Mother’s Day orders rise 9% at FTD.com

Total orders for FTD.com’s Mother’s Day season, April 25-May 8, rose 9% year-over-year, the retailer said. In addition, FTD and ProFlowers.com scored the highest in a WebPosition web search visibility study from WebTrends Inc.

FTD.com attributed part of its increase in Mother’s Day orders to the inclusion during the shopping period this year of Professional Secretaries’ Day, which fell on April 27. Last year, Professional Secretaries’ Day was on April 21. Not counting Secretaries’ Day orders, FTD figures Mother’s Day orders rose 7%, it said.

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FTD and competitor ProFlowers.com, which said earlier that its orders rose 37.5% during the seven days leading up to Mother’s Day on May 8, each also scored the highest among five “grower-fresh” retail flower sites in gaining visibility among consumers searching the web for Mother’s Day gifts, according to a survey by WebTrends, a provider of web site analytics.

WebTrends noted that FTD increased its visibility percentage through natural and paid search listings by 8.33% and that ProFlowers increased its visibility by 6.75%. It said that 1-800-Flowers.com’s visibility through search listings declined slightly. WebTrends figured the increase or decrease in each site’s search listings between April 26 and May 3, factoring in both natural and paid search results.

WebTrends determines visibility percentage by figuring a site’s listings within the first three pages of search results for all keywords and search engines examined in its study. A site that has the No. 1 position for all studied keywords on each search examined search engine would score a visibility percentage of 100%.

In other findings in the WebPosition survey:
-- FTD.com had the highest natural-search visibility percentage of 31.67%, followed by 1-800-Flowers.com, 27%; ProFlowers.com, 26.8%; and JustFlowers.com, 3.83%.
-- ProFlowers.com scored the highest visibility percentage, 73.25%, when analysis covered both natural and paid search listings, followed by 1-800-Flowers.com 68.24%; FTD.com, 62.08%; and JustFlowers.com, 2.92%.