CASE STUDY
say it with flowers
Industry: Flowers & Gifts
CASE STUDY
SAY IT WITH FLOWERS
Industry: Flowers & Gifts
Say It With Flowers is one of Melbourne’s most well-loved florists. With two stores, one in Malvern and one in Brighton, in recent years, online orders of flower arrangements and gifts have become a significant part of the business that continues to grow.
We spoke with Julie Bird, owner of Say It With Flowers, about how working with Firestone Digital on her website has impacted her business.
Q&A WITH JULIE
OF
SAY IT WITH FLOWERS
Hi Julie, can you please tell us a bit about your background in e-commerce and your experience with website builds before working with Firestone Digital?
We worked with a number of different web developers and options over the years. When I bought the business I inherited an old archaic website. The first website developers I worked with improved it somewhat initially, but then the business outgrew them. After that, we went to a more design-focused company that worked with us redeveloping the site but the site was quite standalone from the business. It really didn’t reflect our business or brand as much as really wanted it to.
And then working with Sam and Firestone Digital, how would you describe the experience?
So working with Sam, the website became a much more integrated part of the business that was able to reflect the business’ personality. Floristry is such a visual industry, and Sam has some expert skills in that department – she had a real eye for that. She spent a lot of time understanding the brand to the point that she was able to provide brand guidance on some new projects such as when we opened our new store in Brighton. The same with the gift store arm of the business – Sam helped with the design of that physical store and carried it through in the online presence.
With Sam it really felt like a lot of her suggestions or structure of the way she approached things was based on sales and the marketing. She built the website with a conversion focus which was great.
So what would you say has been the impact of the website on your business?
Well apart from the things I mentioned already, the biggest impact has been on the sales growth through having a strong online presence.
Beyond that, working with Sam has just been so great for our business. And she has got a great resource bank of contacts and referrals. Whether it’s marketing or product photography, Sam’s network has been really helpful and the connection through Firestone Digital has meant that we’re all on the same page.
Has anything surprised you about the results you’ve seen?
Probably just that it’s given us a greater ability to grow the business and given us the confidence to branch out. The success of the e-commerce side of the business is something we can now leverage off.
And the other thing is just how easy it’s been. I’m not a web expert but Sam was really helpful setting us up with templates so that we could update product listings ourselves so we only need to go through them for bigger stuff. This ease and flexibility of the training and resources they provided, has given me the skills to maintain things and keep the website current and up to date.
STATISTICS YOU SHOULD KNOW
