Seasonal Trends
Visibility Vs Authority
Link Acquisition
Content Performance
10 minutesReading time
20 pagesLength
Updated April 2018
We’ve produced a 2018 Florist Retailers Market Performance Report.
This is an annual report which we produce to give leaders in the Florist industry a detailed look into their standing in this digital landscape and where they measure up to competitors online.
We analyse key technical performance areas such as SEO Visibility and Link Authority but also look into the brand’s social presence by scoring their Brand Reach. Companies are scored and ranked separately across nine metrics, so those on top in one category may not be there in the next. Year on year changes are also reported.
We’ve analysed data from the entire Florist Retailers industry, but it wouldn’t be feasible to include them all which is why we only include the top performers in the report. If you can’t find your brand, get in touch and we’ll get your data to you. Similarly, if you want a deeper look into the sector and how it’s changed over the last few years, speak to us about our previous Florist Retailers Market Performance Reports.
This post is best read alongside our full Florist Retailers sector report. Using the data from the report, we’ve conducted further research to see why certain retailers have reached those top spots and what’s got them there. This gives us a better view of the sector overall and helps us to understand what makes brands succeed in their online landscape.
Overall, the florist market seems to be blooming with only two out of the top 10 retailers losing visibility year on year.
Moonpig remains the market leaders despite a 12% drop in visibility.
Interflora and Waitrose Florist took 2nd and 3rd place with small improvements of 3 and 8%.
Flying Flowers has jumped up to 4th position after a huge 42% increase in visibility.
Finishing off our top five is Eflorist who has had a fantastic year, managing to improve their visibility by 133% and overtaking two major competitors.
Elsewhere in the top 10, Bunches has also stormed up the table with a 151% visibility increase. Bloom and Wild has also gained an impressive 104%.
Prestige Flowers has managed to stay in the top 10 after a 37% improvement YOY. And Next Flowers has stagnated but, again, remain one of the market’s top 10 performers.
But Serenata Flowers has, unfortunately, dropped from 3rd position last year to 8th this year after losing 42% visibility.
After the top four, visibility drops dramatically.
This section refers to the high competition and best opportunity keywords we have identified, featured in the report.
The high competition keywords are generic florist searches, as we would expect. The opportunity keywords contain a lot of occasions such as funerals, Mother’s Day, birthdays, Christmas and Valentine’s Day.
Well done to Waitrose Florist who is ranking position 1 for the most competitive search term, ‘flower delivery’. They have one-line sitelinks to some popular pages on their site, allowing users to click on their desired page quicker.
Interflora is ranking in position 1 for ‘send flowers’ and ‘order flowers’. They are ranking for the same page with the same meta description and title tag but have cleverly optimised their one-line sitelinks to go to more relevant pages.
For the term ‘send flowers’ their links go to pages dedicated to sending flowers to different countries such as the USA, Australia and Canada. Whereas ‘order flowers’ brings up links for different occasions.
This level of detail in your knowledge of your customer journey can be the difference between conversion or not.
We also have to commend Home Bargains Flowers for appearing in a featured snippet for the terms ‘cheap flower delivery’ and ‘cheap flowers’. They are also ranking within the top five for both.
Some retailers may shy away from the word ‘cheap’ for fear of making them look poor quality. However, both of these search terms offer a great opportunity and it’s clear to see that people are searching for them.
Looking at both the competition and opportunity keywords, we can see that weddings feature heavily in this sector.
However, we can’t just assume that those searching for wedding flowers always want to buy. Some may be looking for advice, ideas or tips instead.
The search term ‘wedding flowers’ brings up consideration content from Brides Magazine and Hitched, proving that there’s more to consider than just selling.
Always think about the intent behind the searches and try to offer similar content that search engines will recognise as useful.
1800 Flowers is topping the chart for links with an impressive number of links per month of high quality. This is likely because they are an international brand who deliver around the world.
They do have a blog, but it is situated in the footer of the home page and therefore difficult to find. However, it looks like the articles are gaining links from top-tier publications such as Country Living, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful.
The blog exists on a subfolder with two categories to organise the posts. The blog could have easier navigation as currently, the posts appear in a long list meaning you have to scroll for a while before reaching a new one.
Interflora is next on the list and has the highest quality links on the board.
They are mainly gaining links to their category pages and product images. But they do also have content which is performing very well.
Their ‘Mum Salary Calculator’ asset has gained over 140 unique links from publications including Huffington Post, She Knows and the Daily Mail.
On inspection of Interflora’s blog, it looks as though it previously existed on a subdomain, ‘blog.interflora’, meaning that any links gained would lose valuable equity. But these articles have not been replicated on the new blog which now exists on a subfolder of ‘/blog’, despite gaining plenty of links before. Instead, they are redirected straight to the blog homepage.
It is unclear why Interflora would not want to recreate these older blog posts which have gained a lot of valuable links. However, they have done the right thing by redirecting straight to the blog homepage rather than killing the link entirely.
Prestige Flowers appears on the low quality, high volume category for links. They don’t seem to have any form of a blog; however, they do have one standalone infographic which has gained five unique links.
With a full blog and effective outreach strategy, they could be gaining higher quality links from top-tier publications. This would also likely help their visibility and ensure to keep them in the top 10 or even move up higher.
Flowers are an extremely visual purchase, so using social media is the perfect place to promote your brand. This is where you can turn your paid audience into an owned one, engage with customers and show your brand personality.
Moonpig is top of the social charts with a massive 1 million brand searches per month. However, we must stress that floristry is a small part of their business and thus rarely features on their social media feeds.
Interflora is next on the list and, again, has an impressive number of brand searches and owned social score.
They post using national days or news events to keep their social media feeds current. They also regularly encourage users to comment with their own pictures or thoughts on topics.
Their Instagram feed features unique campaigns including their most recent one which focuses on the importance of female friendship and invites customers to share their stories.
Their Twitter feed includes links to their blog along with plenty of brand updates and images of their products.
Bloom & Wild are in third place and have a signature artsy style to their posts.
They regularly promote their upcoming workshops, and on their Twitter, they often retweet blog posts from publications featuring their products.
They have shoppable posts allowing people to click and buy the products from the image immediately on their Facebook feed.
They have also teamed up with author Dolly Alderton for a campaign on their Instagram page and website, appealing to an audience that may not have heard of them before.
Using influencers on your site and through social media is extremely effective for this reason.
1800 Flowers has by far the highest owned social score but a low number of brand searches in comparison. This is likely because they are an international brand based in the US, so the number of UK searches will be a lot less.
Their Facebook feed is very engaging with competitions, posts that ask people to ‘vote’ for their favourite bouquets and posts that ask people to tag loved ones.
They post articles from relevant sources, providing their audience with helpful content and promoting their brand values in the process.
They also have shoppable, click-to-buy posts.
Set us a challenge if you need help with anything we’ve mentioned or download the report for more Florist insights.
