Many established online businesses still rely heavily on the Internet’s gatekeeper, Google, for traffic. So much so, that whole industries have sprung up to help business mangers optimise their site to suit the world’s leading search engine. Search engine optimisation throws up some interesting new challenges and opportunities. But rather than give […]
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Filed under: Guest Posts, Marketing, Matters Webby on May 6th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Hello, everyone. Apologies for the relative blog silence of late. We’ve been super busy at Flowers HQ - not only is Valentine’s Day looming, but we’ve also been hard at work on a top secret, world first feature for our customers - video and voice messages delivered with flowers. Heard of […]
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Filed under: Customers, Marketing, Matters Webby, Mega Days, Setting up, Valentine's Day on February 8th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Our constant scouting for SEO related tips and articles on the Web has led us to experiment with many Widgets on our blog. People who follow our blog closely would have noticed the nonstop activity on the Widget Columns. Just like we bring flowers to customers instead of bringing customers to our flowers, we strive […]
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Filed under: General, Marketing, Matters Webby on November 23rd, 2007 | 6 Comments »
It’s hard coming up with a catchy name for a new service that breaks the mould. After much discussion, we settled on Arena for Business. It’s been a while coming, but we’ve grown organically (much like many of our plants and flowers, wines and chocolates) and the clamour for a business proposition has meant we’ve […]
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Filed under: Customers, Marketing, Setting up on November 20th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
When we set up Arena, we wanted to ensure that we had a great range of add on gifts to make the perfect complement(s) to the perfect flower arrangement (that’s my personal favourite). Because we buy direct from the flower auctions in Holland, our flowers are incredibly fresh and, because we cut out the […]
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Filed under: Ethics & Environment, General, Marketing, Mega Days on November 7th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Today was a fun day at Flowers HQ. One of those days when I reflect how happy I am that our team took the risk and ventured away from our easy(ish) jobs into the uncharted (and scarier) waters of Arena, flowers and building a business for flower lovers. Hooray!
I’ve been out of the office for […]
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Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Flowers, General, Marketing, Matters Webby on October 25th, 2007 | 4 Comments »
I drive a scooter which takes me to work everyday. My scooter is a thing of joy, something I wanted since I first saw one driving down the King’s Road in Chelsea. It is a black Vespa GTS, 250cc and I have added a couple of optional extras, in particular a chrome crash bar […]
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Filed under: Distribution, General, Marketing, Setting up on September 7th, 2007 | 12 Comments »
This year has been a real roller coaster at Arena already. The first three months of the year for any florist are consumed by Valentine’s day and Mother’s day, with all florists living in mortal terror of getting it wrong and losing a lot of money. In order to get through such mega […]
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Filed under: Marketing, Matters Webby on August 9th, 2007 | 7 Comments »
Last night, after an enthusiastic exchange of final amends we launched ‘Flowers & Fun’ the Arena Flowers Facebook application. As with all things Arena, Flowers & Fun had always been there in our ‘to do’ list but it wasn’t until last week that Will’s frantic text messages became too much to ignore – the application […]
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Filed under: Flowers, General, Marketing, Matters Webby on July 27th, 2007 | No Comments »
I received the email below yesterday (no idea why it was written in lurid purple!). Having had a look, I wasn’t initially convinced that Blackle is for real. Both natural and paid search results differ from those returned on conventional Google. It could be that it’s only set up for US searchers. Or […]
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Filed under: Ethics & Environment, Marketing, Matters Webby on July 25th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Being an online retailer is not easy, especially when it’s such an interconnected world where making the right connections is the key to achieving objectives. At Arena Flowers we mull over the different online advertising channels every day, reviewing their promises to dramatically boost our visitors overnight. It would be easy if we had very […]
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Filed under: Big Mistakes, Marketing, Matters Webby on July 23rd, 2007 | 5 Comments »
For those that don’t know, sesame snaps are these sort of stick confectionery type things made by coating sesame seeds with caramelised sugar and letting the whole thing set (at least as far as I can tell). They’re probably not that healthy (though sesame seeds are pretty good for you) but by jove they’re […]
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Filed under: Floristry, General, Marketing on July 9th, 2007 | 6 Comments »
Tuesday 5th June was an exciting day for Sam (tech and design guru), Ronald (flower buying Dutch masterpiece), Alina (chief flower wrangler) and myself (me!), as we attended ABN Amro’s “World Environment Day” fair in ABN’s offices in the City of London.
ABN Amro is pretty hot on sustainable initiatives and driving ethical, environmental policies through […]
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Filed under: Customers, Ethics & Environment, Marketing on June 26th, 2007 | No Comments »
An online florist doesn’t mean that we exist in the virtual world. Each one of us at Arena is a social animal, with a desire to share our experiences with our customers and an eagerness to grab attention. That’s how we realised the importance of blogging as a new form of communication to share our […]
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Filed under: Marketing, Matters Webby on June 12th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
We love gumtree. We’ve recruited about 20 members of our team using the site, at a fraction of the cost of using a recruitment agency. In fact, aside from people we always knew we wanted to hire, every single other recruit has come through gumtree, including drivers, florists, customer service ladies and even our […]
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Filed under: General, Marketing, Matters Webby, Setting up on June 4th, 2007 | No Comments »
…I was pretending to go to my friend Ash’s wedding in Jaipur, India, whilst actually flying to sit at the feet of web gurus in San Francisco, USA.
I had a job at the time (at eBay UK), but, having agreed in principle with Steve that we should set up Arena, I then had to work […]
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Filed under: Marketing, Matters Webby, Start up on May 27th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Simple 3 step plan to throw away £229 in less than an hour and a half.
1. 0938: Think that it might be a good idea to put up some PPC, targeting Chelsea Flower Show searches. Set up campaign at default bid levels.
2. Spend an hour wrestling payroll and our online banking system.
3. 1102: Check […]
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Filed under: Big Mistakes, Marketing on May 22nd, 2007 | 4 Comments »
