Sell flowers online: How to Start an Online Flower Business

Flowers are beautiful gift items for women, graduates, birthdays and anniversaries. They are common at funerals, weddings and sold both online/offline.

Do you have a love for flora or own a greenhouse garden? Then you can leverage on your passion and sell online.

It’s a known fact that passion driven initiatives tends to last longer than profit driven ones. You need an ecommerce website to successfully sell flowers online.

 You are at liberty to sell your own collection or network with wholesale dealers. The technology is readily available and easy to implement.

Already established shop can treble profit by going online. And the business is practicable full time and part-time.

Skill Required to Running a Flower Business

You need specific skill to run an online flower business. Apart from passion you need basic commerce, web and floral knowledge. You also need to have proper time management and business structure.

Purchase Equipment.

If you want to grow the flowers yourself you need a greenhouse or large garden. Purchase gardening tools such as rakes, shoves, diggers and gardening cloths.

You need different sizes of pots, seeds, soil, fertilizer and regular water supply. Selling third party stocks require a slightly different arrangement.

Gardening Tools

• Rakes
• Shoves
• Diggers
• Gardening cloths
• Pots
• Seeds
• Soil
• Fertilizer
• Regular water supply.

How to Sell Third Party Flowers

To sell third party flowers you need to establish contact with wholesalers. Once you have found a reputable dealer form a partnership arrangement.

There are also affiliate deals for flower retailers. To find dealers online you can use keyword search and online directories.

Start a Florist Business

Ecommerce Software

To sell online you need an ecommerce website. Use a premium template to customize your website.

There is hundreds of ecommerce software both free and paid. Add high resolution images of your produce, description and prices.

Some websites include customizable floral orders and arrangement. The ecommerce site should have a shopping cart and checkout.

Make sure you can process credit/debit cards, direct deposit or PayPal. Add as many features to your website such as subscription, email marketing and other marketing tools for better user experience.

How to Build Your Website

You can build your website from scratch or hire a professional to create one. Select a keyword rich domain name and host plan.

If you don’t want any stress use an ecommerce host plans with embedded features. Such websites offer hosting, templates and a shopping cart. Make sure the website is attractive and easy to navigate.

Steps are choosing a domain name-host plan-install premium template- add products-add shopping cart- marketing.

How to Deliver the Flowers

There are three methods used to deliver flower orders. The methodology depends on the type of ecommerce website you built.

Sell Your Own Flowers

Selling your own products is the most lucrative and more challenging. You handle the orders and shipment by yourself.

You need powerful software to organize inventory and accept payment. Software should be used to track the deliver. A good way is to integrate your orders method a delivery company for faster efficiency.

Partner with Online Wholesalers

The second method is networking with a wholesaler that offers drop shipping for third party members. The drop ship company offers the ecommerce site a selection of flowers to be sold on the site.

Some arrangements require the ecommerce site to open an account with the wholesaler. The reason is for easy debiting and payment after sales. The flower wholesaler once a sale is established sends the flower to the purchaser.

 Affiliate Programs

The third method is using an affiliate program to earn small commission per sale. Once you have an order and a purchased established through your unique URL. The provider handles the entire shipment and payment of commission.  

Marketing

To make any sales you need to drive Traffic to Your Website. There is huge competition online and new websites struggle to attract traffic.

You need to create an effective marketing strategy. Work within a small budget and use online advertisements.

Develop a following on social media for your website. And integrate the social media icon to your website. Social media websites to consider are Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and twitter.