How many of these essential technology tools are you using for your flower shop?

Are you thinking about how you can use the Internet and technology to grow your flower shop and save money? These tools may be the easiest way for you to make more money and increase your bottom line:

1. Online Advertising – Google Advertising lets you find customers who are about to make a purchase. Online shoppers looking for “birthday flowers”, “mother’s day flowers” are about to spend money. Best of all, local florist ecommerce website can out-perform big brands with Google Ads. Facebook ads are great also – you can target adds for wedding business right at women with status “Engaged”. Advertising on The Knot is also worth trying!

2. Free Links to your Florist website – Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, and so many other directory sites let you list your florist website for free. Get more traffic and raise your search engine ranking this way.

3. Unique, Affordable Website – Get an independent florist website, without the big fees or per-order charges. Customers shop around online. Having a unique florist website that shows off your brand will make customers more likely to buy from you.

4. Online Wedding Portfolio – Showcase your wedding pictures a video with your wedding work on your website to get brides to contact you for a consultation.

5. Point of Sale – Your florist Point of Sale is the technology that run your business and the tool that speeds up your order taking and so much more. Make sure you’re getting the features you want to make your business run more smoothly and getting good value for money.

Need help with your florist website, florist POS or florist software? Floranext can help. Contact us for more info!

The highlight was the Iron Chef-style floral design competition. Florists did not know what flowers, tools, or accents they would have to work with. They had a limited time to make their creations, while being watched by an audience.

Here are some action shots and then pictures of the final (and winning) designs.

We hope you liked the highlights – stay tuned for more from next week’s Northeast Floral Expo!

Brought to you by Floranext – we make great florist websites and floral Point of Sale!

The Florist Q&A is a new kind of florist community. We know there are a lot of florist discussion on Facebook. But none of these forums are easily searchable – so the best ideas are lost. With our Florist Q&A service, you can easily find the best advice for running a flower shop.”

Floranext has recruited some well-know industry experts to join the conversation. Floral consultant and columnist Tim Huckabee and Randy Oberer, owner of one of the most successful floral franchises in the United States, are among those participating.

The Florist Q&A service enables florists to post questions and answer others. Community members can vote on answers, so the best advice moves to the top. The service is integrated with Facebook, for easy sign up and re-posting of questions.

We think it’s important for local florists to build smarter businesses. The Florist Q&A is a tool for small flower shops to educate themselves on how best to run a successful, independent flower business. We hope you think so too!

Join the conversation at the Florist Q&A now!

Take a look at some of these great new Valentine’s Day backgrounds and banners for your florist websites. Floranext website and floral Point of Sale customers can easily change their designs for seasons and holidays.

Does your website allow you to change backgrounds and banners? Feel free to grab these backgrounds for your own website!

Interested in upgrading your florist technology? Take a look at Floranext’s florist websites and floral POS - we’re florists ourselves and we’re here to help, so feel free to get in touch with us!

Wishing your flower shop a happy, profitable Valentine’s Day!

First what are Google Adwords. Simply put, Google lets you bid on search terms like “florist” or “florist in San Francisco.” You can choose to put a text ad alongside these terms. Google lets advertisers bid on ads, and puts the most-clicked and best content sites at the top.

Here are some pointers for how to build a successful advertising campaign. Make sure to approach this as a trial and error exercise at the beginning. It will take some time to get the formula just right!

1. Location Specific Keywords - Choose your domain names carefully. Don’t waste your time on the keyword “florist”. You’re competing against the big guys who can outspend you. Instead, go for “Akron Florist” or “Akron best florist”. Make sure to use whatever keywords you choose in your ad!

2. Track your conversions using Google Analytics – know if your advertising is generating profits for you. Google Analytics enables you to see which of your orders came directly from a Google ad.

3. Deep Linking – Link some of your ads to specific sub pages rather than your front page. For example, link a ad for funeral flowers to your funeral page, link your weddings ad to a wedding page, etc.

4. Domain Names – Google will give your ad a quality score based on the content on your page and the domain name. Your ad will do better if your keywords are in your domain name. For exmaple, if your keywords are “Akron florist” and your website is www.johnsflorist.com, it will do less well (and you will get fewer clicks) than if your website is www.akronflorist.com.

Have a bad domain name? Don’t worry! You can buy additional domains and set up domain forwarding to your primary website. Examples of good keywords/domain name pairs are: Akron funeral florist/akronfuneralflorist.com, Akron best florist/akronbestflorist.com, Akron gift baskets/akrongiftbaskets.com, Akron cheap florist/akroncheapflorist.com, Akron best flower shop/akronbestflowershop.com — these domain names will only help your organic search a bit, but they will give a boost to your google adwords conversion.

Ultimately, Google strategy will only get you so far – customers are shopping around online and are very choosey. Average flower purchases online are under $40. So if your front page is filled with $100 arrangements, you may turn off the majority of customers that are looking for value. Make sure your front page has $30, $35, $40 arrangements right on the front page.

In sum, adwords are the key to making money online. Don’t think of it as a nice to have — adwords are an essential part of making money through your florist website. The great thing is that Google makes it easy for a small florist to compete with big companies with big budgets.

Limited time offer – sign up for Floranext website or POS and get $75 in free Google Adwords. Contact us for a free demo! 

Want $75 in free Google Adwords. Get it when you sign up for one of florist website or point of sale packages

Take a look at some of the great new backgrounds for Floranext florist websites. Floranext website and floral Point of Sale customers can easily change their backrounds for seasons and holidays.

Does your website allow you to change backgrounds? Feel free to grab these backgrounds for your own website!

Want a beautiful website where you can show off your products and desings? Want to save money on your wire service website and start making more? Get in touch with us today for a free florist website demo!

If you’re a Floranext florist website customer, you can easily upload these banners to your website and link them to seasonal and holiday categories like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

Best of all, the banners are free! Here is sampling of some of the great new banner designs from SAF! (Click on the images to see a bigger version!)

Do you want to download these and other amazing banners for your website? Click here to head over to SAF and check out even more banners!

Want a great floral website where you can add your own banners and create your own unique online brand? Get in touch with Floranext for a free trial!

But first! Here are a few examples of wedding videos – we created these in less than 10 minutes. We turned these photographs into these videos:

Try Floranext’s florist POS and florist website free until 2012! Yes, you heard that right, free!

Floranext today announced the launch of its combined florist POS and website solution – in order to celebrate we’re offering Floranext’s basic package for free until 2012! All you need to do is CLICK HERE to create a florist website before Friday, October 7th.

Why free? We have been retail florists for 40 years – we built Floranext for our own shop. We want to share the tools that have worked so well for our own business with other florists.

Why Use Floranext’s Florist Websites?
- Unique, beautiful website designs
- Independent solution
- Increase the number of orders
- Save money versus wire services
- Free until 2012! (When you sign up before October 20th!)

Why Use Floranext’s Florist Point of Sale?
- Faster phone and walk-in orders
- Keep track of customers for marketing
- Set up in 1 day flat, no hardware required

How do you get your free florist website until 2012? You can create a florist website in minutes – just CLICK HERE to use the Floranext website builder and set up your free florist website.

http://www.floranext.com and click Try Now!

Teleflora Chairman Tom Butler

FFC gave the wire services a chance to engage with the audience, respond, and answer questions.

Bloomnet Presentation – Gino Marotta, Director of National Sales

- Their model – Shops that use more pay more, shops that use less, pay less. “Support legislation deceptive advertising. Have not had a fee increase in 3 years. ”

- Declined affiliate membership – because of ambiguity of membership. Legal council says when you’re public, you can’t make an agreement without Board approval

- How to support national ad campaign – not a clear answer. Could create fee for members, but don’t like that idea. Or could partner by offering discounts to member of FFC and put that towards FFC.

Teleflora Presentation – Tom Butler, Chairman and others

- Teleflora is a technology company: 5,000 POS users, 7,500 Credit Card users, 11,000 web users, 15,000 Dove

- TF believes it is pro-local – $3 million spend on Superbowl ad anti-boxed flowers.

- Reducing the split to 90/10 — it’s a challenge because then other companies who don’t agree will pick up the extra orders from order gatherers. It will be bad for Teleflora members because it will reduce the number of incoming orders.