Top 6 Reasons Why 1 Floral Website Beats 2 or 3

If one florist website is good, three websites for my flower shop must be better – right? If I get 100 orders from one website, I will get 300 orders if I have 3 websites! It sounds like that should be right, but when you dig a little deeper you’ll see that search engines and customers don’t think like that – especially when it comes to local businesses – like flower shops.

Think of your website like a balloon filled with helium. Each floral business in your area also has a balloon filled with helium on an online search. If you put all your helium into one balloon (one website), your balloon will eventually float to a top position online.

However, if you split your website into a bunch of smaller balloons, the result is a lower position. The good news is that you can take your website to the next level with this one simple solution: Combine your websites into one, and enjoy more sales as your site floats to the top of search results!

Let’s look at one local florist and her growing pains with multiple websites. Maryann, a talented, bubbly florist, owns a cute, quaint flower shop in Stowe, VT. Although Maryann only has one flower shop, she maintains two different websites for online orders (stowesflorist.com and stowesflowers.com). For more than a year, Maryann has been so focused on maintaining both websites that she hasn’t realized that they have both dropped in rank.

When it comes to web presence for local searches, maintaining multiple websites for her flower shop presents a number of unique challenges for Maryann. There are several reasons that having multiple websites for one flower shop is bad for Maryann and other local florists. Here are a few of them:

1. With Multiple Websites, You’re Competing With Yourself.

With multiple websites you’re not just competing with floral wire services and other local florists, your websites also compete against one another for better search positions. Even if you do have time to maintain two or more sites, they will always compete against one another for a better search results position because the same keywords are being used to find each site. So for Maryann, and other florists with multiple websites, this means that one site might rank second or third in a local area while the other(s) might rank tenth (second page) for example, or even worse.  

Maintaining one website gives you the greatest competitive advantage against other local flower shops, national order gatherers, and wire services that compete with you.

2. Managing Multiple Websites Is Time-Consuming and Complex

If you’re like Maryann, and only have one physical location and a small staff, running multiple websites along with the day-to-day operations of your flower shop can be very time-consuming. Product management alone takes tremendous time and effort.

When you spend time managing two or more websites, you double your efforts while minimizing your potential. Think of it this way: Imagine pricing 500 products for one site, and then doing the same thing for a second site. Now multiply that by two or three times a year! WOW! Now that’s a lot of work.

With one website, keeping your products and on-page content up to date will be a breeze. This means that you’ll have more time to create awesome arrangements, without being overwhelmed by administrative tasks.

3. Multiple Websites Confuse Shoppers

With multiple websites, the potential for your shoppers to be confused about who they are doing business with logically increases. Let’s flip back to Maryann. What do you think would happen if a shopper (let’s call him “Connor”) who is searching for a florist in Stowe, VT, comes across stowesflorist.com and stowesflowers.com? He will possibly notice the similarities in the name, address and phone number, but will possibly give pause.

When a shopper such as Connor discovers that your shop is doing business under multiple websites, he might not be sure which site is the right one or even the real one, and opt to do business with your competitor. So although Maryann’s flower shop is completely sincere, she could potentially lose Connor’s business and trust.

Transparency and trust are key elements in building brand confidence. With multiple websites, it’s possible that shopper confusion could result in brand mistrust.

4. Inconsistent Business Listings Reduce Page Rank and Traffic

Ever heard of NAP? No, not that kind of nap! NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. It is an important component of local ranking. A business listing on Google Business, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, and more, can have a tremendous impact on your local visibility.

Business listings make it easier for shoppers to find your online store, and the quality of your listings depends on the consistency of your NAP. Moz states that NAP consistency accounts for 8-13% of all local ranking factors.

With multiple websites, NAP consistency issues are quite common, and managing business listings for multiple sites can be damaging because:

  1. When you create duplicate listings, search engines become uncertain as to which ones to trust, which can lead to lower search ranks.
  2. Most listings can only display one website. If you create duplicate listings for each website, you risk having them deleted.
  3. Listing management is a very time-consuming and sensitive task.

5. More Verified Reviews = More Customers

In 2017, a study by BrightLocal found that consumers read an average of seven reviews before trusting a business. It also shows various other statistics to demonstrate that reviews are a big deal. With multiple websites, you risk having your reviews split among different locations, effectively diluted in power, which can lead to an inconsistent online reputation.

If you have seven reviews stacked on top of each other, each telling a potential shopper how wonderful your designs and service are, all the evidence shows it will have an impact. And although getting shoppers to leave reviews can at times be difficult, it’s much easier with one website.

Think about it for a second: Isn’t it easier to combine your websites, provide the best shopping experience to your shoppers, and have them give you the best reviews/feedback on one website? It will be easier for you and for them. The less you have to do with one site, the more you will get. Easy.

6. Some Florist Websites Perform Better Than Others

Once you understand how consolidating domains drives more traffic to your website, you need to choose which florist website partner to stick with. Should you consolidate your domains into the site that has most traffic or best ranking? Maybe – maybe not. Here are a few things to consider when picking a website provider:

  • Maximizing Conversion Rate – How many visitors does your site turn into customers? To calculate this, simply divide the number of orders by the number of visitors. You should be able to determine this from your monthly statement.
  • Mobile Commerce – How easy (or difficult) is it to place an order on your website from a mobile phone or tablet? The best way to figure this out is to try placing an order from your phone on all of your websites. Mobile commerce is the future.
  • Cash Flow Management – When and how frequently do you get paid for website orders? Many florist must pay COD for flower inventory, but their website provider only pays them once a month – so they may wait up to 30 days to get paid. Look for better alternatives.
  • Fostering Shopper Loyalty – How does your site promote shopper loyalty and reorders? There are many ways to do this and partners who provide these services should be given serious consideration, because the value of turning shoppers into regular clients is very high.
  • Boosting Average Order Value – What’s the average order value of each of your websites? To calculate this, simply divide each site’s monthly revenue by the number of orders received in a month.
  • Attracting New Customers With Reviews –  How does your site help you attract new customers with user reviews? Did you know that 72% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more? Again, the value of partnerships offering services that help with this is high.
  • Managing Your Online Reputation – How does your website help you manage your online reviews? And how does it help you identify customer review trends with specific employees, arrangements or customers? Your reputation is everything and this is an area you should seriously consider when evaluating your potential partnerships.
  • Online Advertising – Does your website provider assist with online advertising?  With strong AdWords competition out there, expert help is the best realistic way to win great ROI from your advertising dollars.
  • Integrated Point of Sale (POS) – Is your customer information and order history at your fingertips, or do you have to search across different systems? A good POS keeps all of your information in one place and should include Upselling features, along with features to promote Customer Loyalty, Reviews, and Reputation Management.  Your POS should be an automated assistant, designed to make your life easier and to make your business more valuable when you decide to sell or retire.
  • Inventory Management – How does your website help you manage inventory? Your online store should ideally have multiple features to help you keep selling when you are low on inventory and help clear your coolers of inventory that may soon go bad.
  • Website Security – Is your website HTTPS compliant? Customer security is top of mind these days, with Google announcing that a massive 73 percent of web pages in the U.S. are now delivered using HTTPS encrypted security across Google Chrome.
  • Weddings – How does your website provider support your wedding business? Again, if this is an important area for your business, you should be looking for features and services that bolster your efforts and bring in leads.

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