I have created hundreds of 3D jewelry animation scenes of jewelry designed by a 16-store retail jewelry chain along the east coast. They simply supplied the 3D models from their jewelry design department in Rhino 3D or Autodesk Maya as OBJ or STD files. I then had to speak with their marketing department about the use and context of the jewelry — something dramatized and unique for their jewelry TV commercials. Using at the time Autodesk 3D Studio Max, I converted the files from their 3D models and put them in scenes timed to the spots for everything including loops inside the retails stores, website product videos, and broadcast TV.
Some jewelers have a full-time photographer or two on staff who can spend a full day shooting just a few pieces of jewelry. Then they would pay extra for a video production company to shoot the video on a turn table. Oh yes, the ever exciting and always predictable shot of jewelry pieces spinning on a turntable in one direction or another. Ho-hum.
Since 2010, I’ve helped jewelry companies like Riddle’s Jewelry and smaller stores similar to Jacksonville’s Underwood’s Jewelry to showcase their jewelry in unique ways. Yes, the turntable shots are useful for people to get a feel for the look and dimensions of the jewelry piece from every straight-on angle, but in 3D we can make the camera fly over, through and around it.
There are more exciting options and ways to make a splash and to show off your jewelry lines in more unique, eye-catching ways. In less than a day, they got samples of these scenes – they wanted the camera to show off the jewelry in unique angles so I put the ring on a watery surface and made it rain around it, giving it a sexy style that went with their “walking in the rain” advertising campaign.
I can’t show you the final results due to contract restrictions, but you get the gist.
Selling jewelry is an act of visual stimulation. The better you show your jewelry, the more sales you will make online AND in-store. The two aren’t exclusive. If you get more traffic to your site showing interest in one jewelry piece but sales lag online for that piece, that does not mean your website is failing, especially if the cost of the jewelry is over $300.
The higher the jewelry’s price, the higher the chance a buyer will pre-shop and find out details about your product online but still want to go into a store and see, touch, hold, wear and compare.
Your bring and mortar jewelry stores will not survive without a mobile-friendly, fast, and the largest selection of all of your jewelry products. You will sell more products if you showcase your jewelry in interesting ways and informative angles. They all depend on each other and help each other getting traffic to your website and to your retail stores. It sounds so logical, yet so many jewelry marketers stumble and live in a pre-internet world, they take maybe two flat photos of their products and perhaps the jewelry piece goes on their website but it’s not a priority. This is pure plain idiocy.
If someone goes on your jewelry e-commerce site and doesn’t find what they are looking for, do you think they’re still going to waste their time driving to your store? You just lost them to a competitor who had what they are looking for, it’s that simple… and obvious.
This is where your website helps your retail store more than any other form of advertising — think about it, a radio or TV commercial is one direction, the web is interactive so people can explore, spend more time learning and looking about your products and services.
Of the jewelry stores we made their sites mobile-friendly and increased the quality of their product offerings while improving their site performance and SEO, we saw a dramatic spike in sales in jewelry stores online and in their stores within months.
I know, there are jewelers out their not interested in making money, they’re happy operating in the 20th century and ignore the internet and the mobile device revolution. They ignore the fact 3D animations of their existing jewelry designs could highlight and showcase their products and boost sales while cutting costs in photographing and video production. They’re happy being the status quo and they’re ignoring the fact their competitors are increasing their sales, standing out from them online while simultaneously decreasing their expenses. Eventually, their complacency towards the web and media production regarding their products, their insistence that they don’t need to put all their offerings online which hampers their in-store traffic substantially, will reflect in lower web retail sales, a decrease in mall traffic which will force them to eventually contract because they refuse to modernize and compete. Denial and big know-it-all egos can destroy a company, can’t say they weren’t warned.