to make kind of like a before and after video for social media or something like that, and I never really grabbed like a screenshot or a screen record of our old site before it got pulled down.
Speaker 1:And now I'm like, oh, we might have something. We usually archive something, but we could probably do that yeah.
Speaker 2:And that was cool because I wanted to do a little, you know, a little video like unveiling the new website officially, so that would be cool. So yeah, and that was pretty much it. And then, after it was live, I could go in and make some of my other little tweaks that I wanted to make. And it's super easy with site manager. Honestly, on the homepage you can just literally click images and change them out on your own and you can just edit the text and you know. So that's super easy. And I changed a couple little things, but overall, I mean it was it was super easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I love hearing it from like the perspective of a client, because we I've been here for for a minute now, about six and a half years, and when I first started, yeah, I was designing the websites and we did not have it as fleshed out. It used to be a lot more, you know, I guess collaborative in a sense, but it was more like they didn't like this, so we did this, and then they did this and then we. So it was like very back and forth. And now, because we have again Lorenzo Lorenzo is our project manager and he actually has a his master's in project management and he's incredibly talented at what he does and what I think is very interesting is that he it's about setting up like what the focus of the step is.
Speaker 1:That's what he was telling me one time and like he was telling you, there is, there's always going to be something a little bit wrong Like, oh, I don't love how this phrase is, but if the focus is on, like, the structure of the website, then it doesn't really matter what the words say.
Speaker 1:It's about this like skeleton. And then, when you get to the next stage, maybe the focus is on actually what the content is, because, at a certain point, you do need to nail things down and make sure that you're happy, so that, when you go live, you're not going live with, like you know, stuff that doesn't represent you the way that you want to be. I have found it very fascinating to hear how they've kind of smoothed everything out and allowed you to kind of feel a part of the collaboration. When it comes to the actual build, though, were you. What was your goal, though, for this website? Obviously, more website sales, but was it to just kind of check this off the list, or like what made you feel like you needed to? Oh, would that? This would constitute a successful launch.
Speaker 2:So, okay, I think one way that I can kind of explain this is we like to go visit other jewelry stores, just, you know, to check other people out and always get ideas and stuff. And sometimes you walk into a store and it doesn't matter what their volume is or how successful their business is. There's some stores that you can tell have not been updated for like 20, 30 years. Like they haven't painted, they haven't changed any of the artwork on the wall, they haven't replaced the carpet or is it still the same original showcases, and you just feel it. You know, and we've never been that way.
Speaker 2:That's, I think, something we really pride ourselves on, that we are always updating something, probably even before it's fully worn out, because it's our image.
Speaker 2:You know, we want someone to walk into our store and just be blown away the minute they walk in and to feel comfortable and to just know they're in a luxurious environment and everything. So we're always updating. Like every year, we have some project that we're working on, whether it's on the digital aspect, like this, or physically in store. A lot of times, a little bit of both, and we want the website and are the experience in the store to match and to be as similar as possible. So I think that was kind of our main goal with this is we wanted to make sure that the customer knows they're shopping at key furs, whether it's online or in person. So that's really what sparked it and, just like I said, I got a website and me from seeing other people's websites and I'm like I want those features and I was a little bit stuck with the template that I had originally selected. So by upgrading it, I got to really do things the way I wanted them and ultimately, you know, I think it really paid off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's so interesting. You say that about building out your image. I think that's totally. It's kind of almost similar to to fashion, because I mean, let's be real, like what is the difference between a you know a fruited loom white t-shirt and you know a really nice, like well tailored you know shirt from this other place?
Speaker 1:And it's like, well, in the end they are both shirts and they are both going to do what this shirts functionality is, but one of them does convey a certain look and also one of them makes you feel a certain way and the fact that you can feel well, I mean, your shoppers are going to feel a certain way when they look at a new website and it matches to your in store. But also I do feel like you will also kind of have this confidence. You know you're going to be dressed up nice and you will have kind of put a new, fresh lick of paint on everything, and I think that that is almost just as valuable. Am I crazy and thinking that that sometimes, like if you have that confidence, that almost matters more to you than it does to even just to the shopper?
Speaker 2:No for sure. And I talk to jewelers that are like, yeah, we have a website, but don't go to it. It sucks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've heard that I don't want to say that Like this is my business, you know, like I don't want to be embarrassed about any part of my business, but let alone this part. And I mean we all have seen the studies in the research that millennials and Gen Z, they're checking you out online first and they're going to form their opinion of you based on what they see. And I want to make sure that I'm capturing this new up and coming audience and that I'm not dying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, everybody, we're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors. Stay with us. Handle advertisements, lead the state. Evaluations are easy to work with and it's not just jeweler purchasing. They also buy designer handbags, artwork, antiques, stuff like that. These events frequently attract a different type of customer than your usuals, because who doesn't love getting a little cash back? Elevate your store's reputation, build lasting customer relationships and become the jewelry destination of your community. It's all about simplicity. They take care of the logistics. You enjoy the rewards. Visit national raritiescom. Slash pages. Slash host bash and bash event. It's going to be in the show nuts below. Or reach out to Justin van Maeter by emailing Justin. That's J U S T I N at national raritiescom. Let them know that in the loop set you thanks back to the show and we're back. Yeah, do you remember how long this build process took, from maybe when you signed up to when it went live? What kind of estimated time was that about?
Speaker 2:I'd have to go check my email log to totally tell you, but I believe it was just about two or three months, to be honest, because I think I started it. I mean, I expressed my interest in it at the punch mark workshop, so when was that? That was in April, right. It was in April, so April and yeah, and then it went live a couple weeks ago. So yeah, maybe three months.
Speaker 1:Man, that's crazy. It's like we used to have a much more drawn out process, mainly because a lot of times we have to switch people over from different platforms or we just didn't have the people to just, you know, hold the hands all the way through. But I love, I love hearing how smoothly I went. So did you take this opportunity to update, you know, anything else on your website? Or did you update anything I don't know in your store, or was this like, hey, we're going to kind of get this part done and then we'll focus on the rest?
Speaker 2:So just little tweaks here and there, like with our about us page, like now that it was going to be featured more. We just had some new photography done of me and my family, so we put that on there. We made the search bar. We made it like an actual search bar at the top right corner. Before it was just like the little you know microscope in the top banner and I found it hard to click on sometimes and like hard to find. So now it's like it's only on desktop that it's actually like the bar, but it actually has like the whole space where you can start typing and it says search in it. So I just feel like it's a lot easier to show people like hey, you can just type in here what you want, like I personally hate that when I go to websites and I can't find the search bar to just get to what I want really quickly.
Speaker 2:So we did that, we kind of cleaned up the whole top like toolbar I guess, if you will, it's. It used to just be a lot more cluttered. Now it's just literally like you can click to, click to call us, click to make an appointment, and I just think it's a lot more user friendly with how the top looks, is a lot cleaner. And then our mega menus. We already had mega menus, but I cleaned them up and and just finessed them a little bit more. Yeah, by doing all this and those were kind of the main things and then building out a couple other landing pages. But other than that, I think I really, with this project, was mostly focused on the home page and that's, I think, the one part of our old website that just really felt like it wasn't up to speed with the rest of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, those are all like the little touches, though it does really come together. We always talk about user experience. I'm that's my title is actually director of user experience at punch mark is a very nimblest like overarching term that refers to a lot of different things in website or, honestly, an art, but especially with website design, and one of those things, one of the tenants of user experience, is simplicity and, like, when you think about what is the easiest user experiences that you've had to undergo, I can outline, you know, checking out on Amazon. They offer you, they save all your payments, they save all these things for you, so that way you could probably check out under I mean, you can do it in 30 seconds if you needed to and that simplicity does constitute an easy experience, and that is kind of what we're always chasing after.
Speaker 1:We talk about removing certain elements from your, especially from your, header I think that that is the most important spot and putting down so that the important information is there. So, for example, the fact that you have our locations, so our locations there's a drop down. You click through them. It's going to bring you to the landing page. What used to be popular is people used to love putting their entire address up in the header. It's like you don't need to do that too much stuff. And cutting back on that and making it simpler and allowing people to feel like they're in control of their own you know direction is actually a better user experience than just allowing the information to be out there, which might seem like the first option.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And the other thing that got updated with this is the page load speed. I got the upgrade on that, which was really cool. I think you guys talked about that a couple episodes ago, but that kind of got launched with this, and so now my page load speed is off the charts, which is awesome. So that was a really cool upgrade that I kind of got as a bonus too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, man, page page load speed. We were just getting to the point where it's the 30 day rolling average. So what Google does is typically they actually benchmark you for I think it's like 30 or 35 days or something like that, and they benchmark it whenever I think it's whenever they crawl your website, so they check it and they might, you know, they score it, and maybe you scored a 40 and then you might score a 50, and then you might score a 40, and then they average it out and that's your rolling average and that's actually important. But what's funny is that we updated a whole bunch of people's websites and now they're scoring the 90s, but then they had from before that they had these 40s and 50s and Google was like, ah, we'll just like pretend, like that hasn't happened yet. And now we're right inside of the limit and everybody has really had their shoot back up because now they only have good scores. It's been kind of kind of interesting to follow because now Google was suddenly like, whoa, these guys took it seriously. So kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is very exciting.
Speaker 2:Oh and sorry, one last thing I forgot to say, one that we added with this was we went ahead and did a plug in with Calendly for making appointments now too.
Speaker 2:So I, just a couple of months ago, started using Calendly for making appointments just for our special events, but I wanted to utilize it for a day to day operation as well, and I really love Calendly just because it will send the automatic reminders of the appointment to customers and they can reschedule it really easily on their own.
Speaker 2:And it's made things like our appraisal days and like making appointments to do a gold buying appointment with us just way easier, because customers, you know I don't know about you, but like I don't like picking up the phone and like having a call to make a doctor's appointment.
Speaker 2:Like you know you're sitting on hold forever, and then sometimes I don't have my calendar in front of me and I'm just like whatever, just give me whatever appointment you have available and like hopefully it works, you know. So that's why I love that customers can now book digitally with us, so that it's just a pain point that's being removed and now that our store, like the front end, is cohesive with the back end and my sales team can see the appointments just the same as a customer can, and I think it's really making things easier and helping us convert a lot better too, because it's not like you're just making an appointment request and then we got to get back to you and sometimes we don't have that time available because we have booked something in store at the same time or whatever. So it's just much easier that it's all in one place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, calenly. Calenly was one of those things. So when you have a website platform, like like Punchmark does, we are constantly forced with this option of should we build a plugin that allows them to plug it in to their website but we don't have any control over it, or should we try to build it from scratch and Calenly? So we tried to build a scheduler and we were looking at it more and more and we're like Calenly is so good and I know that Renzo uses his. He uses Calenly exclusively. He like hey, do you want to meet with me? Well, here, check, pick your own appointment. You know whatever works for you. And I have learned that some people, if that's all they do, they do it really well, and I think Calenly is one of those, those companies that they just do so well at what they do that you're crazy to try to try to beat them at it. So I'm glad that you picked that one up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and it was just so easy. Like I love that Punchmark can just I just send the embed code and you guys just plugged it right in and it works so effortlessly. So that's the great thing about it is, you know, you can kind of pick and choose all the different services that work best for you and then just throw it all in the Punchmark and you get the best of everything with that.
Speaker 1:Have you noticed any, because you guys are obviously pretty good at online on e-commerce. Have you noticed any change of performance? Because sometimes I know that when you launch a website, sometimes there could be a different performance, but it sounds like your page speed has gone way up. Have you noticed anything regarding, for example, sales or traffic or anything like that?
Speaker 2:Nothing major yet, but I haven't been through a whole month with the new website yet, so I think that that's going to make the difference. Like I, when I looked at my analytics, nothing like majorly look different just yet. But, like I said, I think that it's going to just take like a whole month with the new site to really be able to tell. There was like a couple of little glitches with it when it first launched too that we had to fix. So I'm wondering if that actually had affected it negatively just for the time being. But then it's going to. You know we caught it quickly and it got fixed right away. But you know it's just some of the growing pains of doing a big project like this. But yeah, I'm really excited to see after like get through September will be the whole first month with the new site and see what that looks like.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that you did it when you did, because September so we used to, but now less so we just have a code. I think it's a moratorium, where we would draw like a line in the ticket, we'd pick a date and we would say, okay, nothing critical to infrastructure can be deployed past this date until and usually the moratorium was until January 1st, and we would just, you know, nothing can touch checkout for this span. Now we have a slightly different system and there's a lot more stringent to seeing that goes on with a lot of deploy. But I love when people choose September to relaunch a website, or September, august, september, even October is a good time because you don't want to have something deploy and it's like on Thanksgiving. It's just like it's a little bit.
Speaker 1:It's such a big project and a lot of times there's so much code that has been changed that there is just there has to be something. That is not going to be quite right, we'll catch it, but it's definitely best to have it ready Again, have a month of kind of like just being able to tweak it if you feel like you need to, and then you're going to be. I mean, christmas season or Black Friday is supposed to start like the middle of October this year, which I think is insane.
Speaker 2:I know people are really getting crazy with it and like Halloween stuff's already or Halloween stuff was out in like July. I'm like people chill out, Relax with that. So that makes sense and honestly, I thought this project was going to go into next year and I like I can't believe that we're already wrapped up with it. So it is kind of funny how some projects take way longer than you think they're going to, and then this one was way shorter than I thought it was going to. So it all kind of works out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so exciting. Alex, I'm so happy that you guys, you know, did that. I was always showing your website when I would go to different shows, mainly because I have the URL memorized and I could pull it up really easily and I knew that you had, you know, optimized a lot of different parts of it already. So if we wanted to show what, like a fully fleshed out jewelry page would look like, I knew that you guys had it figured out. But now that you've taken the time to really kind of dive a little bit deeper, it's very exciting. And also just to hear that the systems that we did set up in place because we didn't always have again these systems the biggest thing.
Speaker 1:I'll give all the credit in the world to our project management team, especially with Lorenzo, our design team, with Sarah, our art director, dan, who is our CPO but also builds a lot of the websites, or builds all the websites.
Speaker 1:They have definitely really taken the time to really optimize every step of the way and I think that that's kind of one of those things after hearing from a lot of jewelers, for example, we didn't always, back in the day, provide a mock-up of what the websites would look like before they deployed. We would say like, okay, you want this, this and this from our creative strategy assessment, our CSA, you want this, this and this, and then we would just build that. And it is way worse tweaking code than it is tweaking a design, and that's why we go with the design mock-up and we can just build that in Adobe XD, design everything, send it to you. You say no, I want this to be swapped with this and, believe it or not, it takes about one second, as opposed to who knows 15, 20, an hour With you to do it with code. So I'm pleased that it's working well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Like I said, I was definitely very, very surprised and impressed with how easy it all is.
Speaker 1:That's great and I know what you might be thinking out there. If you have a Punchmark website, maybe you want to get an update. You can always contact punchmarkcom slash contact-sales. Or you can go to punchmarkcom. Just scroll down to the bottom. There's a footer link contact sales. Talking about the easy user experience, we want to make it easy for you. I think that right now and if you don't have a Punchmark website, now is a good time We'll get that build going. We can either try to speed it up and get it out before the holidays and get you going, or we can get it started, so that way, right when the year starts, you'll have a new website. Alex, where can people find you for your leadership and different kind of consulting services?
Speaker 2:Yep, so you can find me on Instagram or Facebook. On Instagram, I am Diamond Diaries, and on Facebook you can just look me up AlexEviashLindwine. Or you can find me at Kiefer Jewelers. You'll see me all over there social media as well and you can find us at KieferJewelerscom if you want to check out our new beautiful website.
Speaker 1:Yay, I'll make sure I have the link to that in the show notes below. Definitely check them out. We call you guys KV Jewels, because that's your URL, that's our URL, every directs.
Speaker 2:We used to be called Kiefer Village Jewels which is why the V and the jewels and we wanted to slim it down and make it a little easier, so that's where that comes from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll make sure I have all the information there. Go, check it out. You can see what a premium, like high quality website looks like and you know what? Maybe give it a shot, see what it's like to go through a checkout process and see how you would optimize it. We've tried to take the best parts from a lot of different websites, from all the experience that we've had from launching several thousand at this point different websites. So I hope that you agree with our choices and, if not, send us a message. We'd love to hear it. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week, tuesday. Thank you so much, alex. I appreciate your time. It's always great talking to you and we'll be back next week, tuesday. Cheers everybody. Bye, all right, everybody. That's it for this show. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1:This week's episode was brought to you by Punchmark, produced and hosted by Michael Burpo. My guest this week was Alex Lundwein, also known as Diamond Diaries, and her contact information will be in the show notes below. We're talking all about her website, kvjewelscom. Make sure you check it out. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cochran. If you're interested in getting an upgrade for your website or just getting a website with Punchmark in general. You can visit punchmarkcom. Slash, contact dash sales and they'll get you sorted. Let them know that in the loop sent you makes this look good. Thanks, everybody. We'll be back next week Tuesday with another episode. Bye.
