Sunday, December 28, 2008

Proflowers Title-tag: “Fresher Than From Florists”

A search on the phrase “florist” will yield a search result where Proflowers ranks 3rd organically:

Notice that the Title-tag implies that the flowers sold at Proflowers are not delivered by local florists and that Proflowers provides "Flowers Fresher than from Florists." One would think after reading such verbiage that Proflowers has no connection to local florists nor would they want to since they believe local florists do not use flowers as fresh as theirs. But does Proflowers use local florists while implying to the general public that they don't?

Well, lets look at the page in question here http://www.proflowers.com/floral-arrangements-prm

If you can't see the text above, the first long red outline says: 

"We have what a florist wants more than anything: direct connections to the flower fields. And our Designer Collection of bouquets gives florists another reason to go green with envy."

The implication again is that Proflowers does not use local florists to fulfill Proflowers orders. While the products specifically on that page are indeed drop ship flower products that are delivered via FEDEX drivers over a couple day process, Proflowers is aware that most people prefer to have their flowers delivered just hours after they order it (i.e. same day delivery).

To compensate for that demand, Proflowers has placed a link (see the smaller red outline above) directly across from their negative remarks about florists. The link says: 

"Local Florist Delivery" (click here: http://www.proflowers.com/floral-arrangements-prm and then click on the "Local Florist Delivery" link)
If you click through the links you will find that all the products on that page are hand-deliverable by local florists for same day delivery. I don't know about you, but I think in reality that Proflowers actually "envies" local florists. Their own words spell it out.

Imagine the confusion of a Proflowers customer who received flowers from a local florist through Proflowers. I think the Title-tag should be adjusted to reflect something more accurate; or at the very least, less negative.

3 comments:

Dragonfly Flowers said...

Great digging as always Mark.

I think you have a point here, I think they have a real issue to deal with here.

Its obvious that they don't want to work with florists any more, so they should just get it over with already.

"We are better than florists, but if you need delivery same day, or next day without paying a fortune for delivery, or if you want them actually arranged with water and stuff, we can do that too."

Anonymous said...

yeah, but you still gave them a followed link to their page. :( they must be delighted.

Mark McFall said...

I understand what you are saying "Anonymous," but at this time I'm trying to make things easy for readers to follow and understand by linking out.

Yes, I should be using the "no follow" attribute, but when I'm in the zone of thought it is easy for me to forget. Also, when I'm doing a lot of linking out, adding the "no follow" seems like it takes too much time. In that regard, I wish BlogSpot had a quick feature to employee as I write.

Having said all that, I'll continue to wrestle with myself on using it as I know I need to.