As recently reported on internetretailer.com, the top online flowers sellers had the most online visits for flowers and gifts according to internet traffic monitoring service Hitwise.



Capturing the number 1 spot, flower seller 1-800-Flowers.com had over 18% of all visits to flower and gift sites for the week ending Mother's Day. FTD.com held claim to second place with nearly 14% of all visits, followed by ProFlowers.com with better than 10% of all visits. The fourth place finisher, Teleflora.com made up 2.26% of all visits with Flowers.com finishing in fifth place with 0.86%.

Hitwise also reported that 1-800-Flowers.com share of site traffic was 7.5 times greater then it was two weeks earlier in the build up in anticipation of Mothers Day.

What accounts for such dominance by the top flower shops can be chalk up to strong marketing and traditional print and television advertising. The top flower sellers are increasing their brand awareness with consumers with traditional commercial advertising usually dominated by brick and mortar retailers, especially around holidays like Mothers Day, Valentines Day and Easter.

In the weeks leading up to Mothers Day many consumers saw http://1-800-Flowers.com and http://ProFlowers.com run commercials just for Mothers Day. Using television advertising 1-800-Flowers and the like will most likely give online consumers and instant brand or URL to search for as they go online to buy flowers.

Some of the smaller retailers don't have the same marketing budgets as the top tier retailers do and will struggle to compete without other aggressive marketing strategies. With out devising or incorporating other marketing plans many of the top flower shops will likely continue to increase their market share as more and more shoppers embrace the web as their preferred shopping medium.

With hundreds of floral shopping sites online many online floral shop owners are taking steps to broaden their customer base by partnering with related floral theme internet sites to help drive traffic to their sites.

Online stores are embracing partner sites as a new marketing channel to help increase traffic, exposure and drive sales. Some of these partner sites come in the form of blogs, coupon sites, and review sites and newsletters distributors.

Counting on the various partner sites to drive traffic and consumer interest provides the flower retailers, big or small, an opportunity to give consumers a way to see other money saving deals that exits online. As flower retailers take advantage of the traffic generated by partner sites they can look forward to not only more traffic but increased profits which is the ultimate aim.

As the number of online flower shop sites continues to expand, finding ways for smaller flower shops to drive traffic to stay competitive will come in the form of an increasing number partner sites. Ultimately the competition to drive more traffic between flower shops online will lead to better discount deals for consumers.