How to Buy Jewelry Online? – Do’s, Don’ts and Sellers

Looking to buy jewelry online is indeed a great choice as there are many advantages.  But “ how to buy jewelry online ? “ is a question that comes to everyone’s mind who decides to purchase their jewelry online.  This article will hopefully give a comprehensive answer along with some useful tips to get good deals.

I am hoping to cover many areas such as,

• Advantages of buying jewelry online
• Some sellers to look for
• Things you should be careful of

etc., in this post. Hopefully you will feel much more comfortable when you are actually making the purchase after reading.

Advantages of buying jewelry online

According to market statistics, the percentage of people buying jewelry online is increasing much faster than the jewelry industry. This is because the advantages of buying online easily outweighs the disadvantages especially when you know how to avoid making a wrong purchase. (I will also cover certain things you should be careful of at a latter part of the post)

Let’s go through the list of advantages first.  (If you are already convinced that you should buy jewelry online, you can skip this part and jump to the next section which is “How to buy jewelry online ? ”

Wide range of choice

The choice you have when purchasing jewelry online is so much more than walking into a store and trying to find what you want.  You can easily browse through many options offered by many reputable sellers fairly quickly giving you a great chance to find you exactly what you need.

There are also many sellers who sell unique handmade jewelry which will be a great choice if you want to make sure that you don’t want to see you are wearing the same piece of jewelry as your colleague.

Another great aspect of choice is that you can easily access sellers from around the world who will be selling very different styles and designs.

Convenience

Probably the most common reason for online shopping to become so popular is the convenience.  This is no exception for jewelry as shopping for jewelry online is definitely more convenient than walking through many shops. 

In addition to saving time and energy, there are many other aspects to convenience in shopping jewelry online. For example, you will often want to get others inputs when making a decision.

When shopping online, you can easily send the link to quite a few people and get their thoughts before making the purchase. You cannot of course do this so easily when you are in a physical shop.

Online shops also offer online support and you can clarify all the questions you have and also request for more photos and videos if needed.

Lower Cost

Very often we tend to perceive low price items as low quality. But what we first need to understand is that how those online sellers are managing to offer lower prices compared to physical stores.

Physical stores have a lot of overheads such as building rent, staff salaries of shop assistants, utility bills and so on. But when it comes to online seller, most of these costs are either very low or don’t exist at all.

And another major cost component is the cost of maintaining a stock. Physical stores need to maintain a quite a big stock which means they have to invest in making those jewelry as well as pay for the space to keep the inventory.

On the other hand, most online sellers have only a very limited stock and they often do “build to order” model. So online sellers sometimes do not have all the items already made and they only have pictures of a previously done products and they will make the jewelry when they get an order. ( Some sellers do mention this with such products ).

Drop shipping model adopted by many sellers including some of the big ones is another reason for the low cost. They do not manufacture all the jewelry by themselves rather they buy from their trusted partners. They will put the picture in the website and buy from their supplier only when an order is placed and then it will be shipped to the buyer.

Therefore, in a nutshell, lower cost doesn’t mean low quality always. Having said that, there are certain things you need to be careful in order to make sure you are buying a quality jewelry. I will cover these in a following section.

Your Privacy

Going along with convenience, another important advantage when shopping online is the privacy you have. The jewelry store staff are well trained to sell and they can be so convincing and persuasive so much so that you can end up buying something totally out of your budget or something that you didn’t really want.

But when shopping online, there will be no one coming behind you all the time telling you those wonderful stories of how each and every jewelry you start looking at is the perfect fit for you.

Offers

Many online sellers often give you percentage off coupons or credit card easy payment schemes. Some sellers also offer coupons when you chat with them for more questions. So just contacting them to see whether there are any offers will not be a bad idea as some support staff will give you coupons anyway as they are going to get a commission for the sale.

How to buy jewelry online?

Now that you are confident about buying jewelry online, the most difficult question is still not answered.  How are you going to select a reliable seller?

There might be 100’s of reliable places to buy jewelry online and there is no way to review all of them. But in this post, I will introduce you three places to consider when buying jewelry online. Having said that, you should not exclude other options out there. Especially if a close friend of yours is recommending you a seller or you happen to know one already, you can include them in your shop options.

The options

I will recommend you three options here for you to consider in your shop options. 

 1. Etsy

Etsy is an awesome place to start with since there are literary unlimited options. It is an online store with so many sellers from around the world.  You can find a wide range of items from luxurious jewelry to simple silver jewelry and a whole heap of design options.

When you go to a listing, in the top right corner of the listing, the seller’s name along with the number of reviews for the store is listed. When you click the name, you will be able to enter the shop of the seller and there you will see all the other items of that particular seller. The total number of sales done by the seller so far is also listed in the store.

The overall rating of the store and also number of sales done is a good indication of whether you can trust the seller or not.  But there could be new sellers as well who are selling awesome products possible at a lower price as they are trying to get more sales initially. 

Regardless of whether the seller is new or old, you can still ask them for more photos or even a video of the jewelry you want. If the seller is very new and do not have any sales or reviews so far in the profile, it might be a good idea to start a conversation and get a feeling of the seller before making a purchase. If you are not confident enough, then it is better to go with a more reputable seller as there are unlimited options.

Most jewelry sellers on etsy are doing custom designs as well. If you want a totally new design or a modification to an existing design, communicate your requirement to your seller and I am pretty sure you will be able to find one who is ok with doing what you want.

There are also many gem sellers on Etsy. If you find a gemstone you like, you can check with the seller whether they can make you a jewelry from that gemstone. There are plenty of sellers who are doing that on Etsy.  

2. Amazon 

Well, I bet some of you might have laughed at this one. Who on earth is buying jewelry on amazon? Well, if you asked that question yourself, you are in for a surprise. Therefore so many options for great jewelry on amazon with a large number of reputed sellers.

If you are looking for a high price, unique or hand made jewelry, amazon is of course not the best place. But if you are looking to buy some jewelry for office, for a party or for your day to day use, do have a look on amazon and you will not regret.

There are options for silver, gold, white gold, rose gold  and more. If you are looking to buy jewelry with natural gemstones, make sure you ask the seller first if the stones are natural.

3. James Allen

James Allen is another place to buy high quality jewelry. They do offer a wide variety of jewelry. However, they do not offer any silver jewelry.

One major challenge in buying jewelry online is that you are not able to get that touch and feel. James Allen offer a 360⁰   photo to overcome this issue. You can rotate photos of all jewelry by 360⁰  and get a good feeling for the jewelry.

James Allen also offer worldwide free shipping to any destination.

Another cool feature in James Allen is their user interface. You can very easily select the design you want. Even if you are looking for gemstones, it is very convenient to narrow down the options to see only what you want.

4. Blue Nile

Blue Nile is another great seller for you to consider. They do have an awesome collection of jewelry and they have also introduced the 360⁰ image option which is pretty awesome. They also offer a limited collection of silver jewelry.

Blue Nile also offers a great user interface to easily select the item you want and free shipping to any destination.

Both James Allen and Blue Nile offers free return during the specified time window. They will provide you with a free Fedex shipping label for returns.

Cost

When you are calculating the cost of an item, make sure you add in the shipping and tax components. Even though some Etsy sellers do not offer free shipping, the cost including shipping might still be a lot cheaper than other places.

The shipping is free with James Allen and Blue Nile. The other cost component you need to consider is the tax.  The tax depends on the country you reside and you will be able to find out the exact amount with a little bit of research.

If you are in the states, there are some states with no sales tax. You can ship the jewelry to a remote mailbox in one of these states and get it forward to you and avoid the sales tax.  Currently there are five states without sales tax and those are Alaska, Delaware Montana and New Hampshire. This might change in the future and therefore please double check at the time you read this article.

Ask for more from the seller

Regardless of how reputable the place you have chosen to purchase your jewelry, ask for everything you need to make sure that you are buying a quality product.  I can recommend a couple of things for you to ask from the seller to ensure a great purchase.

1. Ask for more pictures and even videos

This will be highly useful if you are buying from a marketplace like Etsy where there are many third party sellers with limited photos of their products.

Getting them to send you a video will make you even more comfortable as it helps you to get that touch and feel experience to a certain extent.

Having said that, certain products advertised on these websites are built to order. The sellers will not have the product in hand and they will not be able to send you more pictures or videos. You will have to rely on the reputation of the seller in such instances. (If this is an Etsy seller, the seller reviews will give you some confidence. In addition, they has 24×7 support to all their customers and they do provide all customers with a great service to ensure the purchases are protected)

2.Certificates

If you are buying a jewelry with a precious gemstone, you can always ask the seller to provide you with a valid certificate for the gemstone.  Some countries have branches of Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and a certificate by them is highly trusted.

But some countries like Sri Lanka where so many wonderful natural gemstones are found, there are no GIA branches. They have either GIA authorized partners or government bodies to issue certificates. When the seller provides you the certificate, certificate includes the name of the institute which provided that and you can do a little bit of research to see whether that institute is trustworthy.

3.Purchase protection

Before buying, check whether the seller accepts returns. Also read more or ask them about the guarantee conditions.

Avoid getting scammed

One major issue of purchasing online is the large number of scams that are out there. This is the main reason why you should be buying from reputable sellers. But even then, checking few more things of the product will help you to make safe purchases.

1. Price

After doing your research on the jewelry you want to buy, you will have a basic idea about the price range of similar products. If you happen to find a product with remarkably low prices, it is always better to be suspicious and do more digging or not consider that product at all.

2. Certificates

For a considerably valuable gemstone jewelry, if the seller is unable to provide you a certificate from a reputable institute when you are asking for one, this is for sure a bad sign.

3. Images and description

If you want to go another step forward in trying to verify the seller,  ( this step will be useful if you are considering a third party seller in a seller store like Etsy) save the product images and do a google image search to see whether the same image appears in stock image sites.

If it does, then it is always best to avoid this seller.

Wrap Up

Well, it was a bit of a long post as there were many things to cover. I believe I managed to give you a good answer to the question – How to buy jewelry online ? . We covered advantages of buying online, recommended sellers and things to avoid when making the purchase.

I really hope you will find this article valuable and please don’t forget to comment or ask any questions you have.