Sorry about the title, but I wanted to get your attention!

Many florists claim that they do not have the time nor expertise to manage their own website... I ask, can you afford to not take the time??

Alot of you rely on wire service "template" sites for your businesses.  IMHO, this is NOT a good option for ANY florist.  Wire service templates, while efficient at getting you on the web, are very inefficient at getting you sales...

Try this test.... Go Google yourself.... try these searches:
florist city state (your city state) or flowers city state or roses city state did you find yourself on the first page??  If so...Congrats! If not..keep reading...

Next search: Florist midland michigan, flowers midland michigan, roses midland michigan, or any other term you wish and see what result you get...(I already know that my shop will come up number one).

THe thing about wire service templates, and while they are managable if you take the time is that most florists don;t take the time...I can not stress this enuf, TAKE THE TIME! Otherwise you are simply spending money on something that will never result in a "paying for itself" gig.  Most florists do not even take the time to change the "bioler-plate" text on the "About Us" page, or add in their real physical address, not to mention adding images of their own work and key words that include their city/state.

It may seem that I am picking on wire service sites...and I guess I am, simply because they are the best example of what NOT to do!  Get yourself a stand alone site like www.smithsflowers.com or www.mcadamsfloral.com .  When you look at these two sites you will see that they are totally different, BUT the thing is, they are really the exact same site.  Changable from one format to the other with ONE simple check box and a refresh.  For more information on this type of site visit www.digitalthoughts.com a very affordable, very easily managed, very functional site format, that will allow any florist to do their own site.

Keep in mind, that Google, Yahoo and most other search engines get their information from Dmoz, the open directory project.  Dmoz has rules for listing sites...they can not, or will not list sites, ranking them highly that do not have unique content.  It's just the way it works.  

I guess what this all biols down to is that if a florist wants to succeed on the web, even if only locally in their market, you must commit the time to doing a website that will work, why spend money on something that at best, will only get found if you direct the consumer to it with other advertising...oh and DON'T use PAY PER CLICK marketing....it's not worth the expense...

Were here to help...


_________________
MAS, floral technology writen by florists, owned by florists and supported by florists.
MAS USA Sales 800-631-0470

Okay Mark and Clay,
I hear you, don't know when I'm going to have the time, but will try.  What am I doing wrong.  We have had our own website for years.  But no, to answer your question, my shop doesn't come up on the first 10 pages.  I've done a few things, but really at a loss as to the first step.
I really don't even know where to begin.  How much time a week do you guys spend on JUST maintaining your website and keeping it upto date?  To say I feel overwhelmed with just normal daily operations of this business is putting it mildly, but don't get me wrong, I've always known that technology is key, and I believe in it, as witnessed by my conversion to MAS, but this one might just be out of my realm of time and expertise.  Any advice would be helpful.  DO i need to hire (ugh!) someone?  Can you guys run me through some basic weekly procedures for maintenance? etc.  
thanks
parie

Is adding keywords... florist amarillo texas, florist in amarillotexas, florist amarillo tx, flowers amarillo texas, flowers amarillo tx, roses amarillo texas, roses amarillo tx...

You get the idea...

Register your site at Dmoz... www.dmoz.org for your city/state under the shopping>florist catagory as well as under any specific products you carry...

Go to Google/Yahoo do a search for florist amarillo texas...at the bottom of the page there is a place for "Help us improve" "Did not find what you were looking for"...type in your URL and submit.  THese entries are viewed by real humans, not computers, and they will often add you in manually...

As to time, the site I use, I spend maybe an hour a month on...unless I am adding alot of images, but here too, the way my site works I can add an image and wording in about 5 minutes per, once the images is on my PC.  One other trick is to change the wording on pages like the about us, visit us etc...this way when the spiders/bots travel your site they see the changes...changes to a site make the spiders recognize changes and they assume the content is fresher than a site that never changes...

HTH


_________________
MAS, floral technology writen by florists, owned by florists and supported by florists.
MAS USA Sales 800-631-0470

Parie,
After looking at your site, one big reason you're not getting ranking on the search engines, is a lack of information. From looking at your first page, I don't know where you are located, plus not trying to insult your site designer, put from a search engine's perspective, it's extremely hard to tell that this is a florists' website. The image alternate text (text that shows up if you leave mouse over for a second or two) is very generic.
Even on secondary pages, there's very little text detail, which makes the site search engine un-friendly. Graphics are great to use and make a site look better (usually) but search engine spiders are computer programs, they can't view any images.
Now for the small sales pitch, take a look at Mark and Clay's websites, Digital Thoughts Interactive has been working with florists' on their websites since 1997. The program behind the websites' is WebsiteCP, which is web based and allows you to control all aspects of the site, with a very user friendly interface. If you're interested, feel free to e-mail me.
Brent Sifford
Digital Thoughts Interactive - http://www.digitalthoughts.com
Phone: 512.215.4608
E-mail: sales@digitalthoughts.com

I have looked at both sites referred to here and my question is what program are you all using to do the editing of your pics for your web sites. Our site has all pics of work we have done here at the shop but am having a problen with the clarity of them. Have tried to thumbs but they look so small and a little out of focus, tried resizing to fit in the areasand some are still not crisp as I would like. Pics taken using a digital Fiji Fine Pix s602 zoom. Using Adobe business edition for croping etc. Do have an area set up with strobs,backdrop etc. Would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions
Thanks
Rich
www.theflowerplacefv.com

About the dmoz. That directly is great, but don't expect anything anytime soon. Depending on how many editors there are for the category you submit for, the wait time is anywhere from 6-18 months just to get looked at. If you do eventually get on there, that is a great high PR backlink.. but don't hold your breathe.

Rich, some of the photos are cropped in Adobe Photoshop but 90% of them were all dynamically created. With the website software Smith's and McAdam's use (WebsiteCP by DigitalThoughts), image thumbnails are automatically created. You just upload the photo, and it will automatically scale it down and create a thumbnail. Makes the whole process efficient and painless.

From what I gathered about you camera, you should be getting decent quality pictures. A quick google tells me that the particular model you mentioned is a 3.x megapixel camera. I personally own a 3.0 mega pixel camera, and while it might not be a photographers dream, it s perfectly capable of capturing nice images... especially for the web.

When you save you images, make sure the quality is decent. Personally I wouldnt save anything below 40-50%. Also if you are manually resizing by grabbing the corner of the image try holding down the SHIFT key while you resize. This will ensure that you keep the original size ratio.

- Jared

with a 2.0 Mega Pixel, and at 75% quality wise (mostly for file size).  I use a combination of Halogen spots, with florescent shop lights to give a combined color hue, and shoot against foam core to reduce "shine" and have a none invasive background.

The software we use (and sell by the way) automatically creates both the thunb nail as well as the larger image.  Digital Thoughts Interactive, has just recently added the ability to choose what sizes you want so you have the ability to vary the image sizes.

Rich, if you are interested I can provide a demo of the back end of the site over the web...

mark


_________________
MAS, floral technology writen by florists, owned by florists and supported by florists.
MAS USA Sales 800-631-0470

Rich, I first have to congrat you on having an independant site.

It amazes me how man florists will pay xxxx amount each month and pay xxxx amount or percentage for each order that goes thru YOUR website. Question to the non-independant website florists- How many of you have a WS come into your shop and arrange the front window and ALL of the displays as they wish...alot with their products, then pay them a fee for EVERY purchase made in your shop? Oh, I forgot...you also pay them a fee every month for them to come change your window displays for the floral seasons....lets say 6 times a year. OK, give me a minute.......while I count the hands.

Regarding digital pictures, lighting is the bigest issue with taking good digital pictures....but looking at yours, I think your situation is more into the re-sizing part. I have several different light tents (cubes) to test out for a future article for Flower Management, you might also benifit from a more controlled light source....possible.

Besides picture quality on a website, other things to consider is your ability to ad you own unique description and have the option to use three price points. Other things to consider is the flexability to choose dates when you would like an item or a catagory gets displayed and taken off. You could be working on some of your fall/Christmas product pictures w/ descriptions now and have it show up at a predefined time...and automatically go off at whatever time you wish. Anyway, just a FEW of the features. Just like the MAS fokes, we are continually adding new features and making updates.

For anybody that does not know all of the modorators on this forum, they are as follows,
Boss (Mark)- Well everyone knows Boss.....he is one of us.
Jared (Jared)- Graphic Artist for WebsiteCP & FSM, SEO, FSM programing, contributor to WebsiteCP
Digital Thoughts (Brent)- WebsiteCP co-creator, THE designer and programmer for same.
clay (Clay)- Creator of FlowerShopMarketing and co-creator of WebsiteCP and a REAL 2nd generation florist


_________________
clay
www.McAdamsFloral.com
www.McAdamsFuneralFlorist.com
www.InLieuOfFlowers.info

Jared -

The backlog for review of suggested sites at http://www.dmoz.org might get smaller if anyone interested in helping review them would click 'Become an editor' in a smallish category where they can find three appropriate sites that are not listed.  Categories for specific cities in the Regional area are an especially good place to start.    

The editors index unique content on the web, by category. Editors are volunteers interested in helping surfers find original information across the world wide web.  Web librarians if you will, people committed to helping others find relevant information regarding specific topics.

http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Texas/Localities/V/Victoria/Business_and_Economy/Shopping/ would be where florists (and other retailers with store fronts) in Victoria would be listed.  Know three that have unique websites and aren't already listed? What are you waiting for?

Even if you don't want to apply, you can suggest the sites for review - but then you'll just be waiting for some volunteer to come along later.  

More about the organization here: http://dmoz.org/about.html .
Forum sponsored by the ODP editors: http://www.resource-zone.com/

BOSS wrote:

Go to Google/Yahoo do a search for florist amarillo texas...at the bottom of the page there is a place for "Help us improve" "Did not find what you were looking for"...type in your URL and submit.  THese entries are viewed by real humans, not computers, and they will often add you in manually...

Boss,
The easiest place to submit a site for a crawl by a Google spider is here: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Yahoo's submission links are located here: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html . You can also sign up to be listed in their directory - for $299 per year. https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/  Otherwise, you pretty much have to wait until one of their spiders finds your site via an inbound link.

Submissions to MSN go here: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

BTW, do you guys at Digital Thoughts primarily offer templates or will you also offer SEO for a fee? Florists with existing sites might find that type of service of interest.

HTH

Well I submitted McAdams to http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Flowers/Florists/North_America/United_States/Texas/.

Not sure what the SEO difference if you apply by business type of more so by location (ie victoira).

Actually to my suprise we are listed. Makes me go   . !!

I checked about 2 weeks ago and we were not on there. Wow.

I know I submitted the site sometime last semister, so atleast 4 months ago, and we must of just now got in.

Some of my other sites I submitted to in March never got in. Then again their cat. was more general.

I actually entered McAdams in a bunch of directories at the beginning of the summer to get the number of back links up.

http://www.best-web-directories.com/free-directories.htm has some other high PR alternatives besides dmoz.

Not sure about anybody else, but when I filled out the on line business listing for Google Local, first they had to send me a post card with my approved ID and Password, and once you enter that, you have to wait for approval again.


_________________
clay
www.McAdamsFloral.com
www.McAdamsFuneralFlorist.com
www.InLieuOfFlowers.info

clay wrote:

Not sure about anybody else, but when I filled out the on line business listing for Google Local, first they had to send me a post card with my approved ID and Password, and once you enter that, you have to wait for approval again.

I did this and also received the postcard. It didn't take very long for them to add us. When I google myself using the word florist and my city/state I am in the local top listing section, but when I use the words flowers or roses I am not there. Do you know if we can update our info or what?

Thanks!


_________________
Patty

CHR wrote:

BTW, do you guys at Digital Thoughts primarily offer templates or will you also offer SEO for a fee? Florists with existing sites might find that type of service of interest.

HTH

There are tons of SEO places on the Internet and I don't know or trust any of them. If BOSS said I could trust Digital Thoughts I trust BOSS so I woudl trust them. So yes, please think about it.


_________________
Patty

Patty -- CHR:

On SEO, yes we can offer SEO suggestions for existing sites. Now, since we've been developing the Florist edition of WebsiteCP that takes into account SEO in its base design that helps florists' on the program to improve their search engine rankings. But, many of these items can be easily added/changed on most existing sites.
Feel free to contact me for further information.
Sincerely,
Brent Sifford
Digital Thoughts Interactive
Office: 512.215.4608
Web: http://www.digitalthoughts.com
E-mail: sales@digitalthoughts.com

A site that I have used to promote my own website is selfpromotion.com.  It has tons of information regarding how to set up your website to increase visibility in the search engines. For a minimal ($20) yearly donation, his site will also automatically submit your site to several directories and search engines every two months or month (can't remember).

Lots of great info there.

I think i'm one of those people that likes to try and do everything myself. It's a bit hard to get out of the habit. Not that I haven't been down the other road, 5 shops, 30 plus staff etc. But now i've come full circle and back to just worrying about myself. After a while you get to realise that you can't physically do everything on your own. Yes, I built the website myself when things were a bit quiet. That was from the point of not knowing what html stood for. It was a lot of late nights, but I sort of knew what i wanted and just didn't believe I could rely on someone else to do it. So basically, I knocked up the site with about 450 pages, lots of content etc and didn't worry too much about fine tuning. Then for about 3 months i wondered why Google didn't know i existed. It was only when someone told me about navigation buttons and images not being recognised by search engines, that i quickly put up a site map listing all the pages. I can't say for sure that it was the answer, but it wasn't long before i was listed. So using your test of "florist haslemere" and just looking at the first page of results, i get multiple listings accross 3 browsers i.e avant=3, firefox=4, google=1. Using "flowers haslemere" i get avant=8, firefox=5, google=3. Admittedly, its only a small town, but there are a lot of online sites pretending to have a "shop" here. So, I am starting to believe it's the 'unique content' that works, even though it does need a lot of cleaning up. There is no online shop at present, so i wouldn't expect to get listed on a national basis, although it would be interesting to see the effect it may have. I am getting several thousand unique hits per week now and it would be great if they all converted into phone calls. But sadly that is not the case. So i suspect that a lot of the visitors just want to see a shopping cart, buy something and leave. So from that perspective, I am probably losing a lot by not having the online shop. It doesn't stress me too much at the moment because we are really busy anyway, which is why i just haven't got the time to do anything about it. But when I think about it, bearing in mind that i kick back 20% for incoming relay orders, it would definitely be worth paying someone xxx to get it all together and start bringing in orders that don't deduct commission. So looking at the posts above, i would have to say that if you haven't got a productive site and you could do with the extra business it should be worth the investment. Like, hey, you could pay a part timer a few grand a year just to keep the place tidy, so what's the difference.  
Comments are always welcome

www.haslemereflowers.co.uk