Punchmark, one of the leading providers of ecommerce websites for the jewelry industry, has spent the Summer building the answers to the biggest problems on retail jewelers' minds when it comes to showing and selling jewelry online. With a team of software engineers based right in the United States, Punchmark has a website platform that is geared specifically for the jewelry industry – meaning it is solely focused on solving the problems that jewelers are facing.
With over 50 combined years of experience in jewelry among its partners, Punchmark can feel the sore points that retailers have to deal with: weak data from in-store inventory systems, fear of online fraud, threats from ADA Compliance lawsuits, and slow page speeds to name a few. Punchmark has been taking retailers' difficult issues head-on since 2011 when they launched a pioneering integration with the EDGE software.
Here are some of the exciting outcomes from this summer's work:
Jewelry websites are all about the bling, and that means high-resolution imagery and captivating videos to grab shoppers’ attention. But this same content, as stunning as it is, can weigh down websites and drag speeds down to a crawl. Since January, Punchmark has been working overtime to turbocharge their entire fleet of web-servers to deliver lightning-fast speeds. With this latest release in July, they are seeing some initial tests with Google Page Speed scores coming back in the 70s-80s and some even in the 90s! Punchmark websites are going from relatively mediocre speeds to becoming the fastest in the industry. This speed boost is a game-changer for retailers big and small who are fighting for position in Google results.
Read our recent blog post about Page Speed here.
Listen to the In the Loupe podcast episode with Director of Technology, Aaron Plocharczyk, explaining why Page Speed is so important:
With 12 years of experience helping jewelry retailers seamlessly get data from their in-store software to their websites through automation, Punchmark has seen how difficult it can be for retailers to get their items set up to be sold on the web. Most retailers enter their jewelry item titles and descriptions for inventory purposes, and not in a language that a website visitor would find appealing. Enter A.I.
Punchmark has developed an A.I. tool that can take data from inventory systems, and produce well written item titles and descriptions with the click of a button for all products that need it. The tool, called "The Jewelry Data Wizard", crunches item data and spits out finessed language in a variety of styles from "factual" to "flowery". Jewelry retailers often have tens of 1000s of products in their Point-of-Sale or Inventory systems, and the process of dressing them all with marketing speak can be extremely nerve wracking – preventing too many retailers from being successful on the web. As an example, one product originally had "Earring" for a title. With the click of a button aimed at the whole category of items, the title became "14K London Blue Topaz Earrings". This feature may be the most exciting advancement yet.
Before:
After:
Watch a demonstration video here.
As jewelry websites started becoming successful online, the sheer amount of ecommerce fraud was unimaginable. There is a lot of fear among jewelry retailers preventing them from selling online – which, unfortunately, means they're leaving money on the table. Punchmark worked for a year to find the right partner, and was the first to introduce real ecommerce fraud protection back in 2018. This service identifies charge-backs before they occur – before the retailer has shipped the item – and gives the retailer piece of mind that they're covered if anything should go wrong. "Our clients used to call us up with situations like, 'I just sold a $5,000 ring to someone all the way in New Jersey, and I'm scared to ship it. Please help!' Retailers who have signed up for a Punchmark website since then don't even know this fear. It's been amazing," says Bryan Cockerham, CTO of Punchmark. Punchmark is stepping up their ecommerce fraud protection this year to offer even more partners that their clients can choose from.
Adhering to the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act is not something that retail jewelers should need to be concerned with. As Punchmark learned of the widespread lawsuits affecting small retailers, they began to research what the complicated criteria of compliance were, and how to protect their clients. Within a few months, Punchmark was the most out-of-the-box ADA Compliant website platform in the jewelry industry. Punchmark took this matter seriously, for both the retailers and the disabled visitors who want to shop, and came up with a set of solutions that has kept their clients safe. "It is actually risky to say that your site is ADA Compliant these days, because you open yourself up to be targeted, but there are several different grades you can achieve, and we have made it so that they are easily within reach," says Bryan Cockerham, "We help take care of it all."
Punchmark has also recently become a direct partner of a company called AccessiBe. AccessiBe provides website add-ons that can measure, suggest, and make your site more ADA compliant. AccessiBe has been a game-changer for clients who have been directly threatened by legal scams, offering advice on how to thwart expensive settlements.
Read the blog article about ADA Compliance and Punchmark's partnership with AccessiBe here!
Sign up for AccessiBe using Punchmark’s referral link and receive 20% off your plan!
https://accessibe.com/a/punchmark
Retail Jewelry stores don't usually have the staff to perform simple marketing tasks like consistently writing blog articles, or generating fresh web content. Once again, enter AI. Punchmark has built their page engines so that you can enter a topic, and AI can generate a title and then a full article from the title. "It's exciting to see how much AI is changing the landscape of this industry." Mr. Cockerham says, "Some of the biggest issues preventing online success for retail jewelers are diminishing rapidly."
"We are really excited about what has come out of this latest surge of new features," says Bryan, "we've got more coming soon but these have been fun to talk about since their inception."
Read the blog article about this new feature here!
Punchmark is a jewelry-specific ecommerce website platform serving almost 500 retailers, brands, and trade organizations in the jewelry space. Punchmark's website platform, dubbed "SiteManager '' was the first of its kind in many regards, and continues to push the boundaries of jewelry promotion and ecommerce. Punchmark's owners have backgrounds working in jewelry since a young age, and Punchmark is one of the few technology companies with all staff based in the USA.
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