WS Templates vs Independent Sites

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I have been thinking about the 15000 tf websites and the multi thousand FTD sites....

If the sites are so inferior to independent website developer's templates, then why are there so many out there?

Do they or do they not work? given the notion that they seem to be the leaders in flower shop websites, one could conclude that they do work and are effective.

Nothing specious about that is there?

joe


p.s. I thought I made my comments very clear that I was guessing at the numbers when I questioned the 15000 number.
 
Joe -

I guess I lose my sense of humor when my long-time assertion about the advantages of running a unique site is dubbed 'specious' i.e. 'deceptive' and just plain wrong - and then the assertion gets requoted.

How about this...

If you are just one of two shops in a town of 3400 people, have inbound links from your local funeral homes and can get user reviews, it really doesn't matter what kind of site you have or whether you SEO or customize it - as long it runs and looks pretty...

If you are in a competitve marketplace, there are advantages - from a search engine placement standpoint, from offering a distinctive user experience, and from a cost standpoint - to running a unique site. Those benefits have been here outlined ad nauseum. To call them specious is an insult.
 
Not being a business owner, I have to toss something into the pile here......If your shop is working hard to brand itself............using everything from customized business cards, to logos, to enclosure cards, design styles, flowers used, whatever methods you are using to set yourself apart in your marketplace......wouldn't you have to put that same level of individualism and uniqueness into your website? Isn't the website sussposed to function as an extension of your store?
 
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Originally Posted by Joe Mioux
So the old argument that runs its cycle here is specious. That argument is "WS templates are inferior because everyone has them and florists need to distinguish themselves from the rest."


I had to go look it up, and I love that word specious, especially in this context.
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I think I have been misunderstood, yes I have since the word deceptive was used there. Where the hey did you draw the conclusion that I even inferred running a unique site is deceptive?????

I was referring to this particular claim and yes I believe it to be specious.

Am I using that word that wrong? I read the definintion I looked up as "plausable but false".

It had nothing to do with Joe's erroneous numbers of how many wire service websites exist. AMOF the more that exist the more impact the "speciousness" (loving this word, even if I am using it wrong) of the claim becomes.

I do not nor never have disputed that having an independent site is preferable, as long as it is at least as good as a wire service site in attractiveness and useability - as many independent sites are not, including mine. (Yes mine lacks features that they do better than me)

That claim so often heard here that wire service sites are inferior just because so many have them is just not true in my opinion.

I'll go right back to - you'll get out of them what you put into them, no matter who builds them.

In case I am not being clear and am again about to be misunderstood - I'll plainly say that I think the "duplicate content" claims we hear so often here are a load of bollocks, in my opinion.

A specious assumption, plausable but false. There's more, but I'm trying to look like I am working.

and - opinions vary

which is kewl
 
I don't know about specious but I am pretty sure many florists use WS websites because they don't know a thing about websites and don't care and just want it handled. Which is fine, but then they are at the mercy of the WS in multiple ways which have already been mentioned.

Ok my website can be improved but I have complete control over it and that makes me do a little happy dance.

Other than certain people here who I've talked to/trust/know are good designers etc. and have a WS template site.... if I don't know anything about the florist and am searching online & have to choose between a florist who has a good-looking custom site or a WS template site I will choose the florist with the custom site because it makes me think they are generally more creative.
(sorry for the run-on sentence, hope it didn't hurt anyone's brain)
 
bloomz said:
In case I am not being clear and am again about to be misunderstood - I'll plainly say that I think the "duplicate content" claims we hear so often here are a load of bollocks, in my opinion.

A specious assumption, plausable but false.
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How clear do search engines have be to tell us about avoiding duplicate content? Read Google's instructions for webmasters:

-
Duplicate content


Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:
  • Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
  • Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
  • Printer-only versions of web pages
However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.

Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a "regular" and "printer" version of each article, and neither of these is blocked in robots.txt or with a noindex meta tag, we'll choose one of them to list. In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.
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Emphasis mine.

If you have 40 TF hosted template sites in LA, one might break through - especially if it has a keyword rich domain name. The other 39 generally are lost in the dust in natural Search.

We saw that in Mark's example about the Toronto FOL site. But what about the other 20+ FOL sites for Toronto florists? I see just 1 cracking the top 20 in G.

You can search around for the exceptions, but time after time I've seen - and continue to see - the templates, especially with their duplicate products & descriptions, appear below unique sites. Sometimes far below....
 
CHR said:
Joe -

I guess I lose my sense of humor when my long-time assertion about the advantages of running a unique site is dubbed 'specious' i.e. 'deceptive' and just plain wrong - and then the assertion gets requoted.

How about this...

If you are just one of two shops in a town of 3400 people, have inbound links from your local funeral homes and can get user reviews, it really doesn't matter what kind of site you have or whether you SEO or customize it - as long it runs and looks pretty...

If you are in a competitve marketplace, there are advantages - from a search engine placement standpoint, from offering a distinctive user experience, and from a cost standpoint - to running a unique site. Those benefits have been here outlined ad nauseum. To call them specious is an insult.
Click to expand...

Actually, I am competing with7 other flower shops, in addition to 3 or 4 home based wedding florists, and 7 other businesses that competes with my on other gift lines in a population base of 35K.

so please don't think that I don't have to distinguish myself among that mix!

my point has always been that you promote non-ws "custom" website as superior to the WS templates.

In many cases, the WS template works well.... very well. After all 15000 TF florists can't all be wrong, can they?

and that argument is what I find as troubling -- specious. You have insisted in past threads that WS templates are inferior to non WS templates... and I have insisted that we need to look at the demographics of each florist in order to base a recommendation.

joe

i am not inferring in anyway that your are being less than honest. I think you and I are just having a good debate and better defining the needs of websites, be they WS or independent vendor created.
 
Joe Mioux said:
You have insisted in past threads that WS templates are inferior to non WS templates... and I have insisted that we need to look at the demographics of each florist in order to base a recommendation.
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Having run both myself, as has JB, I can assure you first hand that moving a site off a WS server can improve not only search volume, but sales.

- A template based site is better than no site.
- A customized/optimized template-based site performs better than a basic WS template.
- The more 'same' versions there are of a template in a target market, the harder it is to appear near the top of search due to duplicate content issues.
- The more contect rich (unique) a site is, the more likely it is to gain links from other sites.

And there are sooooooo many other factors that come into play, all which have been discussed - not just with 'I think so's' but with hard facts and first-hand accounts.

Like Joan said, paying TF (or FTD) several thousand dollars in per-order fees for traffic we generated, plus having to deal with the "suprise" products added to the sites makes independent hosting even more attractive.
 
CHR said:
Having run both myself, as has JB, I can assure you first hand that moving a site off a WS server can improve not only search volume, but sales.

- A template based site is better than no site.
- A customized/optimized template-based site performs better than a basic WS template.
- The more 'same' versions there are of a template in a target market, the harder it is to appear near the top of search due to duplicate content issues.
- The more contect rich (unique) a site is, the more likely it is to gain links from other sites.

And there are sooooooo many other factors that come into play, all which have been discussed - not just with 'I think so's' but with hard facts and first-hand accounts.

Like Joan said, paying TF (or FTD) several thousand dollars in per-order fees for traffic we generated, plus having to deal with the "suprise" products added to the sites makes independent hosting even more attractive.
Click to expand...


Again- that was my main reason for dropping WS site, the per order fees alone saves me over $3000 a year!:bouncy:
 
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master J said:
[/I][/B]

Again- that was my main reason for dropping WS site, the per order fees alone saves me over $3000 a year!:bouncy:
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It's always been my opinion that wire services offer some pretty nice websites, that can rank well if you put the time and effort into it. IMO, a WS template will always trump a "crappy" non-ws template site.

All the SEO stuff is arguable, if any of us knew Google's secret recipe, we'd be billionaires.

But I completely agree with master J and not only will you save on per order fees, you'll also save on the other webhosting and maintenance fees as well (average florist who can't command free perks). It's a good idea to have more flexibility and not become too dependent on the wire services for everything.
 
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Infinite said:
Case in point, we've established there are 15-17,000 tf sites. Since they all use the same url structure, title tags AND show mostly the same product images we can run this search. Only 4,000 tf sites have their Christmas section indexed.
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Joe Mioux said:
my point has always been that you promote non-ws "custom" website as superior to the WS templates.

In many cases, the WS template works well.... very well. After all 15000 TF florists can't all be wrong, can they?

and that argument is what I find as troubling -- specious. You have insisted in past threads that WS templates are inferior to non WS templates... and I have insisted that we need to look at the demographics of each florist in order to base a recommendation.
Click to expand...

Joe,

I again reference my example of only 4,000 florists out of 17,000 having their Christmas products in the Google index. I guess at least 13,000 florists were wrong - or at least, those 13,000 shouldn't expect much search traffic. You are in the 23% that are indexed. Be grateful. I have to wonder what your opinion would be if you were in the other 77%?

Ryan
 
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CHR said:
Having run both myself, as has JB, I can assure you first hand that moving a site off a WS server can improve not only search volume, but sales.

- A template based site is better than no site.
- A customized/optimized template-based site performs better than a basic WS template.
- The more 'same' versions there are of a template in a target market, the harder it is to appear near the top of search due to duplicate content issues.
- The more contect rich (unique) a site is, the more likely it is to gain links from other sites.

And there are sooooooo many other factors that come into play, all which have been discussed - not just with 'I think so's' but with hard facts and first-hand accounts.

Like Joan said, paying TF (or FTD) several thousand dollars in per-order fees for traffic we generated, plus having to deal with the "suprise" products added to the sites makes independent hosting even more attractive.
Click to expand...

and this reminds me of something else.

How much time does one spend tweaking their custom sites? Does that job interfere with that person doing a whole lot of other flower shop things, like filling orders.

how much time does it take to take pictures, size, edit, etc and then post on one's website.

It seems that having these types of sites are time consuming. Heaven forbid, if editing a website would take time away from yacking here.

also, do you know that TF conducts webinars on SEO stuff for its members?

joe

p.s. the "heaven forbid.... " sentence was meant as light hearted humor.
 
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CHR said:
How clear do search engines have be to tell us about avoiding duplicate content? Read Google's instructions for webmasters:

Emphasis mine.

You can search around for the exceptions, but time after time I've seen - and continue to see - the templates, especially with their duplicate products & descriptions, appear below unique sites. Sometimes far below....
Click to expand...

It's quite easy for me to distinguish what google is saying there - don't put dulicate content on your own site with intent of gaming search engines. If you do - block one version of it with robots text or nofollow links and you'll have no problem.

I'm finding and think I have found they are much more "forgiving" (bad term - nothing to forgive) make that "understanding" of vendors that sell common products both using "factory images" as well as canned descriptions - and neither seems to bother me one bit on my site. If I believed for a second that it did, don't you think I would be changing that? It's quite easy for me.

And time after time I've found the above to be true.

I read those google instructions completely different than you do. Could it be we're both guilty of "selective reading confirmation bias"?


CHR said:
Having run both myself, as has JB, I can assure you first hand that moving a site off a WS server can improve not only search volume, but sales.

- A template based site is better than no site.
- A customized/optimized template-based site performs better than a basic WS template.
- The more 'same' versions there are of a template in a target market, the harder it is to appear near the top of search due to duplicate content issues.
- The more contect rich (unique) a site is, the more likely it is to gain links from other sites.

And there are sooooooo many other factors that come into play, all which have been discussed - not just with 'I think so's' but with hard facts and first-hand accounts.

Like Joan said, paying TF (or FTD) several thousand dollars in per-order fees for traffic we generated, plus having to deal with the "suprise" products added to the sites makes independent hosting even more attractive.
Click to expand...

Absolutely - no argument there, darnit :jester

However - JB is no one to compare the two cuz even tho I've had both, or all of the above (TFTD sites) I never even began to try to promote anything but my independent site, which I've had for a quite long time. I simply got their sites for a time to see if they would bring me incremental sales and the answer is, no, without my promotion and me putting time and energy into them - a resounding no.

Infinite said:
Joe,

I again reference my example of only 4,000 florists out of 17,000 having their Christmas products in the Google index. I guess at least 13,000 florists were wrong - or at least, those 13,000 shouldn't expect much search traffic. You are in the 23% that are indexed. Be grateful. I have to wonder what your opinion would be if you were in the other 77%?

Ryan
Click to expand...

That's really interesting - any idea why that is? I really don't know - Besides florists not paying attention - cuz it's hard to believe 4000 of them are paying attention. How did/do they choose who to index?

Strange phenomenon indeed.

Too bad those 13,000 aren't asture enough to generate and upload a sitemap.

Joe Mioux said:
and this reminds me of something else.

How much time does one spend tweaking their custom sites? Does that job interfere with that person doing a whole lot of other flower shop things, like filling orders.

how much time does it take to take pictures, size, edit, etc and then post on one's website.

It seems that having these types of sites are time consuming. Heaven forbid, if editing a website would take time away from yacking here.

also, do you know that TF conducts webinars on SEO stuff for its members?

joe

p.s. the "heaven forbid.... " sentence was meant as light hearted humor.
Click to expand...

well that stings Mister.

BOSS said:
You guy's have too much time on your hands for this time of year.

:spam:
Click to expand...

Ya think?

Is business slow? I have some info on that I'm saving for later.
 
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strippinrose said:
my web site is live too, but no orders as yet any ideas? roundrockflowers.com
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Did you build your site with one of those free-type companies? Please don't take this personally - The Register.com banner across the bottom of the page is very annoying and makes your site look like a parked domain or a high-jacked site IMO.

It's doubtful a regular online shopper would trust it enough to use a credit card online. Can you upgrade your hosting package?
 
Strippinrose - I agree with Cathy - you did a very nice job but somehow you have to lose that stuff at the bottom.
 
Regarding a WS template site versus a customized site. As I understand it, a wire service based site will feature the advertised specials or branded arrangements of that wire service on the first page you come to on the site. You can place your own images on the site, but, they appear on pages other than the very first one you come across.

Ok.....I'll use my own neighboring town of Columbia, SC as an example. If I am looking to buy flowers and I look at two sites.....both 800TFTD based sites....with the same arrangements and the same advertised price.....and then I go to a site that features something different than the advertised specials....on a uniquely designed site.....If you were me, which one of the three would YOU spend your hard earned dollars with. Speaking for me......the last one that stands out would be the one I would spend my money with.

Am I wrong in that assumption?
 
Cathy,

I do not understand your last comment. "well that stings mister"

Let's nail this stuff down a bit.

some independent websites have some serious deficiencies in appearance.

some sites' images lack continuity from one image to the next.

other iws' lack a professional look, not all, but some look like something that was developed using MS publisher. look at some of the backgrounds.

some iws' lack continuity in theme. I have seen some websites that mix funeral work, with holiday work and then with more holiday work, albeit a different holiday AND then all of that is mixed with daily arrangements. Its a waste of space! bandwidth?

I look at these deficiencies and think to myself, where are all the Website experts complaining about those issues. sadly most experts are quiet about those problems as they focus on SEO.

joe
 
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