SAF 2015: All About AdWords and Analytics

If you are serious about selling flowers online Google will play a crucial role in your success, and the 2015 SAF Annual Convention included two excellent sessions presented by Google executives. The first was "Demystifying Google", presented by Google solutions architect Loren Hudziak. Lorne gave a high level overview of how local search, and local businesses, are linked to Google's underlying goal.

The second,  "All About AdWords and Analytics", was presented by Google executive Ben Polk, and used Karin's Florist in Virginia as a case study. Ben and Lorne shared new information that had not been available before, information about AdWords and SEO that will help florists do better in search and sell more flowers online.

This session was more technical, but absolutely invaluable to retail florists that wanted to improve their online performance. It was a pleasant surprise to see just how many florists were interested in this material – it was a standing room only situation.

But it wasn't just florists that were there. Three of the very best providers of e-commerce websites for florists were also in attendance, and they were some of the most engaged and attentive participants.

This says a lot. There a lot of floral website vendors, and even more self-proclaimed experts on SEO and conversion for flower shop websites. It isn't very hard to claim expert status – a basic knowledge of outdated (and often dangerous) SEO/SEM and conversion practices – is enough to impress and convince many people.

But the best of the best understand that it is an ongoing process, and that reiterating old SEO chestnuts just isn't enough. The best website providers continue to educate themselves and refine their products – all of which helps their florist clients sell more flowers online.

One of these was Brock Atwill, the founder of Flower Shop Network – one of the largest providers of ecommerce websites for florists. Flower Shop Network websites are already known to be some of the very best performing floral websites, but they don't rest on their laurels at FSN – Brock and his team are always looking for ways to make things even better.

Two others were Ryan Freeman of Strider Search Marketing (widely considered to be one of the foremost experts on SEO/SEM for florists) and Brandon Kirkland of Epic Flowers (considered to be the expert on CRO for flower shop websites). These two are true experts in their fields, and presented a session of the their own on the importance of being mobile ready, but were still at the Google sessions, learning whatever they could.

Not every florist can attend the SAF convention, but some are lucky enough to have vendors that care enough to go on their behalf, and remain deeply committed to providing the best possible ecommerce websites for florists. FloristWare offers full integration with floral websites from all of the vendors mentioned here, largely because they work so hard to help their clients succeed online.