I get to MANY sites and on the left is a big long list. Its a categorical “itemized list”. The HTML markup tag for this is even called that: my list item.

So what does that mean to me?

It means I have a list of things that are related. Boom boom boom….right down the list.

What does it mean to a search engine?

It means the same thing: list. Boom boom boom…down the list we read.

So here is the thing. This is BIG. Trust me.

When we think SEO and we think customer navigation, they kind of fall in the same train of thought.

YES, the better my site is for my customer, the better my site will be for the search engines.

I have got to do this because it is simply what I have to do to “make it”.

WAIT! Wait, wait…

I only thought of this now, at 12AM, and I’m supposed to be an expert.

So where am I going with this?

The idea is that we jump to associate methods with success. We do things because it is what is the “best practice”.

BUT, who says what is best?

Can the wheel be re-invented? Hell yes.

It happens everyday, and those are the people that get celebrated the most. They have paved the way for new and better ways of doing things.

I have an idea though.

Lets stop.

Slow EVERYTHING down, and look at what we are doing.

What am I doing??? What did I do???

Its like a bad horror movie….”oh God, why did I do that????”.

The answer is usually simple: We thought it was the best thing to do.

The, “why oh why!”, comes after the implementation of that thought of what is “best” and regret comes.

Regret sounds a lot like “realize”. I like to “realize” things. I just realized why.

Heres why:

When I can “realize” an idea, I dont have to look up and ask “Why oh why???”. I have the answer.

Before this gets to existentialistic, not that I even “realize” what that means, but it sounds “good”, lets think about why we do things to make customer experiences better.

Well, I am thinking that maybe a lot of people dont know or “realize” why they take on specific practices. MAKING LISTS IS PART OF THAT PRACTICE.

If I could think of an example, the first thing that comes to mind is a shopping list. I can see it. Its stuck on a fridge accumulating things I need (that part is made up…I NEVER make shopping lists

There are other lists. To do lists and such.

So now lets look at BIGGER lists we make. These lists are more broad. They dont hit on finite details like “Sarah Lee Bread (low-carb)”. They sound more like: “be a healthy person”.

OK…now this is VERY IMPORTANT to get. The word I just used, “healthy”, has a VERY broad spectrum of things it covers. Amongst those things is “low carb bread”.

How would I map out the bread though if I were to drill down from the larger category of “healthy living”. Maybe it would look like this:

Healthy living -> personal goals -> physical well being -> healthy body -> proper foods -> staple diet things -> breads -> low carb bread -> enjoyable and wholesome brands -> Sarah Lee low carb bread -> white.

So that was REALLY annoying to do because I had to really think SLOWLY. Where does my choice to get THAT SPECIFIC product REALLY start?

Probably going backwards would have been easier. That is usually, when people get hit with “oh I realize why…”. It is AFTER the fact.

So let me try again but I’ll take something I have already.

The first thing that came to mind was my MacBookPro.

MacBookPro -> computer -> reliable -> trendy -> pretty -> fun -> to make money.

So…if I switch the order and slightly reworded to make the tenses correct, I would have:

I need to make money online and need a WAIT WAIT WAIT.

Lets try something even better. Let me make a declarative sentence:

“I want to get a computer that is going to help the business. I want the computer to be trendy and fun. I am not going to sacrifice reliability though and performance though. I think that MacBookPro is the one for me.”

That was SOOO much easier!

So now before I get too far off, lets bring it back to our ’s. Our “lists”.

The lists I speak of, can be the left or right navigation on a site, but also can be any customer shopping tool you use on your site.

What I want you to do is to put yourself in the position of the customer.

What would your customer have said if he or she had done the same “realizing” that I did?

What would the forward/backward drill down look like? What would be things between the “->”’s.

What would there declarative sentence look like? THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

No one wants to “be sold something”, nor do we EVER facilitate that happening as buyers. Even a sales person who “sells me” on something, is ultimately just helping me construct the drill down list I need to be OK and happy and excited to “buy” that thing, whatever it is.

So here is what I propose as a starting point:

Lets make “realized” decisions about selling online. Specifically, when we create ANYTHING to help a customer find out EXACTLY what it is they want to buy.

They are on your site for a reason. They are buyers. NO ONE is a potential “person to be sold to”, they are “potential buyers”.

Wait…I know the question I asked myself just now and you are probably wondering too.

How do I, or will I, ever know what everyone wants?

The good news is that you dont need to.

My favorite books growing up, even though the name escapes me now, were the books that had chapters that ended in, “if you want to do “x”, turn to page __, if you want to do “y”, turn to page __, and if you want to do “z”, turn to page __.

I was given choices about where I was going. It made sense. I liked it.

I was led through a story that I built and came to the end with, and did it “my way”.

So now we take all this stuff and apply it to our “menus”, “categories”, and such.

These are NOT navigation tools. These are “choice” tools.

This week, we will be starting THE MOST EXCITING project I have EVER worked on in my life.

I have found a great seller; Larahs Jewels. MORE than, or apart from selling, they are a company with a phenomenal track record.

That is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. I didnt say they had the best business model, but I do know that they will deliver to the customer, and TAKE care of anything the customer will need once they become have bought something.

I can say this with confidence because in the last 12 months, 10,000 people have left positive feedback and 0 people have had any negative feedback.

Just for fun, I would love to see a calculator do that % difference computation.

I am going to implement a NEW approach to “selling” by developing this companies new website geared ENTIRELY towards helping people “buy”.

This means we are at square 1. We ARE RE-INVENTING OUR WHEEL!

So my first question is:

What is the purpose of any “menu” link? What does it lead to? WHY DID THEY CLICK IT???

So we start now, although we have done a TREMENDOUS amount ALREADY!!!

We are thinking and “realizing” and can make “choices”.

Now let me show you what the site is now, and in my next blog post, I’ll tell you what we “changed”…but more importantly, WHY we did it.

Check out the site ->

In preparing for the coming months, I wanted to share some ideas to help get into the right groove this season/year.

Lets look at a time line and think about what we have seen in the past many seasons and how this one will be DIFFERENT:

I’ll break down 3 different trends that gave us edges in the past:

These are things we “banked on” to make us money in the past. The best part, is they worked.

I am going to give them relatively descriptive, but arbitrary names:

1. Retiring old products to a fresh market

2. Listing your “offers”

3. Making friends into customers and vise versa

These are in order from oldest to newest trends in retail marketing, and more specific “making a sale”.

Lets look at each one really quickly and highlight what makes each one get its own number:

Retiring old products to a fresh market

Think eBay.

Think of grams and carats and commodity value.

Think liquidating to “save from losing”.

What did the market allow for?

The market that eBay created allowed manufacturers to look at it as a viable market that had a very reliable number of “what the market would bear”.

Retail value lost its “value” as white ticket items became something you could essentially use as a way to “buy and trade” products with a traded value and market bearing audience of customers.

So now you have 2 new and VERY happy groups.

THE FIRST: “THE CLOSEOUT SALESMAN”

Anyone managing the inventory of closeout products now has a NEW and MORE PROFITABLE way to sell closeout merchandise.

He or she is not selling for pennies on the dollar, they are now selling for the materials cost and can work to have POSITIVE margins on goods that were being liquidated in the past for A LOSS.

THE SECOND: “THE WHOLESALER”

The wholesaler once had to develop products that could sell for what the retail market would bear.

Who was there market? They were a VERY SMALL group. They would buy thousands and distribute them to the chain of stores they had. This of course includes department stores.

So, there is nothing horrible about this. The department store knows what there market of customers will buy into. They have longer data than eBay as well.

BUT, they lack something eBay offered: breadth.

On eBay, the seller of the same product, has an opportunity to sell to the Kohl’s, Sam’s Club, and JCPenny’s customers, while also making offers to the Sacks, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s shopper.

The wholesaler could now go RETAIL. They could manufacture products and offer them at competitive wholesale prices and see the stuff fly on eBay and the like.

So what does the wholesaler do now? They get to be in control. They buy and supply only the needs they have and use there resources to easily offer people access to goods at steep discounts.

LISTING YOUR OFFERINGS:

Now that production is supplying a new and hungry market, numbers BOOM. Jewelry sales on eBay go through the roof.

Even though only so much closeout merchandise can be sold and be stocked (by virtue that it isnt ever “stocked”), the market grows. The question is: how?

The Wholesaler.

The same closeouts that flew out of vaults and into happy buyers hands are being made available. These “closeouts”, though, are really just repackaged offerings of jewelry that would have been manufactured for purchase in a brick and mortar store.

The manufacturer is now MUCH closer to the retail customer.

This is called “the hook up”. I would tell someone, “shop at specific website X., they sell X, but they actually manufacture the stuff and you can get it almost at cost”.

TOP 3 PEOPLE WEARING MORE HATS:

X——->———>——–X

Imagine the line between the two “X”’s being the path a piece of jewelry passes on its way from “development” to “customer purchase”.

HOWEVER, the start of the products development and the end sale, are coming much closer together and the people that once allowed for the success of a project are assuming new roles in getting to the end result.

THE PEOPLE WEARING MORE HATS

1. The manufacturer
2. The wholesaler
3. The retailer

…..(everyone)

**What have you been observant of that marks a change in roles people assume?

Leave a comment on the blog and lets discuss!

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

We are starting a new season/year and know more about ourselves and our customers and have to face ourselves and think about what we did, what we learned, what we wanted, what we got, and most importantly, what we are committed to for this year/season.

One of the MOST IMPORTANT things you can do this year is to MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR CUSTOMER. We are all wearing hats that bring us closer together. This includes you and your customer. No matter who you are.

Make a blog, make videos, hold online seminars about jewelry, create a mailing list, make an online magalog, or anything that pushes you to get to know and serve your customer better.

If they ARE HAPPY, I guarantee you can be too.

Here is my resolution for the season/year:

Continue to develop tools and resources for people to stop scratching their head about jewelry photography. I have successfully helped many people, however, what I really want is to know that I bring and deliver “a solution”, an “answer”, and something that will pay off BIG and make people MORE MONEY.

Watch a video HERE on imaging principles that will IMPROVE your sales, and learn about a new product that is launching soon. You can also reserve yours today HERE and get a discount too. This is going to be huge and I am very excited!

So here is a great dialog I had with a friend that I must share. I asked permission of course. The answer was NOOO!!!

On the condition that I would change the business around, that person said, “OK…only if you make it on a Zoo”.

Heres the “story” (with the real business replaced with a zoo):

What my end heard about his/her progress:

“Ughh…I cant stand to be back to this work stuff, I make no money here! All I really want to do is have my own Zoo. A place that is clean and classy. I’ll have the fanciest and rarest birds and all the seats will be eco-friendly and actually be worked into the Zoo’s natural habitat”.

Now heres my thinking in response:

WOW, thats a wild idea, especially since they live in Staten Island, NY! I believe that where there are kids with expensive taste in birds, there is bound to be business, especially because my friend is smart, able, and dedicated.

Wow…with such exotic birds in Staten Island, NY, of all places, people might even come from Manhattan to visit the Zoo. Maybe it will turn into the hip new thing! I can see the Zoo taking on a larger meaning for people.

We don’t just “go to the Zoo”!

I love “The Staten Island Zoo for Exotic, Endangered, and Very Expensive Birds”! It is my calm. I go there when the city and work is just too much. The ferry and shuttle to the Zoo are my preparation for what I like to call “moving meditation”, I am me…the Zoo is me…

I hear they are opening up a second one…If you went to the first one, you’ll know you’re there at the second if you get that feeling that comes every time from going to the Zoo for all things exotic…ahhhhh.

Stop. OK, that was my dialog.

OK…so I just got VERY caught up with that. Even though this was a made up response to my friends business idea, the dialog is touching on the same bottom line, “what we want to offer” idea.

After my response and loving of the idea:

The conversation stopped though with one of those, “yah…but it is this and that, and we’ll need this too, and that, combined with this, is gonna make it hard, I dunno, we’ll see…I gtg to my real job in in the morning so I gotta go to sleep! gnite!”

I was crying out at the thought of the death of this beautiful dream of having a Zoo that I put myself in. I was also mourning the loss of my friends potential happiness, wealth, and accomplishment, as the idea of “The Staten Island Zoo for Exotic, Endangered, and Very Expensive Birds” was filed along with all the other “what ifs” that were also slain by the “well…yah, but I need this, and thats gonna cost allot…I dunno, we’ll see, I gtg to my “real” job now”.

Thats the worse drawer…I call it, “The Drawer of all Things Good that We Had to Kill because we are stupid”.

OK…then I would have had to take that back. No one is STUPID. If you show up here in the working world, you are given a huge power; the power to make choices. More than your SAT scores, success starts with making the right choices that will bring you to the place one might call “smart and successful” and not “stupid”.

So….

There is truth to the, “eh, yah but, I need this, and that costs….”. Anything you think up that is true, will be a reality. If you cant afford a mansion, you know it! You don’t twiddle your thumbs for months and say “yah, well maybe I could, but the thing is I don’t have any money, so I dunno…we’ll see”.

NO IDIOT! (thats an appropriate label of flagrant stupidity…)

Thats not a thinking activity. You just don’t sit down and “yah…umm…well…” over things that are truly not going to be a reality. You wont get the house because you have no money! Like wise, If you want to have the most exotic birds, in the most eco friendly environment, and all while serving the best frozen tea in NY, without the money, IT WONT HAPPEN!

So…here is where we get the essence of the lesson. Its worthy of the title, “lesson”…trust me.

If I can space off into fantasies about being in a cool zoo that makes me feel cultured and hip (almost as hip as when I got my MacBook Air….I just use it for mostly streaming media you know;), and in a fraction of the time realize it wont work with my vision (having 42 million dollars available), I need to adjust my start.

“START UPS” are not things that generate HUGE SALES, RECORD EARNINGS, etc. The value of a start up is how well it can move into the group called “a business”.

So in the case of my friend, the answer is easy. I gave it to that person VERY straight too:

#1 It aint gonna happen…no millions, no big Zoo
#2 I suggest you rent a $1000 studio apartment in a hip area.
#3 See if you need a license to play with birds…

The same way you could create a small paradise for a rare single bird and work to create the same buzz, likewise, any success you will have, comes from the execution of things that will make your product and business better.

Like my Zoo story, lots of these things are not number or dollar dependent. The romance of a flock of the rarest birds can be matched by the power of a single bird living in a world created for it alone and the growth of something bigger, wowier, and of course, much hipper.

With all that said here are my top 5 ways that you can create what you think will “sell”, without having the money you once thought you “NEEDED”.

#1 Introduce yourself.
#2 Share something that you have to offer.
#3 Let your customer experience something.
#4 Breath…when you take deep breaths and slow your mind, you can think straight.
#5 With healthy thinking, breathe very hard AND GO GO GO!!!!!!!

It will work. You cant offer what you don’t have, but ALWAYS communicate as you would even if you had 100 and not only 1 bird. If you can GIVE YOUR CUSTOMER SOMETHING GOOD with just what you have available, you CAN make momentum. With momentum, you might get a 2nd, then 3rd, and…

Aryeh Sits down with photographer Asher Wilens to talk about photographing and retouching the worlds 3rd largest diamond;”The Incomparable Diamond”

This week, I had the opportunity to work on an image of the 3rd largest diamond in the world. Owned by clients of ImagingPrep, it was very exciting to be a part of history in documenting this one of a kind “thing”, that is valued at 30 million dollars.

An interview with NY photographer, Asher Wilens, will be coming this week. How do you give all your work that same attention and deliver quality work you want EVERY time?

Facebook has launched its new site and people have mixed feelings. With most changes, like Yahoo, whose changes we probably have forgotten about by now, the shock wears off fast and we say, "oh….I get it, cool". We start to like things that change for good reason…usually it offers something GOOD.

I was checking out Ice.com’s jewelry blog. I watched an interview with Pinny Gniwisch . The interview touched on a few specifics, but larger, was the progressive stance he takes when approaching reaching customers, and OFFERING things to customers.

Pinny talks about "touch points", ways to reach out to customers in as many ways as possible. The more you reach out and "touch", the more attention you get. One of the ways he mentioned was Facebook.

Lets take all of that and put it on hold….

Facebook is not a tool, as much as it is a great example of EXACTLY how someone make "touch points" without looking PAST the "center point" or the "touch hub", you can make up whatever word you would like.

Facebook has one goal in mind: connect people. Thats it. There business is build ENTIRELY around that ALONE. If they do that better, everything else, "falls into place".

In the past 6 months, Facebook has seen changes in what they offer users. Applications flooded the pages of users. Staple things, like "the wall", were buried, and people were lost. They were "scaling up" the power of there communication utility, but they were not "scalling" horizontaly for people to access the depth of the pile of new things.

The new Facebook has taken everything and made it accessible. Access is the most important thing it has done.

Nothing is lost, nothing is gone, and from what I see, nothing was added that changed what it is: a communication tool.

"Updates", a relatively small utility that was accessed through a number of clicks, is now like a Twitter.com. Its robust. More than how and WHAT they did, I like what it gives ME. I like updates, and now I can ACCESS that part of the utility easily.

So…you have a website. You must ask yourself, "What do I offer, and how am I GIVING these things?". Merchandise aside, think of how you are feeding the wants of EVERY part of your site, or rather, the parts of your site someone might appreciate and BENEFIT from.

I have to explain BENEFIT though. BENEFIT is defined by what you give your customer, like in any relationship. What can they count on you for? What do you GIVE?

So here is my project for you:

1. Sit and relax first…RUSHING is no good! Anything that you are desperate to do NOW NOW, isnt worth doing. Who wants to feel desperate? Relax…take control!

2. List the "things", "touch points" (as Pinny would call them), and most importantly, the ways you "relate" with your customer.

3. What can you give and have to offer, without re-creating your wheel? Dont think of NEW things…assess what you DO HAVE. Know what you have to offer in this relationship and COMMIT to it!

4. Stick to it! Don’t stop! (commitment). It has its own number because without delivery, your just brainstorming. Don’t make it a "if we….", have a number of things you can say. "we did this and it was….".

5. In a set period of time (3 months, 6 months, a year…), look back and see what you has developed successfully into something BIGGER. (bigger: not in terms of technology, size, depth, etc. bigger: more benefits)

6. Say hello to what makes you valuable to your customer You will be a value to yourself too! This will spread far…I guarantee it.

Everyone has something to offer. No one should watch Pinny’s interview and run for the things he describes. They are wildly successful, but thats them. They have looked at the pie, seen where they excel, pushed to deliver that, and are now enjoying the benefits of that piece.

DON’T FORGET: Considering the jewelry industry is 5 BILLION DOLLARS BIG, your piece can be can be very TINY and still be more than you will ever need!!!

Our commitment: developing ourselves as a business development resource. We will ONLY do what we are good at, and share that.

I hope everyone has a great Sunday! (don’t forget to take some "weekend time" for yourself too!)

If you want a Flash driven flipping book, you can do that. If you want a HTML, easy to publish, and cheap (also offered free), this is a solution for you. I have worked with a number of different components developed to create flipping books, but none as easy and EXACTLY what I wanted as this one.

Is also just great because it has a USE! Printed catalogs, brochures, look books, and other material, can have uber side kick with this.

Let us know what you think of your experience working with it. We want to hear what would be the absolute “ideal”.

Enjoy…and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Aryeh

Not used NEARLY enough, is the great lighting technique that is covered both in this weeks webcast, and a similar project. There is a clean, beautiful, sexy, classy, and obviously a favorite look of mine, that takes relatively “plain” surfaces and turns them into canvases to paint light on.

With big areas, you can say to a viewer, “Hey…I’m pretty plain. Yah, not much going on here”, OR, “look at my perfect proportions, sumptuous lines, and eye catching form”. Tiffany.com does a great job at that, as most of there jewelry is relatively “simple”. They haven’t branded there product to be the most intricate and most difficult pieces ever assembled. They have successful, largely because of there advertising, branded themselves as “simply elegant”. Some of their lines might say, “simple elegance”, as well (if the piece is SIMPLY, simple).

So…what does your image say about your business? What do you photographs say? Are they consistent with who you want to be, or more importantly, who you want to attract?

These projects both cover techniques that will give you the means to carry out INTENT, if you want “simple, clean, and elegant”:

The section above features a complete illustrated setup and a guided editing demo :

For those shooting a line of jewelry that is “clean and simple”, ie. items that have fewer and larger stones with settings and metals that are even in their distribution of textures, should start here. This lesson shows some really effective ways to setup for a shoot that will give VERY good results, without all that much room for error.

Where does one encounter a “learning curve” that is “difficult? I don’t believe in the word “difficult”, unless, you fail and waste time and get discouraged or you end up regressing. HOWEVER, there are contributing factors that are not shared by all setups that will make it EASIER to have problems.

So…if you are looking for a VERY forgiving setup. One with little margin for error, this is your best bet. You can also experiment, make alterations, and change the number and position of lights used. All this you get to do without going for successful work to an abysmal failure of an effort.

Again though, nothing is a “failure” unless the books are closed and it is written that this project is done with no success coming from it. However, for the most part, especially with the right guidance, you can avoid the recipe for failure by delivering successful results.

Please note: while this setup is Ideal for “eye level”, do not forget that items that can be mounted or hung, can often be given a shadow in Photoshop to change the whole perspective of the angle at which the item was shot. This would work well for pins, watch bezels (component), pendants, and necklaces.

Covered in this lesson as well, are some great ways to apply shadows to bring out the “realness” of an image.