Blue Nile Diamonds – Website Users Guide
For those of you who read our Online Diamond Store Reviews, you will know that Blue Nile Diamonds came out ahead of the others in our “Group of Three” online diamond dealers. This group is responsible for approximately 90% of all online, pure play (no significant brick and mortar presence), diamond stores.
As simple as it may seem, we don’t actually believe there is a guide for folks on how to use the Blue Nile Diamonds website. So this is our attempt, in 500 words or less, to give you the executive summary download on what you need to know about the Blue Nile site, including helpful tips, along with our friends at GIA, about the 4C’s, how to read their diamond report and a whole host of other information that you will find useful.
Step One – Go to the Website
First, in order to use this guide properly, you’ll need to go to the Blue Nile site by clicking here. It will open in a separate tab so you can toggle back and forth.
How the Blue Nile Diamonds Site is Laid Out
The site has five tabs across the top: 1) Diamonds, 2) Engagement rings, 3) Weddings, 4) Jewelry and Gifts, 5) Designers and 6) Education.
Our hypothesis is that the site is laid out from left to right from most popular to least popular. Regardless, here is what is on each tab:
Diamonds: This is Blue Niles Build Your Own section. Despite the fact that they do have a tab in this section called “Build Your Own” three of the four tabs are effectively build your own, just from different perspectives. One starts with the diamond, one starts with the setting and one starts with their signature diamond line. They all end up in about the same place. The fourth is informational: the Blue Nile Experience, which talks about: credit cards, upgrade programs, etc. For the avoidance of doubt, most people who visit this site will select this tab and go no further.
Engagement Rings: This is “Diamonds” all over again, but the settings are limited to engagement rings. You can start with a diamond, start with a setting, select a premade engagement ring or select a premade designer engagement ring.
Weddings: This was initially confusing for us, but we figured it out. This section is for the altar. It contains the second ring for women and the only ring for men.
Jewelry and Gifts: rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets are each sold here.
Designers: this section has both jewelry from their rock star contracted designers and elegant costume jewelry.
Education: To be honest this is one of our favorite sections on the site, because Blue Nile does education exceptionally well. I would recommend visiting their Education section no matter where you ultimately buy your jewelry.
Diamond Filter: At least half a dozen different places on the site start with diamond selection. They call it their Diamond Filter and it is super-easy to use. You select: shape, price, carat, cut, color and clarity. What comes back (hopefully) is a plethora of options. Most people gravitate toward the least expensive and start making distinctions from there. If the filter returns nothing, start playing with the settings on each of the four C’s as well as price. We suspect the most people eventually get there with a little fine-tuning.
To go to the Blue Nile Diamonds site and start playing around click one of the following: