In our first post, we worked with Flower Haus to identify the major pain points of running their small business and their goals for longterm growth. Flower Haus is a floral design studio in Shepherdstown, West Virginia with a devout local following that has spread to the DC metro area, capturing the attention of a whole new audience and customer base. With an abundance of orders and events, owners Mark and Darin found themselves with little time to shift in the direction they wanted their business to move towards. They found themselves completing multiple business and marketing tasks over and over again and this workload, combined with their ordering and fulfillment duties, was keeping them (and their business) tucked into a cycle that wasn’t allowing their longterm dreams for the studio to flourish.
We stepped in, along with our partner Squarespace, to revamp their online presence and consolidate their business + social duties into a growth-oriented approach that would help them achieve their dreams. We used the Squarespace e-commerce customizable layouts to create a customer and future customer experience that was simple, beautiful and allowed customers to complete online purchases and other transactions with ease.
The ultimate goal was to increase sales and decrease time spent on redundant tasks and processes. A website audit and a tour of the Squarespace e-commerce templates helped facilitate a streamlined approach to their entire business.
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The redesigned homepage shown above uses the Brine template to showcase the best part of Mark and Darin’s business — the beauty of flowers and plants. They were wowed by the easy-to-use parallax scrolling feature by Squarespace, which now gives visitors to their site an interactive virtual tour of their services and products. Simply by creating a site experience based on what digital users do best — scrolling — potential customers are able to float through images and text that create an experience that mirrors the beauty and flow of an in-person visit.
We wanted that experience to happen for new visitors to the virtual shop, but also have a time-saving way for existing customers to quickly identify concise categories within the navigation menu to get them where they wanted to go — to the point where getting what they need would become a hand-stroke habit with only a few orders.
The navigation menu also had to serve their potential customers (new visitors) and be able to quickly engage them to move past their “tour” to the actual places where they could learn more and purchase. We created the navigation bar with pull-down menus on the top left of the page and this was surprisingly easy on the back-end of Squarespace. We loved how the back-end of the Squarespace platform employed the same simple and intuitive structure. It was almost like a silent guide, which — when using a new platform and creating something as important as a superhighway for your business’ growth — is so much more preferable than wading through a how-to manual.
We simply clicked “Pages,” hit the plus sign in the upper right corner to create them, and dragged them into the order we wanted them to appear.
It is so reassuring to see a guided icon menu when you click to add a new page because you have multiple layouts to choose from. It’s a simple, icon-driven process.
The navigation bar sits neatly on the top left with the logo snuggled in the middle of the page so visitors always know where they are on the web. The monochrome logo in the top center just feels like the North Star and gives everyone a sense of place.
On the far right, we chose the adorable bag icon (as opposed to the ubiquitous shopping cart) to remind customers they are receiving a boutique experience and not just adding product to a metal cart that doesn’t exist in the real-life Flower Haus experience.
The sub-navigation menus cater to both in-store local and word-of-mouth clients looking for shipping a whole lotta love in the form of plants, one of the areas Flower Haus wanted their small business to move towards.
If you followed our first post, we chose the Squarespace Brine template for its ability to highlight gorgeous inventory and a smooth flow on a single landing page. In the Squarespace world, this hybrid-type homepage is referred to as the Index page, and for Flower Haus, where inventory is perishable and always changing, this allows them to create a representation of the in-store experience and main product — natural beauty. From this page, they can send customers to distinct mini-shops that can be easily changed and updated with an in-store iPhone shot of current inventory.
Local flower club customers are now able to see how much inventory is available for their weekly feature flower. Because the flower club options sell out quickly, the local customers are incentivized to check their email dispatch weekly to see what the featured flower is and to order (and pay) early online. Then they just pick up and enjoy. No more arriving at the store only to find they’ve sold out. Once customers have enjoyed several of the weekly bouquets and are sold on the product, they can skip the email routine and invest in a subscription and build the weekly pick-up into their errands. This provides a stable revenue stream for Flower Haus which, in turn, can help fund their future growth plans. Once Flower Haus reaches a certain threshold of subscriptions, they’ll be able to put this income into their growth plan and offer a delivery service that can be outsourced to local drivers. This specialty delivery service will increase customer loyalty.
Next week, we’ll be sharing more of the new Flower Haus website checkout process, how they consolidated their marketing duties on their social feeds, and some printables that will help guide you through the process of streamlining your site and processes. Be sure to tune in to see see the unveiling of the brand new site! –Caitlin
If you’d like to follow this mini-workshop and create or implement these changes on your own Squarespace site, try Squarespace for 14 days risk-free. See all of their E-Commerce templates here. When you’re ready to subscribe use code ‘DESIGNSPONGE‘ for 10% off your first website, online store or domain purchase!
For help getting your online store started with Squarespace visit this helpful page, or contact Squarespace’s 24/7 customer care team.
from Design*Sponge http://www.designsponge.com/2017/04/small-business-focus-growing-flower-haus-part-2.html
from Home Improvment http://notelocreesnitu.tumblr.com/post/159794728694
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