Sea Side Scrap Book » Use an Automatic Floral Website to Make Sales on the Internet

Use an Automatic Floral Website to Make Sales on the Internet

Internet came to Toronto as a public media and started gaining public acceptance, circa 1997. Lots of writing and wild predictions accompanied Net’s arrival in newspaper, magazines and books. It is interesting to look back more than dozen years later and compare what we see about Internet today with the predictions, at the beginning. Internet and shopping on the Net was primarily associated with new efficiencies of doing business leading to better pricing for products and services for the benefit of customers. Internet gurus predicted massive and almost compulsory adoption of Internet as a main merchandising media, in all sectors of the economy. Those businesses not willing to adapt the Internet fast enough were in business jeopardy.

Gift and florists retailers in Toronto were deemed to be pioneers of the change. Lots of enthusiastic Toronto florists jumped on the bandwagon of the change and looked for ways to establish a quick presence on the Net. Majority of florists did not know, what they were doing. What was the right thing to do? Many florists were scared to a hasty action by listening to the predictions and web designers canvassing Toronto florists for the sake of getting their business, while using scare tactics. Many design companies were pointing to the facts, how flower delivery business has been already shaped by large organizations, using central processing, a national 1-800 number and large advertising budget. These florists’ national organizations provided convenience to the consumers and advantages of sending flowers to the loved ones, anywhere in the world. If you do not join the Internet, you are taking a chance as Toronto florist being left behind, just to handle smaller and smaller sizes of the florists’ pie.

Stakeholders in new orders were cultivating image of impending mass exodus of shoppers to the Net. The traditional retail sector with flowers would shrink and only small pie will remain for in-person, and on the street shopping. The arguments that web design companies were presenting were convincing and many florists signed up in order to avoid missing the boat to the future.

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Internet shopping would mean ordering gifts and flowers from the pictures and reading their descriptions from the web site. When you see what you are looking for, then just drop your selection to the automated shopping basket and pay by a credit card. Internet shopping is done from the privacy of our homes, at our convenience and being able to do online shopping 24/7.

That was the blue print for florists in Toronto, but how does it match with real live execution and experience that local florists gained over the years? Definitely there was a dramatic shift to the Internet shopping in Toronto and GTA for flowers and gifts, when more people gained their confidence in safety of online shopping. Some traditional floral retailers in Toronto have moved out of their retail stores to the more economical locations in industrial parks and concentrated their business entirely on the web. Majority of florists in Toronto kept their retail location and just added a website to complement their traditional way in retail business. First were brochure type websites soon to replaced with new websites providing full automated shopping basket and credit cards processing. Secure transmitting of credit card information to the merchant for a manual bank approval is more preferable to the florists for number of reasons.

Billed flowers and gift prices might be changed due to number of reasons. An ordered product might not be available on a given day due to the market conditions. After all, we are dealing with perishable items and substitutions necessary sometimes. Shoppers placing orders for other people often provide incorrect information, requiring second or substitute delivery.

Florists in Toronto have recognized that doing floral business online provides some rude awakening from earlier expectations they held on the web. The first expectations were fostered by the web designers and proved to be a great fallacy. Once you pay the design for your website, you just have an inexpensive hosting to pay monthly, but you can enjoy a free ride on the web. Many florists ordered their new websites thinking that they have a right to free traffic on the web. This misconception was quickly put to the rest as more Toronto floral retailers have realized in a hard way that gaining valuable traffic on the web is a proposition as much expensive, as having prime retail location on a busy street. One set of new costs has replaced old and traditional costs being associated with prime real estate in Toronto.

Traffic is very valuable and having a website does not guarantee any placement on search engines quarry results. Your floral website has to be optimized to appear in the top three search results and any lower ranking means much lower results on a business side.

Ad Words or pay-per-click are additional promotional programs and it can be an expensive alternative. Participation in the program should be left to the expert who will charge a monthly management fee.Unless you have a plenty of time, it is better to leave pay-per-click to the expert. You have to compete with other florists for the top position on sponsored search results, driving the price for your keywords up. Since seven of ten searchers prefers to click to the natural search results, rather than a sponsored searches, it is better to pay to have your web site fully optimized. Your monthly costs of harnessing the traffic to your web site might be equivalent to the monthly price to pay for a prime location around Yonge and Bloor.

Expectation of fully automating retail sales through the website and avoiding any personal cost was another illusion of doing business online for flower website in Toronto. While Internet shoppers may order online with an automated shopping basket and provide credit card information, they still might have some important questions.

If would be a great mistake to have an automated web site and omit your full business address and location of your store or flower processing center, if you are an online retailer only. The phone numbers should be answered minimum 12 hours a day by a knowledgeable personnel able to provide a status of an order on demand. Calls processing center in far-away place or just have a generic answering service will not do any good to your flower business online. Most shoppers avoid dealing with online florist-brokers and prefer a local merchant in the place, where they are sending they flower to. Shoppers expect to pay in Canadian dollars. You might have a well design websites explaining your products, services and policies, but shoppers might still call you about the same questions. Many shoppers absorb their information verbally, rather then reading. It is then advisable to have your staff well trained in the product knowledge and good manners of customers’ service. Some shoppers buying online view it as a choir to gat done as soon as is possible, for some it is an event worth of social talk.

Above are just few observations based on real experience of doing business as a florist in Toronto. Starting with a well established store in a traditional way and changing in scope to generate a bigger part of business coming from online.

Are you a Toronto flower delivery shop looking for online promotion? Check out the Toronto flower online directory, that has a separate section for Valentine’s Day flowers delivery.