As you run around like crazy this week for Mother’s Day, try to remember…

1. Big work for big payoff

Remember to tell yourself, while you’re scrambling to keep organized and move fast enough, that this is one of the biggest holidays of the year for florists. So while the work may stretch you to your limits, the reward will be great for your business.

2. Exposure

Some people out there only buy flowers a couple times a year: Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and whatever day they happen to be in big enough trouble with their spouse. Make sure to take some time during the rush to cement yourself in their minds as their new go-to florist.

3. It’ll all be over on Sunday

Despite all the benefits of big holiday rushes, it’s no secret that the amount of work you’re doing is exhausting. Remember that you’re almost there and then you can enjoy some well-deserved rest on Monday.

4. Thank your employees

Employees are stressed too! You are a team and without your team, your Mother’s Day doesn’t work.  Keep everyone going strong with a special lunch or dinner.  And remember to give a heart-felt Thank You to each employee when it is over, they deserve it!

5. Stop and smell the roses

And of course, don’t forget why you became a florist in the first place. Working with flowers and creating arrangements that will bring a smile to the faces of mothers in your neighborhood should feel good, so enjoy it!

Have a Great Mother’s Day!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!

It is less than two weeks until Mother’s Day and you might be thinking; did I do enough to market the holiday for better sales? Take a breath and read…there is still time to do some Mother’s Day marketing!

Everyone Procrastinates!

Many don’t even know that Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 11th. You have to get these procrastinators moving. Here are some ways to do it:

Make up a sample of the signature arrangements you are offering.

Which designs are you promoting for the holiday? Make up a sample now of each and take their photos for use in your marketing plan.

Once the photos are taken be sure to put the finished designs up by your cash register. Add signs telling people the price and flowers included.  Remember, an educated customer will order now.

It is always good to have a few signature designs to highlight. Try different styles.  Make a few larger designs for those people who want to spend BIG for the holiday.  Don’t limit yourself to only fresh flowers. Container gardens with bedding plants for outdoors and succulent gardens are both very popular now and give consumers something different to give.

Lots of people are intimidated to call a flower shop to order flowers; they don’t want to sound stupid so they go to another outlet and just grab something. Give them options to choose from without too much trouble and they will order.

Email, email and email again.

Take the photos of the arrangements and use them to design your email campaigns. Your emails should answer these questions for your customers:

1. When is Mother’s Day? You might want to do a countdown, something to get customers to pick up the phone and order now!
2.  How can they order? Have your phone number, address, email and website all prominently displayed.
3.  What do you have to offer? This is where your design photos come in. Place the photos on the email and add description and pricing. Be sure to add the pricing. Remember many people do not want to call unless they know the price. Their perception is that florists are “too expensive”.
4. What’s unique or different? Using the pictures is to help those who are intimidated or not sure what to order. However, you don’t want to miss out on the others who want to do something different! Be sure to let them know you are a flower artist!

Email often. As long as you change the email up a bit to keep the interest up for your customer, you should email often. If you send the same email, you will get less and less opening rate and less and less interest.

Go Social!

This is where you can really have fun. Show pictures of the selected designs, the Mother’s Day flowers as they arrive at your shop, your team and the inside of your shop as you get ready. You want to involve the audience and get them excited about sending your flowers to their mother! Designate a certain member of your team if possible that can take these photos and post them on your social media. You don’t want to be responsible for this important part as you get busier and busier.

Add coupons, information and photos to local listings.

Make sure your information is up to date in local listings like Yelp, YP and Google so that you are ready for Mother’s Day searches. Add new design photos and information on Mother’s Day to these listing as well as check and make sure all the information on the sites are correct. There is still time to add a coupon to these sites if you would like. Contact their business support for more information.

Give Online Advertising a Try.

You can still place ads on Google adwords up through Mother’s Day. Google Ads are great for getting customers just as they are about to spend money. If you’re new to Google Ads, call their toll free number – they will help you target ads at local buyers. Include a coupon or mention of a special in the ad.

Give your website one last look.

Make sure when users click on your website that it answers all these questions in less than 5 seconds – your location, phone number, guarantee policy, years in business – and products with prices.

The Mother’s Day countdown has begun. Give these quick tips a try and get ready for increased sales!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!

Spring is a busy time of year with Mother’s Day, Proms and Weddings but don’t miss out on promoting your shop for these smaller spring holidays to bring in more sales all through the year!

Flower Shops Can Earn More with Spring Holidays

It’s all about shop recognition and keeping your shop name in front of the customers so when they think flowers and gifts they think of YOU! By using these promotional tips for the upcoming smaller spring holidays, you can distinguish your shop as a leader and a go-to shop for flowers and gifts throughout the year.

Easter – April 20th

Easter is coming up fast but there is still time to promote the holiday. Customers are still deciding where they are going for Easter brunch; remind them the perfect hostess gift is flowers! Do something different… leave the plain Easter Lilies to the big box stores, go for interesting spring designs.

Make up mixed plants in baskets decorated with Easter ribbon, willows and other spring items like Styrofoam Easter Eggs. Make it unique and different, something that only a florist artist can do!

Make a bright, show-stopping window display to help remind your foot traffic that Easter is fast approaching!

Send out at least two emails highlighting your Easter selection throughout the week of Easter. Blast your selections out on social media now through Easter for all those procrastinators. Be sure to highlight your hours and how they can easily order from you.

Administrator Professional Week – April 21 – 25

This is the perfect holiday to get with commercial accounts for year-round benefits. Don’t fret, there is still time to go after them this year!

Select a few distinctive designs and planters that would work well in an office setting for both male and female associates. Then make the photos into a nice color flyer that includes your shop information, hours and location. If you have commercial accounts email addresses, send the flyer out in email form for the next few weeks. The holiday goes throughout the week so be sure to send out reminders throughout the week of the holiday. Again, lots of procrastinators!

If you do not have many commercial accounts or want more, this holiday was made for you! Take the time to visit the commercial accounts around your area. You have something to talk about; making the administrators look good to their employees. Use that! Leave the flyer with your card and more information on your services that they can use all through the year. This is also something you can leave with the front desk, if the person is busy. The administrator assistant will be sure to give their boss the flyer to remind them of the holiday!

Before leaving the business, get the administrator’s name, phone number and email address. Also, it is good to get the assistant’s name, phone number and email address as well. When you get back to your shop, add the emails to your commercial accounts email database. You can make two lists, one for administrators and one for their assistants. Now you have the rights names to send them information during the entire year.

Teacher’s Appreciation Week May 5 – 9th

Depending on your area, many schools are embracing this holiday as a way to bring small gifts as a thank you to their teachers. Bringing flowers is a natural! Promote a few different small bouquets or planters that a student can give their teacher.

Another idea would be to work with the school’s PTA or parent association for a fundraiser for the school. Have small bouquets available for students to purchase and give some of the proceeds to the school or have the parent association collect money for each teacher and give larger bouquets or planters from the class. Have fun with it!

End of Year Celebrations!

The end of the school year is drawing near and that means the year-end chorus, band and dance recitals. Also lots and lots of graduations! The perfect time for presentation bouquets! Don’t miss out on this meaningful and profitable “holiday”. Highlight and remind parents and grandparents about giving bouquets to their students after their performance. This can be done through social media, email and in store.

Again, you can work with the parent associations to make this a fund-raiser for them. It is a win-win. You give them a few examples of different flower presentations bouquets and they make up the flyer and promoted with their school parents, grandparents, families and friends. Even if the profit isn’t the best for you with the bouquets, think of the good-will and name recognition you will receive from this. All these students will be going to prom and getting married and….

With just a bit of promotion and thought, you can make these smaller spring holidays profitable to you this spring and all year through!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!

When you are looking for information on the web, what do you use to search on?

If you are like 58% of American Adults, chances are you are checking the information out on your smartphone. Or you could be part of the 42% who find information from their tablet.

Smartphones and tablets have become a big part of our lives. Many people cannot go anywhere without their mobile devices. According to Pew Institute Research, 34% of cell internet users go online mostly using their phones, and do not use some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer.

A recent report of the % of cell phone owners who use their cell phone find …

With the trend going to more and more mobile usage, having a website that works on these devices is critical.

What can you do for your Florist Website?

Take a good look at your present site on a smartphone and see how it does when answering these questions…

• Does it load fast? If the site takes too long to download, people will move on. 74% of consumers expect a web page to load in 5 seconds or less.
• Is the content easy to read? Lots of photos and writing can look great on a desktop but look jumbled and messy on a small 4” screen.  Keep It Simple & Clean!
• Is the content worthwhile? Content needs to be simple, short, focused, and fit within the screen width. Place important content toward the top of the page.
• Can people find what they want in a few clicks?  Customers will not hunt long for the information they are looking for. The above photo shows the bottom half of the home page of Bill O’Shea’s Florist & Gifts mobile website. Here you can see a clear path to possible selections the customer might be looking for.   When you click on the occasions button, you get to that page in just one-click.  Easy and Quick!
• Is it easy to find your call-to-action buttons? When people look for your site on a smartphone they are usually looking for one of two things – how to call you or how to find directions to you. Make these buttons easy to find on every web page.   Bill O’Shea’s Florist has two large call-to-action buttons on every page and make it easy for their customers to call or find directions to the store.

• Is it easy to find you with your directions? Make it easy for your customers to find your store on their smart phone with good directions.
• Is there plenty of space between links? Large fingers, small screen with lots of links together makes for a frustrating experience.
• Does your site fit into the screen size? Only vertical scrolling, please. Too wide with horizontal scrolling can be so aggravating!
• Can you check out fast on your site? If it takes a long time to check out and includes lot of typing and filling out forms, forget about it!

The Most Important Question you will have to ask about your Florist Website is…

• Is it a site you would visit? Okay, be honest or ask others who will be honest, would you visit your site on a smart phone or tablet? If not, you have some work to do.

Looking to Go Mobile?

Our Floranext website packages include a ‘Mobile Theme’ to optimize the floral website when viewed on a mobile device – no extra setup needed!

Your florist website is a big part of your flower business. WHERE are people coming from, HOW did they find you and WHAT they are looking at.  It’s easy to see when you use Google’s free tool, Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is the free resource from Google that lets you analyze who, what and where potential customers are coming from to your florist website and how you can better market to them by using this information.

WHERE are the people coming from to your florist website?

Acquisition is the section to find out WHERE are the people coming from and HOW they found your florist website.

Here are the different sections under that tab…

The Overview section is a great place to get a birds-eye view of where the potential customer is finding your floral website.  You will find different sections that will let you see how you are being found.

• Organic search is how many potential customers type in a search word in one of the search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo and find you.

• Direct is when the customer types in your website directly.

• Referral is how many times a different site referred you to the customer.  This is why building links with other sites like other businesses are important.

• Social is how many people arrive via social media.

• Email is a direct link from your email campaigns so you can see how many click-thru to your site

Next go under Acquisition to the Channel tab. Here is where you can see a bit more information into each of the groupings in the Overview. You will be able to see the percentage of new visits to the site and how many pages were visited for each of the different sections. You will also be able to see the bounce rate which is the percentage of people who only looked at the page they landed on and didn’t click further.  Which section is higher for any of these columns?  Which one needs works?  If you get a large bounce rate, do you need a better landing page so viewers want to look further?  How many pages did visitors look at?  Which section looked at the most or the least?

An example of your Channel report might look like this…

As you click on more of the tabs under Acquisition you will be able to find out which social media avenues worked the best under the Social Media tab. Have you been promoting on Facebook heavily? It should show. How is the new Pinterest page doing for click-thru to your florist website?  They will all show.

Check under the keywords tab to see what keywords your visitors are finding you by.  Are those what you thought  your potential customers are using to search with.  Also where is your traffic originating…is it with Google? Bing? Facebook?  If you are advertising on Google or Facebook, are you getting your money’s worth in traffic?  Are these people staying on your site and clicking on more than one page or are they leaving quickly?

The Acquisition tab is an excellent resource for pinpointing where and how your customers have gotten to your floral website.  It will help you see where your marketing is working in bringing in visitors and where you need additional help.

WHAT pages are your customers looking at on your flower shop’s website?

The Behavior tab or WHAT did your flower customers look at is next.  Here is where you get the low-down on what pages were viewed the most, which pages were the landing page – or the first page the visitor came to from their search.  It is an excellent section to see which of your florist website pages are working and which ones aren’t.

Here is a list of what sections are under the tab…

One tab that I just love is the In-Page Analytics. This shows you how your visitors interact with the content on your florist website. With Google In-Page Analytics, Google will add the percentage to each link on your page and display how many visitors are clicking through. It will help answer the questions…Is one menu item more popular than others? Does anyone actually scroll down and read below the fold? Which designs do more people click on? Are they interested in my wedding tab or seasonal designs? You will be able to find out a lot of pertinent information here and it is really interesting to see what potential customers are clicking on.

After looking at the Acquisition and Behavior tabs, if you do not have Google Analytics, you know you have to sign up now!  It is the best, free informative way to find out the WHO, WHAT, WHERE  and HOW of the relationship of your visitors and your florist website. And THIS is just the tip of the iceberg on what you can find on Google Analytics!

Get started today, start earning more from your flower shop website!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!

Is your flower shop ready for bad weather on Vday?

A flower shop’s worst nightmare – freezing cold temperature, lots of snow and ice the week of Valentine’s Day! The fix – make it a Valentine’s Week!

When the blizzard of 1978 was bearing down on New York City, Mayor Koch announced it to be Valentine’s Week! This was a win-win for everyone.

New Yorkers could celebrate Vday anytime of that week by sending flowers, going to dinner and giving gifts and still feel like they celebrated Valentine’s Day!

Florists, Restaurants and Shops benefit with receiving their Valentine’s Day sales and the government also won by collecting the tax revenues for these purchases!

Valentine’s Day is on a Friday this year so check the weather the weekend before to see what is predicted. But be ready ahead of time with an action plan in case of bad weather.

• Talk with other local business in your area to get them on board. Working together with benefit everyone!

• Engage your local Chamber of Commerce, Mayor and government office to ask for their help in talking it up to the media, writing letters and emails. Have the Mayor do a press conference talking about Valentine’s Week!

• Involve the local media. Can they do a Valentine’s Week promotion?

Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be a weather worry
It can be a Week of Celebration!

Sometimes it seems like you need a crystal ball to see who is visiting your Floral Website.  Who are these people?  Do they visit often?  Do they stay long?  All excellent questions that go unanswered unless you add Google Analytics to your Floral Website.  It is a free, easy to use and an incredible tool that is a MUST for your Florist Website!

Google Analytics is a free marketing tool from Google that provides you detailed statistics on your florist website traffic and traffic sources. It can track visitors from all sites including search engines and social networks, direct visits and referring sites.  It is the perfect step to begin learning about your visitors and marketing to them.

Add Google Analytics to your Florist Website

First thing you need to do is create a Google Analytics account and set up your tracking code. Once you have created a new account you will receive a block of code that is your web tracking code. You will need to add this JavaScript Code to all the pages that you want to track on your floral website. It is an easy addition and helpful tips can be found on the Google Analytics site.  If you have an IT person take care of your site, they should be able to help you with this step.  You should be able to see results in about 24 hours.

Start at the Opening Dashboard

The Opening Dashboard on your Google Analytics page is a good start for a quick overview of what you will find in the analytics. Here you will see graphs on how many New Visits and Unique Visits you had for the month or the browser most people used to view your site and lots more.

Change the reporting date

A few helpful hints while you go through analytics. By default, Google shows that last 30 days of activity for your site. If you would like to look at a different timeline or even to compare against last month or last year, you can do this by clicking on the date range box in the upper right corner. Notice in the example below,  we are comparing the same month but for two different years. You can tell the different years by the two different colors. Google will now carry this time information throughout the entire search unless you change the dates back. (Note: Google Analytics can only collect data from the date you added their code to your website therefore you will not be able to retrieve any information before that date.)

Another interesting and helpful note is that you can hover over any dot on the graph – these dots represent individual days or time periods. A box will appear next to the dot and show the numbers of new visits for that date and since we added the comparison, it also shows last year’s number and the percentage change. Are you running a different ad this year than last year or doing more social media? This comparison will help show if it is working or not.

Now it is time to dig deeper into who is looking at your site…
Today we are going to look into the information you can find under the Audience tab. Go to the left tab and under Audience click on Overview. This is what you will see

As you can tell, 665 unique people visited this site during this time period and by the graph you can see the days that they visited the site.  What days are most visited?  Is that when you are advertising, emailing or posting on social media?  What can you do now on the slower days to get more visitors?

What do each of the numbers mean?

Visits – the number of times someone comes to your site.  Each visit is counted.
Unique Visits – the number of times new people visit your site.
Pageviews – the number of times people view pages on your site.
Pages / Visit  – the number of pages the visitor is viewing on your site. The larger the amount, the more pages are being viewed. For example, if your site has 2,000 visits and 4,000 page views, then an average person would have looked at two pages while on your site.
Avg. Visit Duration – the average time each visit to your site lasted in minutes.
Bounce Rate – this is the percentage of people who only visit one page on your site and do not go any further.
% of New Visits – the percentage of new visitors who have never visited your site before compared to the visits total.

What else under the Audience tab can help your Florist Website and Marketing Plan?

Lots of interesting things! 

Next go to Demographics and you can see the percentage of female and male visitors your floral website gets. Are you attracting brides or men looking to purchase arrangements for their spouses?

What about the age group of your visitors.  Are they baby boomers, millenniums or generation X?   You can find the age group by clicking on the age tab.  Does this age group look like your clientele?  Is that the age group you are targeting in your marketing? Or do you want a different age group so you need to rethink your marketing plan.

Going Mobile?

While still under the Audience Tab, click on Mobile and then Overview. Here you can see what device your customers are using to find your florist website. Is it mainly on a desktop or mobile or on a tablet? If there is a large amount of mobile and tablet views, you must check how your florist website looks on these different devices. In 2014, it is predicted that mobile phone users will overtake desktops for internet usage.  50% of mobile phone users use mobile as their primary Internet source.  This is how most people are looking at your florist website.

Want to see which mobile devices your customers use the most?  While under Mobile click on Devices and here you will find out more specific information about which mobile device your visitors are using to browse your site.

With Google Analytics and going under the Audience tag, you can find out a lot of great information about your present visitors.  You now know who your visitors are and are they the ones you want?  If not, you will need to change your marketing to fit with the demographics you want.  Are you getting the visits to your florist website you thought or wanted?  How can you increase these visits?  Wonder if you change your website or add new pages?  Will you see an increase in pages viewed?  All these questions and more can be found when looking under the Audience tab in Google Analytics.

Now that we have reviewed the Audience tab, look to our next few blog posts when we will be discussing the Acquisition, Behavior and Goal Setting through Google Analytics.

It is better than a crystal ball and will help make 2014 a Great Year for your Florist Shop!!!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!

Looking to drive sales on your florist website? Pinterest continues to be the darling of the social media websites and with good reason – study after study shows that if you are looking for the social media avenue that will increase sales,  Look to Pinterest.

According to a recent blog post Pinterest Pins Drive 25% More Sales Than a Year Ago; “One pin brings in $0.78 in sales on average — and that figure is growing. Compared to data pulled a year ago, the value of a pin has grown nearly 25%.” It also noted that “Pins are evergreen — even months after they’ve been pinned, they’re driving traffic and sales. Half of sites visits happen after 3.5 months of the original pin date, and half of the sales happen after 2.5 months of the original pin date.”

Looking for new ways to get more traffic into your flower shop? Look to Pinterest. 21% of the Pinterest users surveyed by Harvard Business Review said that went to the store and bought the item after pinning, repinning, or liking it, and 36% of users under 35 said they had done so.

Looking to showcase your florist wedding work? Look to Pinterest. 86% of all brides create their dream wedding with Pinterest boards.  They design their wedding from the photos they pin and they look to Pinterest for the current trends and designs, including great florist photos.

Now that you have seen the worth of using Pinterest, lets get your business ready…

First Step – Create a Florist Pinterest Account

Even if you have a personal Pinterest page, similar to Facebook, you need a business page. This is another place to optimize search engines.   While crawling, search engines will pick up your username (your flower shop) and information from your About section.

The About section is the place to shine and describe who you are and what you do.  Optimize this 200-character space with keywords that are relevant to your city and the work you do to boost your visibility in search results. For example if you are a florist in Brooklyn, make sure the term “Brooklyn Florist” is in your About section.

It’s very important to utilize the same description and keywords across all your other social media profiles for consistency.  All should contain your florist website, where you are located and your flower specialties.

Second Step – Create a Florist Pinboard

Pinboards are just sub-pages on your florist Pinterest page – for flower shops these are typically collections of your work. You might create a Pinboard for your wedding work, one on Christmas flowers, and another for your everyday flower photos.

When you create a board make sure to use the About section and include keywords relevant to the board. Also make sure to use the maps function to locate your photos (and your business) on a map. This will help Google and other search engines to recognize your business as a leading local flower shop in your area.

Third Step – Link Your Florist Photos and Florist Website

If you are using Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox browsers, there are Pin It buttons you can add to your browser to easily pin your florist website photos. Add this button to your browser and you can “pin” a photo to any one of your Pinboards with a few clicks.

Pinterest is a great spot for backlinks – links that lead people back to your flower shop’s website. They are invaluable for SEO because search engines take them into account when measuring relevancy of your business and how they will rank you when someone uses a search engine. Each time a pin is pinned and repinned on Pinterest, it creates a backlink to the source page – which is like an additional “vote” for your florist website.

The more a florist pin gets shared, the more backlinks are created.  That is why you must continually pin new content from your own florist website.  Yes, repinning and liking others’ photos is important from the social aspect but making sure you add your photos from your florist website is most important.

With over 70 million people on Pinterest, starting with these four simple steps, you will be able to Look To Pinterest for increased sales on your florist website.

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!

Want to get more wedding business? Take a critical look at your florist website. According to The Wedding Report, 76% of wedding couples turn to wedding or bridal websites when they are planning their wedding. Are they turning to your site?

Try these 5 steps to increase traffic to your florist website.

1. Testimonial Page

One of the most powerful pages on your website is your testimonial page. Great testimonials tell potential brides that other brides just like them, loved your work!

Testimonial pages should be more than just the reviews themselves. Add a photo next to each review to make it more personable and credible. If you have testimonials on third-party pages like wedding wire, knot, etc add a link. Make it easy to submit a review with a one-click button.

2. Links to other vendors

Adding a page of links to photographers, wedding planners, venues that you recommend and work with is a helpful resource for the bride. Make sure they give you a link on their page also – a great way to get more traffic. It is also a great way to establish a working relationship with area businesses.

Add suggestions of different business that you have worked with

3. Contact Us Form

Brides are busy, they want to be able to contact you on their time and their way.  Add a contact us form on your floral website to make that connection as quickly and easily as possible.  Ask lots of questions up front so you will be able to respond with specific answers.  To add an easy to use contact us form try Wufoo, an easy form builder.

4. Wedding Flower Checklist

Brides are looking for your guidance in flower needs for the bridal party, reception and ceremony.  Help make this easier with a handy checklist form that can be downloaded and printed.  Don’t forget to add your contact information to this sheet!

5. Photos, Photos and more Photos

Brides are searching for floral designs that they can “pin” on their pinterest boards.  One recent source said that more than 86% of all brides create pinterest boards.  You need to be “pinable”, you need to have current photos on your florist website showing all your floral designs.  Without recent designs on your site, brides will not see you as a wedding florist!  Make it a priority to add new photos often!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here!