Our Hana digital marketing group typically advises florists to offer FREE delivery on their website. But, how does that help? In these days of high fuel costs, is it not counter intuitive to offer FREE delivery? How will it help anyways?
Our Recommendation
Increase your product prices by about $3-$5 and offer FREE local delivery within a 5-10mile radius. We typically see about a 20% increase in conversions with this business strategy. This will earn you several first time customers who might buy from you for years into the future.
Please review the business reasons behind this recommendation
1. Customers hate being surprised: Based on our internal research and analysis and our check-out page traffic behavior, we have come to realize that customers hate surprises when they start to complete the purchase. If hefty fees are added onto the original price some of the customers get turned off. This seems to be especially acute in the floral industry, as it falls under discretionary spending category.
2. On an average about 20% increase in conversation rates:
When we provide FREE delivery, customers tend to view your business as more trustworthy as there is no bait and switch and no surprises during the check-out process. Think of it as the "Amazon Effect". Cart abandonment and incomplete orders goes down and your conversion rates increase leading to about 20% increase in your website sales.
4. New Customers are won: There is lot of hidden benefit in earning your first time local customer. Please note, you can offer FREE local delivery ONLY online but in the process you won a customer who might buy from you for years into the future. This is an amazing business strategy to increase your customer base and then market to them in the years to come.
Frequently asked question
But, don't we lose the revenue on delivery fees?
FREE local Delivery: Please note, we recommend increasing your prices by about $3-$5 and then offering FREE Delivery ONLY in your local delivery area, ONLY within 5-10 mile radius.
About 50-60% of your orders might be FREE delivery but rest of the orders, you can continue to charge delivery fees.
This FREE delivery in local area allows our marketing team to promote FREE Delivery in Google and AdWords and attracts more traffic and better conversions in your AdWords program as well.
Typically, a florist earns a new customer which is more valuable than any lost revenue on delivery fees for a small area.
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