Brick and mortar stores have been the foremost choice of jewellery shoppers. The reason being that the customer is able to touch and try on the jewellery themselves. Because buying fine jewellery is never cheap, the customer wants to inspect all the aspects of the piece in person for complete satisfaction.

But the past decade has seen a major shift in jewellery buying habits of the people. This shift started with globally established jewellery making companies like Tiffany & Co. and Cartier started to sell their products via their websites. Though it was not an instant hit, but it broadened the customer base of these companies as its products became available to people in countries where there were no physical stores of the brand. And with this started a competition among various jewellery brands to capture the attention of the online buyers, who were eager to shop their brands but there were no physical stores in their countries.

In recent years many luxury brands like Hermes, Dior, Louis Vuitton etc. have also jumped into the jewellery market and have been seen consolidating their collections, selling both in-stores and online, says a report by McKinsey company analysing the growth and future of online jewellery market. The report also points out that there will be a slow yet steady increase in the growth of sales and revenues of online jewellery retailers and in future shall make it the third largest marketplace for luxury goods after China and USA.

To sparkle in the world wide web, the jewellery e-commerce platforms need to take care of a few important factors to make a loyal consumer base:

Firstly, exact dimensions and descriptions of the listed products. The consumer should receive what he was expecting and not otherwise. The weight of the metal, the number and weight of the stones, the purity of the metal, dimensions of the piece etc, should be clearly mentioned with every piece. This way the consumer shall be sure of not being cheated.

Secondly, transparency in operations. The consumer understands that cross-country delivery shall incur charges other than the price of the product for example shipping costs, taxes, excise duty etc. It has been observed by various research sources that customers are okay with paying these upfront, if given the opportunity, for a hassle-free delivery of their purchase.

Thirdly, the online jewellery marketplaces should understand that consumers are attracted more if not just the shopping experience but payment method is also custom made. The online retailers must provide a variety of fast and easy payment options to their customers so that the check-out process of the purchase is not as difficult as choosing the jewellery piece.