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O 436 IN T H I S I S S U E

Summer 2008 • Title and Meta Tag Enhancements• Your Website is Secure• Who’s Talking About You?

Online Reviews

Soliciting reviews from customers might seem scary, but it’s better than ignoring the fact that people are talking about your business. Getting involved in the social networking aspect of online shopping is to your advantage. You may be wondering “is it worth it?” to ask your customers to review your business. Consider this: according to a recent study by Forrester, 71% of online shoppers read reviews. So, yes, it is worth it!

There are many places that consumers can go to read and write reviews. There are websites that are dedicated to consumer reviews, such as yelp.com. There are also local-centric websites like citysearch.com or insiderpages.com where shoppers can write reviews and read about others’ experiences. Even the major search engines like Google and Yahoo! provide places where consumers can post testimonials. These search engines will often pull in reviews from all of these websites and place them with the local listings they provide.

If you’re concerned about someone posting a negative review of your business, think about this: the majority of responses that are proactively solicited are positive. A study by Jupiter Research shows that 60% of online shoppers provide feedback about a shopping experience and they are more likely to give feedback about a positive experience than a negative one.

There are many ways you can ask your customers to go online and review your business. You could ask them while they are in your shop or on the

phone, send a postcard or email to your recent customers, or include a brief note on your enclosure cards asking the recipient to review your arrangement. However you decide, we encourage you to proactively solicit reviews from your customers. You’ll be glad you did!

Good news! Year-to-date sales across all eFlorist sites are trending 30% higher compared to last year, with a particularly strong Mother’s Day 2008 that saw total sales increase 45% compared to last year.

In addition to your efforts on marketing your eFlorist website, we’ve seen big increases in traffic coming from search engines. This is the result of several things:

• Google placing more emphasis on local businesses and their listings

• Bulk submission of eFlorists to Google with your URL included

• Several search engine optimization (SEO) features we’ve implemented in the past several months.

You may have noticed some of the SEO features, such as the category navigation text links at the bottom of each page. Other enhancements are behind the scenes, and while you may not have noticed them, the search engines certainly did!

eFlorist Site Sales Surge

Title and Meta Tag Enhancements

Your Website is Secure!

We are pleased to offer eFlorist members well-known security seals, such as Hacker Safe and VeriSign, on their websites to instill confidence in consumers, to ensure secure ecommerce transactions and to increase conversion rates. These seals are part of your membership in the eFlorist program and are provided at no additional cost to you.

The Hacker Safe seal initially appeared only on the checkout pages (delivery, payment, order review and confirmation) on eFlorist websites. Now, the Hacker Safe seal appears on all pages of standard Teleflora templated eFlorist websites*. This will assure your customer through the entire shopping and purchasing process that your website is protected against security vulnerabilities.

*Unfortunately, custom-designed templates cannot use the Hacker Safe seal provided by Teleflora on their non-secure pages. Florists with custom templates may purchase the seal by contacting Hacker Safe directly.

Get eFlorist Insight

If you aren’t receiving your free monthly eFlorist Insights in your email box, you’re missing out. It is loaded with information about your eFlorist site. Topics include new eFlorist features, important updates, tips to help increase sales, and your eFlorist marketing calendar. Simply send an email to webmaster@teleflora.com and mention that you’d like to sign up for the eFlorist Insight.

A great example of a behind-the-scenes enhancement is the recent title and meta tag updates on all pages of your eFlorist website. Title and meta tags tell both Internet users and search engines what a page is all about. The title tag can be easily seen by looking in the top left corner of your web browser (as shown below). Title tags are one of the most important elements that search engines monitor, so having a well-written title tag for each page of your website can improve your ranking in search engine listings. Meta tags are more descriptive phrases placed within the code of your website, and while they

may not be visible to you, they are important to search engines.

As part of the overhaul on these tags, we made them unique and relevant to the content on each page. We’ve included your city and state, your shop name, and information on the category or product for each page. For example, the title tag for the birthday category for a shop in Madison, WI now says “Send Birthday Flowers in Madison WI – Flower Shop Name – Madison Birthday Flowers.

We optimized these title and meta tags for you based on keyword research. We know your shop is

unique, so you can customize these tags to fit your business. If you would like to change your title or meta tags, contact Web Services at 866.983.3932 or webmaster@teleflora.com. You will need to indicate what page you wish to change and specify the exact wording of the new title and/or meta tag. Web Services cannot write custom title or meta tags for you.

If you choose to customize, we encourage you to do some research. Make sure to use keywords you think your potential customers may be searching for. Make each page’s title tag unique and limit the length to 65 characters. Review our Search Engine Optimization webinar to learn more about title and meta tags and other SEO elements. An archived version of this and other webinars can be found on myteleflora.com > eFlorist Service Center > eFlorist University.

Customer Email Collection Policy

As part of a new requirement from our email service provider to comply with email best practices, a first name and last name will be required for each email address you submit. In addition, if you are using manual signup sheets in your store, please keep them as records of your customers’ opting in to your email list. This protects you if a dispute ever arises.

We understand it may take some time for you to change your collection process. Submitting first and last names with emails will be mandatory beginning August 1, 2008. We apologize for the inconvenience but these changes will ensure that you get the best email marketing service available. All list submissions prior to August 1 do not require these additional name fields. If you have any questions, please contact Web Services at 866.983.3932.

Remember! Recipes for Teleflora web items are always

available for viewing and downloading on MyTeleflora.com >

Market Your Business > Recipes.