Online flower store: what software for ordering, etc?

I’m helping set up a site for a family member in the business, and am wondering which software is best to use so that people can order and pay online, etc. We won’t have a physical store for about 6 months, but want software that won’t need to be replaced once the store opens. Also, we’d like to have as many "bells & whistles" options as possible for the online store - i.e. a separate page for each floral arrangement, a list of other popular and/or similar floral arrangements shown in the bottom of the page, user accounts, ability to search for arrangements by name (i.e. "roses"), popularity, price, and whatever other features there are out there, etc. The more awesome features the better - we want to really stand out above the crowd, as my family member is a celebrity florist who’s done work for the Clintons, etc, so the website needs to be awesome. What would you guys recommend? Thanks!

update: also, as far as domain names go, given the fact that we will be starting with a single major city and only expanding to other cities after 6 months (depending on initial success), should I look for a domain name with the city’s name (and other keywords) in it to help with initial SEO rankings? I do plan on paying an Indian Elance firm $150/mo from day one to do SEO, and having an AdWords campaign from day one, but I’m still scared we might not get customers because of the sheer number of online florists out there! So what do you guys think: get a city-specific domain and then switch down the road, or get one non-city specific domain name and stick with it for life?

Also, regardless of whether or not I get a city-specific domain name, should I try hard to squeeze as many keywords into the domain name as possible, or just give it a cool, unique name that doesn’t necessarily have so many keywords?

No, it’s a new business and we plan to start it online and open up a physical location later in 2011. So it would be preferable to set something up that won’t need to be thrown out and replaced once the store opens.
Magento or Drupal. The former is better for commerce. The latter is better for user-management and creating user-specific or user-dependent content, which it seems like you might want. Personally, I sackride the shit out of Magento, I’d wind up using it. For you, either option will present some challenges, but Magento would still be the way to go if you want to have a full feature store platform.

Holy shit, starts at $13k/yr?! Wow. How is their free model? I was hoping for something that’s free or cheap to start, and can be upgraded to cost maybe a few hundred a month, but $13k/yr is just an utter waste of money unless the company is doing a ton of business already.
if you are looking for something really simple just install wordpress, add e-commerce plugin > play with some e-commerce add ons and you’re done

accepts google checkout, paypal, plus a ton of other options

that should be all the customization you need from what it sounds like

might need s2member plugin for better control over user accounts

Can you think of any online stores I can view to see what’s possible with this setup?
idk if this will help, its just so customizable you can make the store function and look like anything you want

I’ll take some screens of the admin panel for you, 1 sec

That sounds really promising, but where can I see some actual stores to see what’s possible when you customize the hell out of this thing? I checked out most of the stores in their Showcase, but quite frankly they all look pretty bad. Some of the features (i.e. drag n drop cart) are pretty cool, but they just don’t look visually appealing at all, and I think it’d be a royal pain in the butt to redesign the entire thing. In contrast, Magneto’s free version, with some relatively minor tweaks, could look pretty sweet:

post #8?

might be confusing, but thats a site using the plugin I’m talking about… they just so happen to sell plugins as well

the reason I ask is for credit card processing, I have dealt with a few in the past and they have a list of what cart systems they work with and not all of them will work with every cart system, so if they want to open a store and accept credit card payments there and use it for the site, that is something they need to look into

A few of whom in the past?

Sorry, I’m completely new to this, but yes we 100% need credit card processing.

Use their community edition.
I spent a bit of time looking at different flower sites, and this is the site that I want mine to most resemble:

Reasons:

1. Super functional because it lists top picks in every category, so that you can basically decide or almost decide what you want all on the main page, without having to click one category after another and compare stuff on different pages, which is basically what almost every other site out there makes you do. Compared to this site, the designs of almost every other site, including world-famous giants like FTD and Teleflora, look retarded.
2. The design is very soft and easy on the eyes - it emphasizes the flowers, rather than the design, so you can choose more quickly and get on with your life.
3. If that wasn’t enough, added awesome functionality features like the "Find a Gift Fast" are great - a few clicks and you’re well on your way to completing your order! Also the account login is conveniently clearly visible, so overall this site is a real winner when it comes to functionality and looks.

My other fave is pinklotusflorist.com, which is a very similar concept, but with a harsher designs and less functional (best sellers from all categories are jumbled into one, which can get confusing because you don’t want to accidently order funeral flowers for a birthday - and who the hell can tell the difference until they arrive and someone makes a comment! Also, where is the fast order box and the account login?) This site has flaws, but is still a lot better than most others out there.

That being said: how close can I get to honestflorist.com with the free version of Magneto? Can I have all those categories on the main page? The quick order box? The account login?
two options:

1. Shopify.com - pick a theme and configure (very easy to use + they give your everything you need, no need to worry about security, hosting..):
2. Templatemonster - pick a template for a cart that you like: (scroll down for templates)

An examples for magneto:

shopify won’t work for this, at least not well. you’d have to rely on the customers to manually enter in the date and time for delivery with little in the way of making sure the date is a future date, one that can be fulfilled, etcetera.

also, theme forest is better than template monster.
shopify is not as feature rich or as customizable as magneto. As far as themeforest being better, i wanted to recommend it at first, but couldn’t find anything worthwhile with a flower shop theme, templatemonster on the other hand…

Wow, that’s one awesome-looking theme - I’m very impressed!

Do you guys think I should get the free edition of Magneto then?

Is there any way to get that Quick Order box in the middle with this software though?

Also, are there any specific limitations of the free edition that will really get in my way?

P.S. Spasibo chuvak!
Also, as far as domain names go, given the fact that we will be starting with a single major city and only expanding to other cities after 6 months (depending on initial success), should I look for a domain name with the city’s name (and other keywords) in it to help with initial SEO rankings? I do plan on paying an Indian Elance firm $150/mo from day one to do SEO, and having an AdWords campaign from day one, but I’m still scared we might not get customers because of the sheer number of online florists out there! So what do you guys think: get a city-specific domain and then switch down the road, or get one non-city specific domain name and stick with it for life?

Also, regardless of whether or not I get a city-specific domain name, should I try hard to squeeze as many keywords into the domain name as possible, or just give it a cool, unique name that doesn’t necessarily have so many keywords?

I ended up doing some freelance for a local kitchen cabinet manufacturer, last year

what we ended up doing we had city specific domain names to advertise in each city with and then one overall corporate site

it worked well for scoring higher in the local market searches having city specific domain names

we used one design, but we had 4 different color schemes, we split the US into 4 divisions and then we had a totally different design for the corporate site

the corporate site was used for doing trade shows and getting affiliates across the united states to sell the cabinets

Sounds like an awesome idea - do you by any chance have all the links so I can see how it pans out in real life?

Zdarova!

If you are planning to hire an Indian firm to do the SEO, post their SEO plan here so we can take it apart. Make sure they provide you with the list of your competition and how they are planning to outrank them. If it is a major city, it might be difficult and will take time, given that florist keyword is pretty saturated. Also, take into the account a new structure for Google Listings, local organic ranking is pushed even further down now - Which means that ranking for local listing will be a lot more rewarding, but you will need a physical location to register (there are ways around it of course) Here are the latest local ranking factors ().

For your adwords, there are a lot of amateurs that know basics, try to get a certified google adwords pro, they will be able to give you a $100 free jump start voucher (google sends about 20 of them every quarter to their certified individuals). At least you’ll have someone who took the time to learn, studied for the exams and keeps the license. You can search for a local one here:

udachi!
Curious if you’re going to be selling flowers locally or just doing order fulfillment to anywhere with someone like FTD/Teleflora? Worked in a family florist before I got into web dev.

Thanks, I’ll read through this stuff and post here in a bit.

We’re gonna go head-to-head against the likes of FTD, etc, but we’ll have our own store / warehouse in our home city so that we don’t have to rely on others. Any advice?

sorry I don’t share anything like this on ot anymore

Can’t blame you!

Guess I should register it to a PO box (ahem "suite") downtown? How do I find out what Google considers to be the absolute center of town, so that I can pick the one nearest to it - do I just search for the city name on Google Local, and the place where it puts the star by default is what it considers the absolute center?

Don’t worry about the absolute center too much, I am way off center and still ranking. Also, google will not take a P.O. Box… (try UPS box)

Guidelines:

Thanks, that was an awesome article at David Mihm’s. When I mean PO box, I mean at private stores (like UPS) that actually call them "suites", so Google won’t know. Btw do you have msn or aim - I got the breakdowns from a few SEO firms and wanted you to have a look. Thanks dude!

I don’t understand the point your trying to make. The processor has nothing to do with the cart system itself. The gateway does however, and most major gateways will tie into any existing merchant account, which when the B&M store is built will function on its own processing CC orders in person.

P.S when we people stop suggesting wordpress for e-commerce.
So where does Google Checkout deposit money - can I just give it a regular business bank account, or does it have to be a special one or something?

Reg account, but only use google checkout/paypal as additional options unless your goal is to look like an amateur.
Kinda off topic here but don’t many of the online florist stores just whitelabel a few of the big key players?

(obviously I’m talking about ones that don’t have their own brick and mortar store)
So what should my main form of payment be?

Payment options:

I used to use PayPal Website Payments Pro (direct processing, unlike regular paypal). Also, I’d recommend passing the financial info directly to the processor, without storing it on your server.