Fine-Tune Your Online Presence

We're looking for great things in the “Online Presence” section of your contest entry.

Published

5 years ago

January 1, 2021

INSTORE Staff

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TECHNOLOGY MOVES FAST — so get up to speed now.

Here at INSTORE, we pride ourselves on being up on technology, and we devote a fair number of pages each month to showing retailers how to use new media to their best advantage.

So it should come as no surprise that we look for great things in the “Online Presence” section of your America’s Coolest Stores contest entry.

The section itself is pretty self-explanatory, so here are a few extra tips that may help as you fill it out:

If you’re redesigning your website, link us to a preview. If your new site will be up before the contest deadline on March 15, just give us the standard URL. But if it won’t be ready, chances are your designer can provide you with a preview link, so judges can see what’s in the works. Just make a note in parentheses after the URL, so we know what we’re seeing.
Make sure you tell us specifically what’s cool. While our judges take a careful look at entrants’ websites, you’ll improve your chances of winning if you explicitly mention any awesome digital features. (Do you do custom design via email? Allow customers to share purchase information via social media? Post videos of proposals? Or maybe you’ve just received great comments about how useful your site is.) Alas, there’s no box in this section to make such notes, so make a note of them now to remember to include them in a later section (“What’s cool about your store?” “Provide three fun facts about your store,” or “Tell us one of-of-the-box idea you’ve implemented this year.”)
The internet moves fast, so there’s still time to improve things. We love to see great reviews on Yelp, Google, or other review sites. It’s a plus when we see a store has a strong Facebook presence too. If you need some work in any of these areas, the good news is that it’s not too late. There’s nothing wrong with asking a few reliable clients to leave you nice reviews, and if you do that now, they’ll be posted before the judging begins. Same goes for asking for Facebook likes. (If you’re especially enterprising, consider setting up a laptop or tablet in the showroom, so willing folks can do it right then and there.) It’s certainly not cheating — these are things we think you ought to be doing regardless, so consider the contest a useful kick in the butt.

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Honoring a Legacy: How Smith & Son Jewelers Exceeded Every Goal With Wilkerson

When Andrew Smith decided to close the Springfield, Massachusetts location of Smith & Son Jewelers, the decision came down to family. His father was retiring after 72 years in the business, and Andrew wanted to spend more time with his children and soon-to-arrive grandchildren. For this fourth-generation jeweler whose great-grandfather founded the company in 1918, closing the 107-year-old Springfield location required the right partner. Smith chose Wilkerson, and the experience exceeded expectations from start to finish. "Everything they told me was 100% true," Smith says. "The ease and use of all their tools was wonderful." The consultants' knowledge and expertise proved invaluable. Smith and his father set their own financial goal, but Wilkerson proposed three more ambitious targets. "We thought we would never make it," Smith explains. "We were dead wrong. We hit our first goal, second goal and third goal. It was amazing." Smith's recommendation is emphatic: "I would never be able to do what they did by myself."