Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

After reviewing Cathy’s comments on my recent post “Let’s talk landing pages – an early Valentine’s Day critique” I was excited to see a company selling flowers for the Valentine’s Day holiday using service and quality as marketing points rather than just price and while the ad left me with mixed on opinions, it got their value offering across. The real problem for me however wasn’t their ad but the weak follow-up their site delivered. As twitter user MonaMarimow in her tweet: “Teleflora is now downgraded to a 1 after seeing the site.” The site isn’t a 1 or a 2 but it is missing some fundamentals for conversion; here’s my post-ad review and critique…

After reviewing Cathy’s comments on my recent post “Let’s talk landing pages – an early Valentine’s Day critique” I was excited to see a company selling flowers for the Valentine’s Day holiday using service and quality as marketing points rather than just price and while the ad left me with mixed on opinions, it got their value offering across. The real problem for me however wasn’t their ad but the weak follow-up their site delivered. As twitter user MonaMarimow in her tweet: “Teleflora is now downgraded to a 1 after seeing the site.” The site isn’t a 1 or a 2 but it is missing some fundamentals for conversion; here’s my post-ad review and critique…

Starting at the homepage… Teleflora launched with an initial page (below left) and moved to a second page shortly after the game (below right) presumably after doing a test or just not liking the results. While I like the simplicity and directness of both pages but both were missing some very important elements – action and an explanation of the value offering. A few blocks of text, a link to the ad, 2 links to buy now was all they offered to keep the message going.

On the other hand, both the ProFlowers.com and FTD.com homepages offered something to want to click on. Not that either is without flaw but there are photos of the products, gift finders, strong pushes to the valentines categories, and incentives to keep you going. On the other hand the Teleflora page had a simple message but not much else to push a visitor along. The shop now buttons and Superbowl ad link were good but where wasthe gift guide they have linked on other pages? The incentive for the millions of visitors to order today instead of tomorrow? And more importantly, the link to find out about their “unique” process. Offering something in a vase versus a box is extremely compelling, but without a page that explains the process or a video that shows the delivery service it’s just not a lot to buy into.

Continuing into the site things don’t get much better and the odds of me or anyone converting kept going down. I chose to start my shopping clicking on the Valentines’ Day highlighted category in the navbar which lead to a pretty standard grid-style page with a variety of seasonal products for further exploration. There wasn’t a whole lot wrong here but not much right either… no shipping guarantees, no more info or buy now buttons, a gift guide well below the fold, interesting subcategorization but presented in a very bland way and basically nothing that screamed “click me” or “good value”. Oddly enough there was one thing that popped… larger product preview images on some items but not others – couldn’t figure that one out.

While the category page wasn’t amazing they rarely are and a list of products can be all you need to get a click to that stunning looking product. Of course the product page is what needs to shine and it just didn’t do it. No descriptions above the fold, loads of empty white space, no recommendations on who a product was good for, not even a compelling reason to learn why about upgrading to a more expensive option (”How do I upgrade this product?” is not a good way to say what upgrading is all about). For a company spending millions of dollars on an ad that was all about a strong, love-related message the product page was pretty much relying on a picture of a flower to do the selling.

Most disappointing of all, the key message of the ad was nowhere to be seen on any category or product page I ever made it to outside of the homepage. The Superbowl ad made it clear that Teleflora prides its self on delivering service but you’d really never know unless you looked at the homepage twice over, and of course the homepage is not the only page people start on and certainly not always read word for word.

At the end of my visit I left unimpressed. I’ve bought flowers from Teleflora competitors and have seen the boxes they came in so selling me on a better option was completely possible. But the site didn’t sell the option, it didn’t even explain it. Beyond that the site was just too plain, too simple. Crowded homepages and product pages are certainly no better but when you’re selling something emotional, seasonal and extremely important to millions of people, color, message and a promise is important as is driving visitors to the next step. No one wants a bad flower selection and while the Teleflora got my attention with their delivery service, they didn’t back it up with even the basics.

That all said, hats off to the Teleflora marketing team for going heads up against the “big guys” with their Superbowl Valentines Day commercial. I hope they were able to get some sales from the campaign and can find some quick learnings from their analytics and make some tweaks to get their conversion rate near the 14-20% rates some of their competitors pull.