I am dropping the Teleflora find-a-florist program. Anyone else dropped it? Does it make an impact to have or not to have it? cutting as many small charges as I can, so any help would be appreciated
Find a florist
- Thread starter herndonflorist
- Start date
David
Well-Known Member
I think you need to check your web stats. You should look at how many visitors you get from them and how many orders originated from find a florist.
Eric S
Demoted Webmaster
Ditto what david says. You can't just assume that this is the best way to save money. But I think you can answer this question yourself by looking if the TF directory shows up for searchs in your town. How many other shops are also competing for the bread crumbs of traffic that the Teleflora Directory gets.
Ask yourself this. How will the consumer find your shop. If the directory was the only way then you have a problem. But I doubt that and I'm sure your web stats will show otherwise.
Directories used to be great but they have been falling lower and lower in ranks including Find a florist, locateaflowershop and flowershop network.
Do yourself a favor and ask Teleflora to offer you a lower price to continue your listing before you just leave.
Also take a look at the t4affic report from Alexa. It could help you sleep better when you do leave.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/findaflorist.com#
Ask yourself this. How will the consumer find your shop. If the directory was the only way then you have a problem. But I doubt that and I'm sure your web stats will show otherwise.
Directories used to be great but they have been falling lower and lower in ranks including Find a florist, locateaflowershop and flowershop network.
Do yourself a favor and ask Teleflora to offer you a lower price to continue your listing before you just leave.
Also take a look at the t4affic report from Alexa. It could help you sleep better when you do leave.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/findaflorist.com#
Awesome! FlowerChat.com has a better Alexa rank than FindAFlorist.com.
CAUTION, I AM HIJACKING! Eric please help me understand the link you gave us to look at for the web traffic report from Alexa. I looked at it & I don't understand it. I too am getting rid of TFS Find A Florist. I will still be with TF for awhile but I am taking my website down with them (sick of it all, the fees, extra add ons & the $3.45 they take from every order, I am done with that the end of Jan!) so there is no need to have the Find A Florist since it only brings up TF sites. I took my www.fanciesflowers.com url from TFS website & put it on my own independent website, which I love by the way! Anyway temporarily I put on a different url on my TF website (fanciesflowers.biz) till that part of my contract ran out. But I just don't understand all the web traffic info & I need to know. I read on another post that LINKS were going to be one of the deciding factors on how you place on Googles search engine. I just don't know what to do anymore to keep my name close to the top. This is all driving me crazy! I did put in my own url on Alexa site & found 6 links & I don't even know how they got there or who they are from. I don't understand the link think at all. I thought if you had your name in a phone book it linked to your site and that would show up as a link but it doesn't, so I just don't get it. The report didn't show a link from Find A Florist to my url. Can you help with this, much appreciated! Thanks
Eric S
Demoted Webmaster
First lets just keep it simple and address your concerns with find a florist.
Find a florist is a directory that list teleflora florist by city and state.
Everything looks great on their site except how do they get traffic to their site?
Thats the key and unless their site is coming up before yours there is really no reason to use it. But there is many factors to consider. First you have to do some research and see if their site comes up before yours.
I'll start out simple and look for florist rapid city, sd on google. Your website comes up under the local listing and according to my results their website comes up on page 2. So thats just one reason why you wouldn't need it. But its only one reason so far. You have think like your customers and figure out what are they searching for when they are looking to send flowers.
Find a florist is a good URL. So if someone is searching on google for Find A Florist then their website comes up and if the consumer clicks on the website they can find what they are looking for.
If you type in florist only and look you will see that the website also appears a little lower down but it is there. But you have to ask yourself is your customer really just going to type in florist only with no reference to a city? Maybe or Maybe not. Thats where your website logs tell you how customers are finding you.
But when you are listed on findaflorist you don't have access to that information so the only thing you see in your reports is the number of visitors that came from findaflorist and visited your website. I'm not sure if Teleflora gives you conversion information such as how a vistor came to your site and actually bought something on your site. But thats the one wayyou would find out what works and what doesn't. If course its never that easy and its hard to decide if consumers are calling in versus placing the order on the website. So that means you have to ask your customer when they called how did you find us.
I understand the frustration trying to figure this all out. I'm not all knowing in this area but I do know that it takes plenty of research and time to decide if something can work is working or never worked in the first place.
Find a florist is a directory that list teleflora florist by city and state.
Everything looks great on their site except how do they get traffic to their site?
Thats the key and unless their site is coming up before yours there is really no reason to use it. But there is many factors to consider. First you have to do some research and see if their site comes up before yours.
I'll start out simple and look for florist rapid city, sd on google. Your website comes up under the local listing and according to my results their website comes up on page 2. So thats just one reason why you wouldn't need it. But its only one reason so far. You have think like your customers and figure out what are they searching for when they are looking to send flowers.
Find a florist is a good URL. So if someone is searching on google for Find A Florist then their website comes up and if the consumer clicks on the website they can find what they are looking for.
If you type in florist only and look you will see that the website also appears a little lower down but it is there. But you have to ask yourself is your customer really just going to type in florist only with no reference to a city? Maybe or Maybe not. Thats where your website logs tell you how customers are finding you.
But when you are listed on findaflorist you don't have access to that information so the only thing you see in your reports is the number of visitors that came from findaflorist and visited your website. I'm not sure if Teleflora gives you conversion information such as how a vistor came to your site and actually bought something on your site. But thats the one wayyou would find out what works and what doesn't. If course its never that easy and its hard to decide if consumers are calling in versus placing the order on the website. So that means you have to ask your customer when they called how did you find us.
I understand the frustration trying to figure this all out. I'm not all knowing in this area but I do know that it takes plenty of research and time to decide if something can work is working or never worked in the first place.
Flowermomma
Well-Known Member
anytimeflowers
Linda
Carol,
Links are confusing, I barely understand them myself. Infinite says flowerchat shows up before findaflorist. Flowerchat and facebook are in the top ten of my stats for how people got to my website.
I checked and you don't have your URL listed on your profile on this forum. DO THAT! Very important link. A link refers search engines back to your site FROM another site. So if you list a URL of somebody else on YOUR site, you have given THEM a link. Make sense?
Get your URL on your profile right now before you look at any other threads, just edit your profile, you'll find the spot.
Links are confusing, I barely understand them myself. Infinite says flowerchat shows up before findaflorist. Flowerchat and facebook are in the top ten of my stats for how people got to my website.
I checked and you don't have your URL listed on your profile on this forum. DO THAT! Very important link. A link refers search engines back to your site FROM another site. So if you list a URL of somebody else on YOUR site, you have given THEM a link. Make sense?
Get your URL on your profile right now before you look at any other threads, just edit your profile, you'll find the spot.
Eric S
Demoted Webmaster
The alexa rank really isn't important. What's important is seeing the data that shows how a website in this case find a florist gets their traffic.
Another factor in determining if a directory helps your site's placement in Google is whether or not the search engines use the directory as a local citation.
To see some of your businesses' citations (Google does not display them all), go to your Place Page (the one for your business) and scroll to the bottom of the page. Your citations are listed in the 'More About This Place' section.
Look through them to see what other sources G uses as signals about your business.
- FlowerChat is a citation for us since we're listed in the directory here. That means G trusts the data - which is a good thing.
Others include:
- The PFCI Directory on SAF's website
- Locateaflowershop.com (another directory)
- CitySearch, CityVoter, Yahoo Local, Yellowbot, InsiderPages listings also appear in our citations.
I do see FindaFlorist.com listed as a citation for other local flower shops so it does have some value. Is it a reason to keep a listing? Not if you have lots of other trusted sites under your name. If you only have a few, then work to get your business listed in some of the places mentioned above.
To see some of your businesses' citations (Google does not display them all), go to your Place Page (the one for your business) and scroll to the bottom of the page. Your citations are listed in the 'More About This Place' section.
Look through them to see what other sources G uses as signals about your business.
- FlowerChat is a citation for us since we're listed in the directory here. That means G trusts the data - which is a good thing.
Others include:
- The PFCI Directory on SAF's website
- Locateaflowershop.com (another directory)
- CitySearch, CityVoter, Yahoo Local, Yellowbot, InsiderPages listings also appear in our citations.
I do see FindaFlorist.com listed as a citation for other local flower shops so it does have some value. Is it a reason to keep a listing? Not if you have lots of other trusted sites under your name. If you only have a few, then work to get your business listed in some of the places mentioned above.