As the holiday season is underway, we're answering bunch of your questions about preparing your website for the holidays, managing limited inventory, and maximizing the impact of your Google Business Profile.
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Pick premium arrangements for the site. You want your site to have a 50/50 mix of prices. Have about half of the options under $100 and half of the arrangements more than $100 in price.
Place an arrangement that is priced $100 or higher on every other line in each section.
Always give emphasis to your best-selling arrangements over the ones you personally like the most.
Don't be overly concerned about being different. Having a website that looks different from another shop’s is not as important as most shop owners believe. (A florist is far more aware of differences than a typical consumer who visits the site a few times per year).
Definitely not. You would not put a huge sign outside your shop blocking your front door—that is exactly what a landing page is to your online store. It interrupts the person’s visit to your site.
Shoppers want to see a nice selection of arrangements the instant they land on your homepage. A landing page, regardless of the message, increases the bounce rate—it says to shoppers, “Shopping here is complicated, go elsewhere to find a simpler site.”
Get rid of any reference to product shortages on the homepage. The best place to put a message about substitutions is on the checkout page. Better yet, do not warn shoppers at all that they may be disappointed if they buy from your shop. The better policy is to call the customers when something is out of stock. Calling is better customer service and offers the opportunity for you to sell an upgraded arrangement or add-on.
Not at all. You want to post FAQ (frequently asked questions) — but pick ones that use important keywords. The two most used keywords by flower shoppers are “florist” and “flower delivery,” so pepper those into a lot of the Q&A.
For example, “Do you offer flower delivery to XYZ town?” is a good question. In your answer, use “florist” and “flower delivery” as many times as is practical.
“Yes, we have flower delivery to XYZ. This florist offers flower delivery every weekday to XYZ. We offer same-day flower delivery for orders placed before 1:00, and our flower delivery service is guaranteed by the florist to be on time and with the freshest flowers.”
You can post as many Q&A as you want. Be sure to use important keywords in each one.
The conversion rate, or percentage of visitors that make a purchase, is one of the most important measures of a website’s performance. The range of website conversion rates for florists is typically between 3 and 9 percent, so your site is above average at 7.5.
Even a small increase, such as from 7.5 to 7.9, can mean a significant increase in sales.
Here are three of the most common mistakes we find on shops’ websites:
It is not likely to give you an affordable source of new sales. When making advertising decisions (or any big decision), it is better to compare alternatives rather than asking yourself a straight “yes” or “no” question. Consider what other marketing you could do with the same budget.
Most customers look for a florist online these days. Also, shoppers only care about seeing your ad when they are ready to make a purchase. Your average customer buys from the shop less than once a year. This means you want to concentrate your advertising around the time they are ready to make a purchase.
Pay-per-click does this with more precision than most other marketing options. An ad pops up on Google only when a shopper indicates that they are ready to buy flowers by using certain keywords in their search. When a person enters words such as “florist” or “flower delivery,” it is very likely they are getting ready to make a purchase. This makes pay-per-click a more effective option for florists.
The most important marketing goal you should have for your shop is to get picked by Google as one of the three shops listed in the so-called “map pack.” Almost 60 percent of the traffic on Google goes to one of the shops that are in this coveted position.
Once you’re in the map pack, getting picked is most influenced by the review score that you have on Google Reviews. Consumers will compare your score to the other two shops in the pack—when your shop has the highest score, you have the advantage. Studies show that a business with a score below a 4.0 will rarely get picked. If another shop has a 4.6, you want to be a 4.7 or higher. The number of reviews is also important. You want to have at least 40 reviews for the score to be considered legitimate by shoppers.
Certainly. You need a Google Business Profile (GBP) for every location, even if that location does not have its own website.
Think about each GBP account as being a “horse in the race” for Google to show when a shopper does a search. The more horses you enter, the better odds you have of winning.
It is not enough to just have a barebones listing. You want to have constant activity with your GBP by posting weekly and filling out the Q&A section. There are also settings that will enhance your visibility. Google “set up a GBP,” and you will find lots of articles and videos that tell you how to make your GBP more attractive to Google so you will rank higher.