ProFlowers.com Comes Up Smellin’ Like Roses

The days leading up to Valentine’s Day are some of the busiest for online floral retailers (only Mother’s Day is busier). Big money is required to remain competitive in this market. Both 1800-Flowers.com (FLWS) and ProFlowers.com appeared on the homepage of Yahoo! (YHOO) the week prior to Valentine’s Day and Teleflora.com aired a TV spot during the Super Bowl. In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, each of the top four online floral retailers (1800-Flowers.com, FTD.com, ProFlowers.com, and Teleflora.com) saw a major increase in traffic. ProFlowers.com claimed the biggest spike in weekly visitors, increasing 423% in the first two weeks of February.

When looking at Share of Voice (the percent of visits within the competitive set) over the first two weeks of February, FTD.com and ProFlowers.com stand tall with 40% and 30% of visits, respectively. However, when also considering the Share of Wallet (the percent of purchases made within the competitive set) over the same timeframe, ProFlowers.com clearly separates itself. They accounted for 54% of all the purchases made at one of these four retailers.

In fact, ProFlowers.com led the field in two key metrics: bounce rate and conversion rate. The lowest bounce rate (percentage of visits that result in the visitor immediately leaving the site) and the highest conversion rate both belonged to ProFlowers.com by a comfortable margin. It appears that ProFlowers.com was much more effective at driving quality traffic to their site, as their shoppers were engaged and more likely to make a purchase.

Today’s economic climate is certainly not news to anyone. As consumers tightened their sweetheart budgets, the leading online florists pulled out all stops to gain market share (one going so far as advertising during the Super Bowl). In 2009, ProFlowers.com clearly outperformed its top rivals by having more online transactions than their top three competitors combined. For rival florists, understanding what tactics have helped ProFlowers.com succeed online will be critical to their efforts to regain lost market share as they gear up for another battle come Mother’s Day.

Comments

[Ånden som ...:]

Nice article! Thanks. Didn't know about these companies before. Looks like decent value investments.

Feb 25 07:49 PM

[Fooled by t...:]

We had ordered flower for a funeral from Pro- Flowers and to be delivered to the local funeral home, Well it showed up in a box with a vase, WOW, was I mad, So the local funeral home called this Great Shop called Ultimate Affair in Aberdeen MD, They came and put all the arrangments togeather, but due to the cold weather some of the flowers were frozen, So they had to bring in there own, great investment company, but awful on telling customers the facts.

Feb 26 11:53 AM

[User 365161:]

Why do you think that FTD got so much traffic on their website but couldn't make the sale? What are some of those tactics that you think put proflowers over the edge? They all seem the same to me.

Feb 26 05:50 PM

[flowermom:]

I would be interested in dollars spent on advertising by each , and complaints, and refunds for bad product.

Feb 27 09:27 PM

[flowershopd...:]

I think Proflowers understands the power of the lure. You have to give away something to get something back. Their flowers deals compared to other flower shops get higher click throughs by comparison.

Mar 01 12:43 AM

[huggybear302:]

When you log on to Proflowers.com all you see is beautiful pictures of flowers in vase, what you don't know is that all the flowers come in a box FED-EX with a vase attached inside the box. People who buy from them expect that the flowers are going to look like your local florist made them. This is great if the recipient likes to arrange the flowers themselves, however, the majority of the buys are unaware exactly what their purchase will look like

Mar 13 07:10 PM

[HAROLD18:]

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Sep 26 03:56 AM