Flower Shop Network

Sorry about your troubles. The best move that I made was to a strider site. It is wonderful. I still belong to teleflora, but only use a select few of their pictures on my site, plus some john henry everyday arrangments. I own all my domain names. I have seen a great increase in orders and ranking for my website.

I am not crazy with some of FSN designs.. but I do send and receive order through them. I have preffered florist and alot are in the Seattle area as we are trying to get rid of the BIG wire services.

Please feel free to call me anytime, as I would be happy to help you.
 
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I wouldn't mind seeing FSN respond to this. It probally would be a good idea because I'm really not understanding what the heck happened here.

A domain name points to where your website is hosted.

To make changes to this would effect the way your website would appear in the search engines and it could take up 3 months before things would return back to normal.

It kinda sounds like you didn't give the FSN website enough time. How long where you using the FSN website?
 
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We were with FSN about 3 months before we decided to swtich back. I understand we weren't with them for a long time - but we were losing local customers who used to order from us all the time and decided we didn't want to continue with FSN.
 
Thank you all for your comments. I am also looking forward to having FSN reply. I will let you kow if i hear back from them in reguards to the letter i sent detailing our experiences of the last few months.

I am heading out on a post-valentines day vacation so won't be aorund to respond to the thread next week if this conversation continues. I look forward to checking on it when I return.

Thank you again for your comments and your time in reading through our experiences.
 
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srowe99 said:
We were with FSN about 3 months before we decided to swtich back. I understand we weren't with them for a long time - but we were losing local customers who used to order from us all the time and decided we didn't want to continue with FSN.
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Thats not enough time. And now you have switched your domain forwarding to another hosting company and that is going to screw things up for another 3 months.

Did you ask your regular customers what was the problem?
 
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Eric S said:
Thats not enough time. And now you have switched your domain forwarding to another hosting company and that is going to screw things up for another 3 months.

Did you ask your regular customers what was the problem?
Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree - we convert sites and see improvements in a matter of days. The 3 month rule is well outdated now.

Besides, if previous customers who were coming directly stopped ordering, that's very indicative of a problem of some nature.
 
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Infinite said:
We convert sites and see improvements in a matter of days.
Click to expand...

So then are you thinking that it was just the website sucking or the domain not forwarded correctly?

When I switched from our TF site to our yahoo site I saw the same drop off and it took some time to get people back to ordering on the site. Perhaps it's a trust thing maybe?
 
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I also had a bad experience with FSN regarding their website. They have pressured me on numerous occasions to change to their website and I've explained over and over that I won't because my website does very well and customers love it and I like being in total control of it. I also told them I don't agree with the 4.99 service fee on top of a delivery charge. I also felt like I had to ask a lot of questions in order to find out about this 4.99 fee and if it was "no problem at all" then I didn't understand why they weren't upfront about the fee to me.

They told me that I was making a very bad business decision by not getting their website because it would increase our visibility and raise our sales. I tell them my website does awesome in sales and ranks very high on the search for my town. I honestly felt bullied by the whole thing. They said that no one has a problem paying the service fee but I just don't understand how they could possibly know that because the people who have a problem might just order somewhere else.

Then they picked on my website saying that the front page should be full of arrangements--not photos of us and our shop. I disagree, obviously, because I like it to be very clear that we are local and I like for people to feel that they know us a little from our website. This is just my opinion and I respect that others might not feel the same way but to tell me that this is bad business and that our sales would go down because the products are hidden and people like to see the products immediately is just out of line. I felt bullied and didn't understand why they were taking it to this level.

I'm still a member for sending orders but I'm glad they've left me alone about this website business finally.
 
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I just tried out an order for your shop and no I don't get charged the 4.99...

Flowermomma, have you ever searched your shop...I had a really hard time finding you until I put in flower shop network after your name and city...You really might want to go in and claim your listings and add in the website address so it can get searched more readily...If I am, looking for you specifically and it is hard to find, you aren't gonna show up for a random florist search either...

go to getlisted.org and make sure you claim all of the listings on that for a start..sorry getlisted doesn't work for Canada zip codes...
 
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i am trying to improve my web standing but having a hard time doing it.
as you can see the other shop in town is with teleflora and all over the net.

i'm stuck on how to improve it!

what search are you using?
i use google and i'm the second list with the map and appear twice on the first page.
 
Flowermomma said:
i am trying to improve my web standing but having a hard time doing it.
as you can see the other shop in town is with teleflora and all over the net.

i'm stuck on how to improve it!

what search are you using?
i use google and i'm the second list with the map and appear twice on the first page.
Click to expand...
Hey there.

We have been FSN since the beginning and spent a great deal of our time working on our site and off-site to improve our rankings.

We have never had the service fee in Canada, and I am not sure why, but it's something to do with how the credit cards are charged. In Canada we clear our own cards. I don't know if that has changed, but I always thought it was a fee charged to the florist per order and was $3.99, not $4.99. I guess that may have changed.

Anyway, you can rank well with FSN. The only reason we are no longer fully utilizing their service is because we outgrew it and needed something that was fully customizable to work with. This is not for everyone, and I believe that used correctly, FSN can be a great starting point for florists to get their act together online. The fees are low, the images are great and from what I have seen in 7 years is that the customer service is fantastic. I have some of them as friends on facebook.

Anyway, I also took a look at your rankings for your site, and you have some work to do! You may be seeing results that are tainted by your own search patterns, your location or some other weird Google bug in your system.

- Google your own name and spend time looking through the directories that come up and CLAIM ALL YOUR LISTINGS. The impact of this alone will be significant and is a great start for you.

- Search "SEO" on FlowerChat.

I hope this helps.
 
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lori042499 said:
go to getlisted.org and make sure you claim all of the listings on that for a start..sorry getlisted doesn't work for Canada zip codes...
Click to expand...

GetListed.org is now available in Beta for Canada: http://ca.getlisted.org/

BOSS said:
Where oh where is FSN? The silence is deafening ;) <poke>
Click to expand...

I contacted Mandy for a response immediately after this thread was posted a week ago. Not sure why they haven't responded yet.
 
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Flowermomma said:
ok you looked at my ranking? but how do I do that?

sigh I"m really not up on computers enough.
Click to expand...
Claim the listings? When you Google your shop name, I get a lot of directories popping up with "Unclaimed Listings". These are auto generated directories, and the info has come from YellowPages or DMOZ or other sources. You just go to the directory pages and click on the "claim listing" button (which most have) and follow the prompts. Each one will be a little different and some will require you to jump through some hoops to get the listing claimed. You can then add your own information to the listings, including your web address etc.

By improving these listings, and especially adding the link to your shop, you will see an almost immediate effect on your rankings. This is a small but very important ranking factor for your site.

Here's the google search. See all those directories, like Cylex, Yelp, iBegin etc. Those are the ones.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&c...wers+and+charm&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

The first listing I get for you on that search above is GoldBook and it links here, which is a dead link. For that one, choose "Update Listing" at the top of the page.
http://www.allflowersandcharm.ca/

See this yelp link to your store's page and see the "Claim Listing" button?
http://www.yelp.ca/biz/all-flowers-and-charm-new-hamburg

See our yelp page includes our web link and some other stuff. It's not a great listing, but it is at least claimed and has some info.
http://www.yelp.ca/biz/dragonfly-flowers-winnipeg-2
 
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You should also get your web address in as a link on your profile here and get yourself into the directory, start getting some photos into the gallery here, these all get back to your site and strt developing like streets to your webpage...if you look up my shop name you will see the fact that I have a crumb trail all over the internet directing back to my shop...every post I leave I put in my web address, every email I send has a link to my email...just think of the internet as the open wilderness and you are walking in it...you want to leave little reminders along the way of the direction back home..Everything you do on the internet should direct back home to your webpage especially if it is professionally relevant...maybe not if you are searching porn or leaving really nasty essages on anon chat sites, but anything that has to do with who you are as a business person...you need to build yourself an online presence just like a community presence every park you leave keeps you in the front lines of the net..
 
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