Edwards Jewellery – Uncovering the Expertise Behind the Business
Anne asked for an e-commerce website to replace a perfectly presentable Wix site. Conversations with her uncovered a much stronger proposition: a specialist bench jeweller who works personally with clients to create, restore and transform jewellery, including the inherited pieces people no longer wear. The project became discovery, positioning and content strategy as much as development, and the platform grew to support how the business actually works, from events and wedding fairs to consultations and a private client area.
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Built with
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Node.js
- MongoDB
- Mongoose
- Stripe
- Claude API
- Zod
- reCAPTCHA
- Nodemailer
At a glance
Client
Edwards Jewellery, the business of Anne, a specialist bench jeweller
The original idea
a new e-commerce website to replace a presentable Wix site
What changed
conversations with Anne uncovered expertise and ways of working the old site never showed
What I did
discovery, positioning, content strategy, and the design and build of the platform
The hidden problem
Anne already had a website. It was built on Wix, and it looked perfectly presentable. This wasn't a rescue job.
The problem was quieter: the site didn't show Anne. Edwards Jewellery is built on the skill of an experienced bench jeweller, someone who makes, repairs and remodels jewellery with her own hands. Anne isn't someone who naturally promotes her own abilities, and the old site reflected that. It presented a jewellery business. It didn't present a specialist.
The brief, as Anne first saw it, was a straightforward e-commerce website. Before building that, I wanted to understand the business behind it.
Listening first
So the project started with conversation rather than a template. I sat down with Anne and asked about her work: what customers bring to her, what she makes, what she repairs, how a commission actually unfolds, and where she meets the people who buy from her.
What came out of those conversations was a much richer business than the website described.
The value isn't only "buy jewellery online". It's "work directly with a skilled jeweller to create, restore or transform something personal".
What the conversations uncovered
Anne is an experienced bench jeweller. She makes and repairs jewellery herself, at the bench, and she works personally with the people who commission it. Three things stood out in our conversations.
Bespoke work
engagement rings, wedding bands and one-off pieces designed with the customer and made by Anne.
Repair and restoration
bringing worn and damaged pieces back into use.
Remodelling what people already own
inherited and sentimental jewellery that nobody wears any more, turned into something new without losing what made it matter.
The third was the one the old site barely touched, and the one that best captured what makes Edwards Jewellery different. A grandmother's ring or a broken chain in a drawer can't simply be replaced with something from a shop. It needs someone who will listen to why it matters, and has the skill to transform it.
Anne's new site says it in her own words:
"Most couples come to me with something already: a grandmother's engagement ring, a signet nobody wears, a broken chain kept in a drawer for twenty years. I melt those metals down and draw them into new rings."
Turning expertise into positioning
Once the expertise was clear, the job was to make it visible. Generic jewellery-site copy would have flattened all of it into "beautiful handmade jewellery". So the site's structure became part of the positioning: each kind of work got its own space.
About Anne
the person behind the business, front and centre.
Jewellery services
bespoke, wedding jewellery, the jewellery range, repair and restoration, and materials, each on its own page.
Portfolio, reviews and the Journal
evidence of the work, what clients say, and Anne's writing about her craft.
Shop, events, booking and contact
the ways to buy, meet her and start a commission.
Someone looking to remodel their mother's ring, repair a chain or commission wedding bands now finds a page that speaks directly to them, rather than one homepage trying to say everything at once. Recycled and heirloom metals are welcomed throughout the site, and the enquiry form lets people say up front that they're bringing a piece to redesign.
Anne's voice, not marketing copy
The content was written in the first person, as Anne. My notes from our conversations were the factual basis, and I used AI to help turn those notes into structured, readable pages, and Anne's own changes went in before launch. The discovery came first and the facts came from Anne; AI helped with the articulation, not the substance. That mattered for someone who wouldn't naturally write about her own abilities: the site now says what she does, in her voice, without sounding like an agency wrote it.
From website to business platform
With the positioning settled, the question changed. It was no longer only "which pages does the website need?" but "what should the platform do to support the way Edwards Jewellery actually works?"
Meeting customers where they already are
For the business: Anne meets many of her customers in person, at wedding fairs and events. That wasn't part of the original brief. Once I understood how she finds clients, I recommended the platform should tell people where she will be, rather than acting purely as an online catalogue.
Under the hood: Anne adds events herself (open studios, talks, trunk shows and wedding shows), with dates, times, the venue and a link. The events page lists what's coming up and a few recent past events, the next few also appear alongside her reviews, and each event is described to search engines as an event. The website now supports the physical business instead of sitting apart from it.
An online shop
For the business: ready-made pieces can be bought online, which was the original idea, built properly.
Under the hood: payment runs through Stripe's secure checkout. Prices are always calculated on the server, never taken from the browser, and include VAT and UK delivery. Anne manages products, stock for each variation and discount codes in her admin. International orders are quoted personally rather than charged automatically. An order is recorded before payment is taken, and stock is confirmed only when payment succeeds. If a paid item turns out to be out of stock, Anne is alerted rather than the order quietly failing.
Starting a commission
For the business: bespoke and remodelling work starts with a conversation, so the site makes that conversation easy to begin.
Under the hood: customers book consultations through Anne's online booking calendar, embedded directly in the site. The enquiry form asks what kind of work they're interested in, including redesigning an heirloom, and a rough budget, then sends Anne an alert and the customer an acknowledgement.
A private client area
For the business: a commission involves photos, ideas and decisions over time, so it shouldn't be scattered across email.
Under the hood: clients can register and verify their email, then see their orders and keep a private message thread with Anne, attaching photos or PDFs of the piece they want to work on. Each side is notified by email when the other replies.
Proof Anne controls
For the business: the work and the client feedback are what convince a new customer, and Anne keeps both current herself.
Under the hood: Anne curates the portfolio gallery, adding, removing and reordering images. The reviews page shows her Google reviews, which she enters herself, with a link back to the full review on Google where a quote is shortened.
Running the business
For the business: the day-to-day stays with Anne, without a developer.
Under the hood: one admin covers enquiries, orders, products, stock and offers, the portfolio, reviews, the Journal, events, client accounts, messages and settings. A WhatsApp button follows her opening hours and shows an away message outside them. Public forms are protected against spam, and the passwords and keys for connected services are stored encrypted.
AI, used in proportion
AI appears twice in this project, both times to reduce the effort of turning real expertise into words.
During the project, it helped turn my notes from conversations with Anne into structured pages in her voice. In the finished platform, the Journal editor has a drafting assistant built on Anthropic's Claude. Anne describes a topic, and Claude drafts a post in her first-person voice and British English, ready for her to edit. The draft only fills the editor. Nothing is published until Anne has reviewed it and chosen to publish it.
AI helps Anne communicate her expertise. It doesn't manufacture it.
The technical foundation
For readers interested in the technology:
Next.js 16 and React 19 in TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, MongoDB with Mongoose, Stripe Checkout with signed webhooks, Anthropic's Claude API for Journal drafting, a TipTap content editor, email by SMTP or Resend, reCAPTCHA v3 and rate limiting on public forms, structured data for the business, products, articles and events, and a self-hosted deployment on a Linux server.
What Edwards Jewellery has now
A digital presence that represents Anne's expertise far more accurately than before.
Each kind of work explained on its own terms: bespoke, wedding, repair and restoration, remodelling, materials.
Product sales online, with pricing and stock handled properly.
Easy ways to start a commission: consultations, enquiries and private messaging.
Support for the real-world business, through the events and wedding fairs Anne attends.
Tools for ongoing content, so the Journal can grow without becoming a chore.
A platform that does far more than the website it replaced.
Your business may need more than the website you had in mind
Anne asked for an online shop. What her business needed was a way to show the specialist behind it, and a platform shaped around how she actually works with customers.
If you're planning a new website, it's worth starting with a conversation about the business, how it finds and serves customers, and what a digital platform could do for it.