1st QTR Website Stats Independant compare to to WS

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clay

clay

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Aug 12, 2004
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Victoria
www.mcadamsfloral.com
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TX
As you may remember, I have two websites....one that I have had for awhile , and one that is by a wire service. The reason that I have the WS website is to see exactly what THEY bring to the table vs the traffic/sales from my own customers and traffic/sales brought to my own website by my own website marketing.

1st QTR Stats____________My Independant__________Wire Service
Unique Visitors___________4,217___________________157
# of Orders______________209_____________________7
Gross Order Sales_________$13,116_________________$449
Website/Hosting Cost______$142*__________________$410**
*Includes 4 months directory with ilocal (Mary Lou)
**Includes 4 months mandatory FindAFlorist and includes per order fee

If I would have had the same amount of customers/orders with just a WS website, I would have paid another $627 on per order fees for them to send me my customers website orders.

In talking to Rich earlier this week on independant websites and blogs, we both agree that for every order you get in through your website shopping cart, you recieve another 5 that were on your website and choose to call. With that, our website helped contribute $65,000 worth of orders for the first quarter of 2006.

Do you pay a wire service $900/year plus $2.95/order for each shop order, to arrange YOUR flower shop window with seasonal WS products?
 
Clay,

I was going to post this yesterday, but didn't get a chance: Our stats consistently show the majority of people order online, not by phone, when viewing our site. Our Mother's Day week numbers were 74% online, 26% phone, for people who found us online.

We do have our phone number on every catalogue page, so there is nothing forcing people to order online. It's my belief that the design of your site and how much confidence you create in the customer affect how they order.

The majority of florists have 4:1 people ordering by phone from the web. Why? It's not that they all have obviously bad web sites. Not at all!! In some cases, yes, but I think for many florists the differences are subtle, but it's costing them business.

Ryan
 
Interesting

Infinite said:
Clay,

I was going to post this yesterday, but didn't get a chance: Our stats consistently show the majority of people order online, not by phone, when viewing our site. Our Mother's Day week numbers were 74% online, 26% phone, for people who found us online.

We do have our phone number on every catalogue page, so there is nothing forcing people to order online. It's my belief that the design of your site and how much confidence you create in the customer affect how they order.

The majority of florists have 4:1 people ordering by phone from the web. Why? It's not that they all have obviously bad web sites. Not at all!! In some cases, yes, but I think for many florists the differences are subtle, but it's costing them business.

Ryan
Click to expand...

Interesting. I have talked to other florists that expressed a 4:1 and 5:1 + phone to shopping cart ratio when order from their website.

Hard to say why the company to company and/or region to region differences.

I had discussed this percentage 4:1 with the SEO person at the seminar, and he said that is the average for online retail local to the area. He explained that it is customary that most people "do research" (price & feature comparisons, product education) via the web but will still call to place the order.

I find myself calling to a company after doing my research at night, asking them a particular question on the product or availabilty.
 
clay said:
I find myself calling to a company after doing my research at night, asking them a particular question on the product or availabilty.
Click to expand...

Perhaps that's part of the issue? If the site leaves unanswered questions, people will have to phone.

One of my favourite websites for ordering computer gear I can't get through my wholesalers is DirectDial.com. They have live inventory numbers and detailed specs on the merchandise. Very easy to shop, compate, sort and decide.

Ryan
 
What I have found intresting is the difference in traffic going to a WS website compare to an independent site.

Clay your numbers are dead on with what we experienced with our independent site and our TF site that we both promoted equally two years ago.

A concern that florist need to think about is how come there is such a big difference between the traffic and sales with an independent site versus any of the WS sites? Why are the numbers so different?

My thought is the templetes that are used and since the content will be simular to other sites the only difference would be (at least for the florist that do nothing to change the look, apperence) the information contained in the about us sections and perhaps the florist name and contact information located on the top of their pages.

Could this be causing many of the cookie cutter sites to be considered spam or duplicate content? And is this why FTD.com And Teleflora.com's websites look so much more different then the hosted sites that they provide?

As search engines continue to change so does the need to have a different site then anyone else and the need to provide fresh new content on your site as well as the use of a blog to promote your site.
 
Eric S said:
Why are the numbers so different?

My thought is the templetes that are used and since the content will be simular to other sites the only difference would be (at least for the florist that do nothing to change the look, apperence) the information contained in the about us sections and perhaps the florist name and contact information located on the top of their pages.

Could this be causing many of the cookie cutter sites to be considered spam or duplicate content? And is this why FTD.com And Teleflora.com's websites look so much more different then the hosted sites that they provide?
Click to expand...
Simple answer, yes!

Most florists that have template sites do nothing themselves to change any of the content to original. Most as far as I know do not allow for keyword changes, and/or ALT TXT within images, custom descriptions and all the things we know make a difference in getting found.

Most florists do not take the time to do the work themselves relying on the wire services to do it for them, and we know it's not in the WSs best interest to help.

The WS's want their sites found first, that way...well you know this answer already.

As to the number of orders difference between a WS template and a independant site, hard to say, I would never accuse the WSs of only passing on "some" of the orders generated. Back when I had a WS site, I did not have access to the back end, to know how many visitors and how many orders were placed. I do know some shops with WS templates, that have taken the time to "originalize" their sites, and they do rank and sell well.

Most of it, IMHO is based on originality, likely related to your duplicate content thought.
 
BOSS said:
I would never accuse the WSs of only passing on "some" of the orders generated. Back when I had a WS site, I did not have access to the back end, to know how many visitors and how many orders were placed.
Click to expand...

Not exactly an acusation but if I had a TF site I would be highly suspicious of that javascript. It's not there just for looks.

My friend who switched not long ago from one of those to an independent site - 4 orders in a month before - 6 in 36 hours after. That says something to me.

And, I find just short of 70% choosing to order online. I don't believe that 80% of people use the phone stuff. That IMO has to be an indicator of something not flowing in your website, and if the numbers are that low, I think you are losing orders to people who have gone elsewhere and you don't even know it. A majority of consumers these days choose to order online. Or so I think. Let me qualify that - people from out of town. Locally we get more on the telephone. That just occured to me.

I think my numbers should be higher than they are - and am willing to bet that the big boys are closer to 90% online.

opinions vary
 
percentage of phone web orders

Maybe I should requalify my statement on the percentage of phone web orders. Most of them are not really asking a question when they are calling in, they just want to call the order in. Then you might say then the website is not order friendly, but ours is not set up any differently that any other floral website, WS or independant. Most are local customers, and I would guess are our own customers, maybe they like to talk to a live McAdams Floral salesperson? Who knows, maybe the south Texans are that way....or chalk it up to other reasons. While my thread was not to concentrate on a florist web phone percentage, this has prompted m to have the sales staff to ask our phone web customers on the reason they called in vs. placing the order of the website.
 
Infinite said:
Clay,

I was going to post this yesterday, but didn't get a chance: Our stats consistently show the majority of people order online, not by phone, when viewing our site. Our Mother's Day week numbers were 74% online, 26% phone, for people who found us online.

We do have our phone number on every catalogue page, so there is nothing forcing people to order online. It's my belief that the design of your site and how much confidence you create in the customer affect how they order.

The majority of florists have 4:1 people ordering by phone from the web. Why? It's not that they all have obviously bad web sites. Not at all!! In some cases, yes, but I think for many florists the differences are subtle, but it's costing them business.

Ryan
Click to expand...

The opposite is true in many cases as well..............people do not want to talk to a phone message system that tells them push 1 to place an order, or press 2 for.... and for 3... and then to put on hold for the next available operator!!!!
In shops with those types of unfriendly phone systems it's little wonder the online order percentage is much higher than in shops where they are answered by a real live person........sending flowers is a personal matter and very often the customer prefers to make personal contact with the florist making sure they understand their every wish.
 
I saw at Mother"s Day my web site with BBJ, www.a1florists.com up in sales. Many also called in and place their order directly. I am not sure how many visitors I had, but I found my site easy to navigate around. If time permits I want to continue to grow in that dept. My next step is father's Day and I hope I can Market those people that visited me at Mother's Day.
It may take me a year to fix, change every holiday to my satisfacton where I just have to change designs once in awhile.
Thanks John for your help with my site.
Luc
 
About Phone Systems

BBJ (Big Bad John) said:
In shops with those types of unfriendly phone systems it's little wonder the online order percentage is much higher than in shops where they are answered by a real live person........sending flowers is a personal matter and very often the customer prefers to make personal contact with the florist making sure they understand their every wish.
Click to expand...

I am prejudiced as I hate automated phone systems. I will never consider such a system. The most meaningless phrase is "Your call is very important to us." How can a computer ask me to be patient? No way.

That's my rant.
 
BBJ (Big Bad John) said:
The opposite is true in many cases as well..............people do not want to talk to a phone message system that tells them push 1 to place an order, or press 2 for.... and for 3... and then to put on hold for the next available operator!!!!
In shops with those types of unfriendly phone systems it's little wonder the online order percentage is much higher than in shops where they are answered by a real live person........sending flowers is a personal matter and very often the customer prefers to make personal contact with the florist making sure they understand their every wish.
Click to expand...

We have found the same result, and have never contemplated using a phone routing system in our shop!!
Interestingly, though you MAY be concerned, whether the ratio is 4:1, 5:1, or higher, it STILL means that MORE customers and potential orders are being generated by YOUR OWN website(s) than those of wire service sponsored sites, and I FOR ONE, am as guilty as sin, in NOT dumping my wire service site, though that is about to change.
With John's help, we too want what Luc wants, and though MANY of you have zoomed ahead in your net order domination, our incoming DUE TO our websites have really shot up, both by online, and phone order, and THAT is the result we ALL want!!
 
Congrats

Mikey the Flower Guy said:
We have found the same result, and have never contemplated using a phone routing system in our shop!!
Interestingly, though you MAY be concerned, whether the ratio is 4:1, 5:1, or higher, it STILL means that MORE customers and potential orders are being generated by YOUR OWN website(s) than those of wire service sponsored sites, and I FOR ONE, am as guilty as sin, in NOT dumping my wire service site, though that is about to change.
With John's help, we too want what Luc wants, and though MANY of you have zoomed ahead in your net order domination, our incoming DUE TO our websites have really shot up, both by online, and phone order, and THAT is the result we ALL want!!
Click to expand...

Congrats and good luck on your new independant floral website.

No automated routing system in our shop....including having FTD/Teleflora answer it for us.
 
Tom Carlson said:
I am prejudiced as I hate automated phone systems. I will never consider such a system. The most meaningless phrase is "Your call is very important to us." How can a computer ask me to be patient? No way.

That's my rant.
Click to expand...

I'm with Tom on this one - add "Our menu options have changed so please listen carefully and choose" and "Press 1 for English" to complete the frustration.
 
Infinite said:
The majority of florists have 4:1 people ordering by phone from the web. Why? It's not that they all have obviously bad web sites. Not at all!! In some cases, yes, but I think for many florists the differences are subtle, but it's costing them business.
Click to expand...
Perhaps the ratio has to do with the age of the buyer, the way they arrived at a site and the nature of the purchase.

Customers who've previously shopped online with us are much more likely to do so again, especially if they're responding to an email offer or other call to action. Traffic builds more traffic with the appropriate marketing.

Long-time customers, especially seasoned citizens, that have traditionally phoned personal orders seem to continue to do so, even when looking at our site.

The more 'boutiqueie' shoppers want to discuss, even briefly, their personal preferences and options. It's possible that more product images or online options would move some of them to handle their entire order online. Maybe a live chat feature would help that.

We're at about a 3:1 rate.
 
Eric S said:
A concern that florist need to think about is how come there is such a big difference between the traffic and sales with an independent site versus any of the WS sites? Why are the numbers so different?
Click to expand...
There are several factors and each is weighted differently.

Unique Content

It's one of the most important elements, IMO. The text for both product and service descriptions should be original and rich (but not over-done) in keywords that relate directly to a targeted market. This includes locations and occasions as well as products.

Even sites with WS products that re-write descriptions can do well but there are definite benefits to including quality original floral designs because consumers can only buy those items through your store.

Spiderability

Search engines crawl sites to index content. Some site designs are poor for search engines - like many of those built in Flash or the ones using dynamically generated pages with session ID's. The deeper pages (past the root URL) may be totally lost.

Optimization

Focusing keywords through site name, on-page use, page names, image alt text and interior linking with appropriate terms helps reinforce the relevance of a page to a particular topic. Some WS templates can be optimized to a certain degree but lack the ability to create on-topic page names and add unique textual content specific to a single page.

Similar sites on server

Search engines 'know' the number of sites sitting on a server. If there are 15,000 of them (as in the case of TF) then most of the boilerplate versions are going to be ignored. There's little original or of interest to SE's except the name, address and phone number of a company. Everything else on a basic template looks the same, especially when sitting all lined up in a row on a single server.

Age of site

Older URLs generally do better, especially for competitive terms. If you go out and register a new URL, it generally takes longer to rise to the top in search than if you purchase an older domain name (that has never been hijacked, penalized or blacklisted).

Inbound links

High quality, on-topic inbound links make a huge difference. Even if a site is relatively poor in the previously described areas it can still do well in search with good inbound links.

Take Clay's two sites for example:
  • Independent site - MSN shows 159 IBLs, some from authority sites.
  • WS template - MSN shows 1 IBL and it's from another TF site.
Which do you think the SEs trust more?

Where do florists get good links? Floral industry authorities (associations, some directories), local authorities (Chamber of Commerce, fellow businesses like funeral homes, wedding salons, photographers, venues), quality directories (paid or free) and News sites are good places to start.

Outbound Links

Linking to on-topic authority (high quality) sites also helps increase SE's trust of your site if the links are related to your site's topic. Getting WS templates to let you link out to others can be like pulling teeth.

Freshness of Content

Sites that remain relatively unchanged may find themselves falling in search. Some independent sites actually do worse in this department than WS templates because the owners never have their content freshened or updated. (Leaving up Christmas, Mother's Day and Valentine's Day year round also looks funny to your surfers IMO.)

Promotion

Owners of independently hosted and run sites are generally more motivated to promote themselves. In Clay's example, he's promoting his indy version to regular customers. Had he chosen to customize and optimize the WS template, it too could do relatively well - but would cost him an additional $3 per order and limit his customization options.

Conclusion

Of the factors listed above, IMO the most import two are Unique Content and Inbound Links. Clay's indy site has both and his WS template has neither. The other elements factor in as well, but if florists tackle the top two, they'll generally be able to rise through the SE clutter - at least for their cities.

Sorry to be so long-winded but this is a topic I've spent a lot of time studying it. The lack of effort on the part of many real florists (even on a minimum level) to help themselves - especially when the info, tools and resources are so readily available - is disheartening and frustrating.
 
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Very good Cathy

I am copying that post as a document on my hard drive. Very good Cathy.

One thing that we are working on not mentioned spacifically, is a Site Map ...which would help with the Spiderablility.

As I had stated before on a post, you would be surprised on how many florists have not done anything with their WS "About Us" other than the WS using the shop's name once in their "About Us" template copy AND they have not submitted a picture of their shop....leaving a standard "No Picture" across the photo location alloted space.
 
Good call Clay. Cathy and Mlou should write a book. I'd pay $100 for it. All they would have to do is do a search here, copy and paste all their stuff and sell it. :p

When epic was up, very corporate looking, the orders were 3% phone and 97% online. As Cathy pointed out, and is VERY important to know, know who your target market is. Old people? Get your phone ready, younger people, get your shopping cart ready. How you target found your site will also help answer -who your target is. If you are high in google, then maybe more educated target will find you. Traditional target might look at yellowpages.com. All of this is in general of course.

If you don't already ask phone customers how they found you on the net, if they did find you on the net, you are missing a big piece of the puzzle for the future growth of your shop. :)


Tally HO! I'll have one more glass of red wine then off to bed!
 
Eric S said:
The lack of effort on the part of many real florists (even on a minimum level) to help themselves - especially when the info, tools and resources are so readily available - is disheartening and frustrating.

So true!!!!
Click to expand...

Amen!!! !!!
 
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