Whilst many horticultural business's have struggled to find a way to fit the web into their business models, one company, purely web based, has taken off in a big way.
Arena Flowers, which is based in London's Park Royal, started trading in 2006. The company turned over £2 million and broke even in the first twelve months. Turnover is set to double to £4 million in year two.
Speaking in an interview on e-Consultancy.com, Web developer Sam Barton says that most of their phenomenal success can be attributed to achieving a page rank of five before the their e-commerce site went live.
What the Arena Flowers business has demonstrated is the importance of developing great search engine optimization and brand awareness of the business. Anyone can have a great website but if your target market does not know about you it means diddly squat.
Arena says that 15% of their traffic comes through having a Face Book presence and although there is a lower conversion rate, it still means business is generated and of course that means more profits.
I come across many garden centre and landscaping sites that stick content and offers onto their front page and leave them gathering dust for weeks at a time. When dates and relevancy do not fit with the product then your customers quickly become turned off and walk away.
Sam Barton goes on to say that they monitor hot spots and popular products and ensure that they are always placed on the hottest position on the site. The less patronised the product the more it is sent to the periphery.
Arena are now faced with the dillema of focussing purely on their flower business or developing their highly successful platform for other e commerce business'.
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