Jewelry Industry Trends

78% of holiday shoppers researched online before visiting a store. Customers are doing more online research than ever which means your brand needs to be well positioned in the search results, and offer helpful information.

As you build your brand online to complement your retail experience, it helps to know how people search, and what topics are trending. The tools mentioned below are free ways to learn more about online research and purchasing behavior.

Google Trends

About 75% of web searches in the US are done on Google, and they have built some free tools using all of that data.

If you aren’t using it already, Google Trends can yield some interesting insights. You can see, real time, what consumers are searching and can compare search terms for historical trend information. Understanding how customers search for jewelry can help you determine what content is added to your website, and better craft your marketing message.

Let’s look at historical trending using the “Explore” function in the menu. Not only can you see when relevant search terms spike, but by comparing these terms you can determine which to use in your digital marketing efforts.  

For example, imagine a customer looking for a peridot necklace for her mother. What terms might she use to research this? If you compare the terms “color stone jewelry”, “gemstone jewelry” and “birthstone jewelry” from 2018, you get the chart below. You can see clearly that “birthstone jewelry” is the most popular search term of those three, and it has very apparent spikes that coincide with holidays like Valentine’s day, Mother’s Day, and Christmas. By looking at past years, you can figure out how far in advance of holidays consumers start searching for jewelry gifts and use that to determine when you spend your advertising dollars.

If you look at those same three search terms going back to 2004, you can see that “birthstone jewelry” has become a more commonly used search term today, overtaking “gemstone” sometime in 2010. What this could suggest is that you make sure to use the term “birthstone” throughout your website to make sure you are showing up in searches, especially local ones.

When looking at search term trends, you will also see related topics and queries. In other words, someone who searched for “X”, also searched for “Y”. You can sort these by “top” or “rising”. The “top” related queries can help you better understand this customer, but the “rising” related queries can help you see topics that are trending.

When I took a look at the search term “color stone”, there were some interesting related queries including “soul stone color”, and “what color is the power stone”. Those interested in Marvel Comics may know that these are referring to the six colored “infinity stones” featured in the latest Avengers movie. Could you come up with a clever social media series referencing this movie to boost interest in birthstone jewelry?

Spend some time playing around with Google trends and at it just may help you think about your category in new ways. 

Shopping Insights

Shopping Insights by Google allows you to look at broad jewelry trends and track the popularity of big brands.

If we take a look at rings, bracelets, and necklaces as shopping search categories, you can see the holiday spikes you would expect. One thing to note here is the percentage of people searching on their mobile phones – around 80%! The percentage of searches done via mobile has been increasing dramatically for years, and yet not all retailers have a mobile-first strategy. In your digital marketing, first think about how a customer would interact with your message on their mobile phone, and then think about their desktop experience – not the other way around!

Google Alerts

Finally, Google Alerts is another great way to monitor trends, and also monitor your own brand online. You set alerts for certain search terms and get a report at a set frequency. At the very least you should have alerts set up for your brand, your major competitors, and a few industry specific search terms.

There is a lot of content written on jewelry trends, and many topics have a short life. When Meghan Markle married Prince Harry, there was buzz around the ring Harry gave her that once belonged to his mother, Princess Diana. It was an aquamarine stone and Instagram influencers everywhere raced to post similar pieces, or reflect on significant family jewelry in their lives.

You probably have a great strategy for interacting with customers in your retail stores that allows you to find the perfect product. These tools can help you better understand what those customers are looking for that have not, or will not come into a retail store. What do they want to know and how can you answer?