Wow. What is there not to say about Oxford Floral's website? This is the quintessential definition of poor quality web design. In fact, Oxford Floral's website is so bad I would venture to say that it could be the worst in town (which is ashamed considering the great reputation of this company). If you take a look at Oxford Floral's slogan it says, "Serving Oxford, Mississippi and the South since 1924"... It might as well say, "If the Internet was around in 1924, we would be the only destination".
It really is that bad. Let's point out some things that I see off the top of my head:
- Awful color variations on different pages... it is almost blinding (this screams BACK BUTTON!)
- No Opt-In List for Email Marketing
- Very little HTML content on Homepage
- No top menu structure
- Poor Meta description
- No use of Heading tags
- Online Store is way out of date
Color Variation
When a visitor arrives at Oxford Floral's website the first thing he/she is going to notice is the bright background color. But, we do not know what background color the visitor is going to get because the website has some weird thing going on that brings up a random (annoying) color every time the user refreshes the page... this feature would have been cool in 1996. Not anymore.
These bright colors scream for the visitor to bailout of the website by clicking their browser's back button which will result in this site have a very high bounce rate and a low average time on site.
The Many Colors of Oxford Floral
No Opt-In
For a company such as Oxford Floral that has many loyal customers their website could really use an opt-in form in order to collect customer email addresses for an email marketing campaign. Personally I believe email marketing would work great for a local florist and gift shop. No doubt that Oxford Floral has a huge database of customers... why not take advantage of that and keep the customers informed about updated inventory? The bottom line: Email marketing definitely couldn't hurt. If anything, it is going to bring people back into the store more often.
Lack of HTML Content on the Homepage
This one is obvious. There is such little text on the homepage that it makes it difficult for search engines to actually know what the site is about. I would definitely recommend adding a brief keyword-rich blurb about the company in order for search engines to better index the site.
No Top Menu Structure
This website should certainly have an "About Us" page, "Our Location" page, and a "Contact Us" page in a menu at the top of the site above the fold so that visitors can actually find these pages. Right now if you wanted to find out where Oxford Floral's location is, you would have to navigate to the bottom of the page in order to find the "Find Us" link... most people are not going to see this. If you did actually find the "Find Us" page (http://www.oxfordfloral.com/?page=find), the first thing you would see is an outdated image of an Oxford map... I think it's time for an embedded Google map so that people can actually find the store.
Poor Title and Meta Description
For those of you that know how to view a website's source, one of the first thing you will notice is the poor title tag and meta description that this website uses. The title tag and description simply reads, "Oxford Floral Company"; The title and description should be much more enticing and keyword-rich. Also, I have noticed that every single page on the site uses the same title and meta description... this is not good at all from a search engine standpoint. Each page should have a unique title and description... SEO 101.
No Use of HTML Heading Tags
Another thing one will notice when they view the source of the website is that it does not take advantage of Heading tags. Again, this is SEO 101... adding a few keywords in H1 and H2 tags could possibly increase the organic rankings of the site. Small changes like this can do wonders for a local business website.
Online Store Out of Date
It is obvious that Oxford Floral's online store is way out of date. Not only is it old, but I bet it hasn't been updated in years (they probably do not even carry some of the stuff that is on the site anymore... which wouldn't matter, because I bet no one has purchased anything off of the site... ever). That's all I will say about the online store; it's just old.
As I mentioned, I can go on and on about the poor quality of Oxford Floral's website... It's bad, really bad. The sad thing is that this website actually gets some decent traffic... it's sad because if I owned this website, I actually wouldn't want any traffic -- I wouldn't want anyone to see it. Take a look at these search stats from Google:
It sometimes amazes me how some companies forget that their online presence this day and time is almost as important as their offline presence. A well-designed and up-to-date website never hurts a companies image, but it definitely can help.
Here's the bottom line: Oxford Floral is a reputable local Oxford business... it's time that their website convey that same quality reputation (especially since so many people are searching for them on major search engines.
Adam is considered a top Internet marketing consultant for the local Internet Marketing company P.O.G. in Oxford Mississippi. To learn more visit: http://ProfitOptimizationGroup.com
Adam is considered a top Internet marketing consultant for the local Internet Marketing company P.O.G. in Oxford Mississippi. To learn more visit: http://ProfitOptimizationGroup.com
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