Case Study

Lily West Florist

Lily West Florist, Westport, Edinburgh

In the early part of 2007 Digital Design Scotland was contacted by Susan McManus, the proprietor of Lily West Florist. This business had been trading from a retail outlet in central Edinburgh for approximately four years but did not have an online presence. Susan felt there was an opportunity for the business to increase sales by having a website that could offer customers a flower delivery service.

After our initial consultation meeting we were not sure if concentrating on the flower delivery market was the best way forward for the business. We concluded that trying to establish a foot-hold in this very competitive sector would prove extremely difficult. We suggested that we investigate other market sectors that could potentially produce better returns on website investment.

We discovered that each year Lily West Florist exhibited at a number of wedding fairs throughout Scotland. The cost to the business ran into thousands of pounds. No orders were obtained when attending a fair, but many leads were gathered. A percentage of these leads eventually resulted in orders being placed. The value of these orders could, on some occasions, be fairly substantial.

A proposal was put forward to create an ecommerce website that covered the whole range of products the business handled. It was suggested that a flower delivery service was mentioned, but not given any real prominence. The main feature of the business was its capability of providing beautiful flower arrangements and we felt delivery was a secondary service that by itself could not be regarded as being a unique selling point.

www.lilywestflorist.co.uk

Because wedding orders generally resulted in high value sales it was also suggested a promotion package was put in place that allowed Digital Design Scotland to spend a certain amount of time each month fine tuning the site to ensure it received healthy online exposure in the wedding market. This would not interfere with the day to day running of the business because Susan, or one of her employees, would be responsible for updating the website by adding new products, deleting old ones, inserting news items and keeping prices up to date.

This proposal was accepted and the new website was launched in April 2007.

Leaflet Campaign

Throughout the first year sales of Everyday Bouquets, Plants and Flowers were respectable, but the real benefit to the business came from Wedding sales. The site was used to gather leads and these were followed up with emailed quotations. The enquiry to sales conversion rate was very healthy, so much so that the business decided to stop exhibiting at Wedding Fairs. The resultant saving from doing this more than covered the cost of Digital Design Scotland’s fees. Lily West Florist was so impressed with the sales figures being generated via the website that they asked Digital Design Scotland to carry out more extensive promotional work. An extremely successful Google Adwords campaign was implemented and this was followed up by an email marketing campaign and offline leaflet campaign.

Susan McManus has seen a steady growth in sales from her online store and she is now discussing its future expansion with Digital Design Scotland.

You can visit the website at www.lilywestflorist.co.uk