Biceâs buys up domain names to boost traffic and sales
Biceâs Florist is closing its stores and buying up domain names as part of its strategy to drive more customers to its site and boost e-commerce sales.
The Fort Worth, TX-based florist has closed four of its six bricks-and-mortar locations and plans to close a fifth soon and has adopted a domain name acquisition strategy as part of a shift of focus to online retail.
The new business model is working, says Biceâs Florist owner Keith Riewe. By purchasing 35 to 40 domain names such as eflowersite .com, nationalfloraldelivery .com and blossomlink .com, Biceâs has increased traffic by 47% to about 68,000 unique visitors a month. Sales also are up by $1.5 million to about $3.7 million, he adds.
Riewe, who comes from a computer technology background, says he started looking into purchasing domain names as a way to drive traffic and sales soon after he purchased Biceâs six years ago.
Most of the domains redirect to Biceâs home page with the BicesFlorist .com URL displaying in the address bar. The only difference is that a unique identifier is tacked on to the end to help track each domain.
However, Riewe says heâs rethinking that strategy. âI donât know if people like the fact they are being forwarded to a different domain name with all the concerns with identity theft out there,â he says.
When selecting new domains, Riewe looks for catchy names that consumers will remember from ads or that they may type in on their own. He also looks for short character counts and specific terms that a user may enter in a Google or Yahoo search.
For example, an ad with the phrase Computer Hut conjured up the idea for FlowerHut .com. That name was takenâbut the similar Flower Nut was not, and so FlowerNut .com became a new Biceâs domain.
Biceâs markets the various domains in many of the more than 800,000 direct mail pieces it sends, as well as through paid search. The florist also promotes unique domains tied to specific promotions such as holiday campaigns. For those, the e-retailer will often create a special landing page for the domain that links through to Biceâs home page.
Although Riewe is able to track and spot underperforming names, for now heâs keeping them all. It costs only about $10 a year to maintain a domain name through GoDaddy.com Inc., the domain name registrar service Biceâs uses and, Riewe adds, if Biceâs owns a name, that means a competitor canât purchase it. âYou want to have as much property thatâs unique to your industry as you can,â he says.
