From florists, for florists.
Slow flower shop website? You’re losing orders right now
A slow website sends mobile customers elsewhere. What slows down your online flower shop, how to test its speed and what to ask whoever builds your site.
Your customer won’t wait
Think about how you look something up on your phone. If a page doesn’t open quickly, what do you do? You go back and try another one. Your customers do exactly the same.
Someone needs a bouquet for an anniversary in an hour’s time. They tap the link and the page struggles. White screen. A few seconds. Gone. They end up with the florist on the next street, whose site came up straight away. You never even knew you had a customer.
What’s slowing your website down
Most of the time there’s one culprit: the photos. You take a gorgeous shot of an arrangement on your phone, it’s 6–8 MB, and you upload it just as it is. The customer’s browser has to download that whole huge file, even though it shows up small on screen. A photo properly prepared for the web is under 300 KB and looks just as good.
The second culprit: too much moving about. A big slider on the home page with five photos changing on their own. Animations everywhere. A plugin for this, another for that. Each one adds weight. You want the site to impress, but the customer only wants to see the bouquet and the price.
How to test your site in two minutes
You don’t need to be technical. Open Google’s PageSpeed Insights (it’s free), paste in your website address and run the test. You get a score and a clear list of what’s holding you back — usually the photos.
Even simpler: pick up your phone, turn off Wi-Fi so you’re on mobile data, and open your site the way any customer would. Count in your head: one, two, three. If there’s still nothing on screen by three, you have a problem. Ask a friend who doesn’t work with you to try the same and give you an honest answer.
What to ask whoever builds your website
If you’re paying someone for your website, you’re entitled to ask for specific things. Tell them: I want photos optimised automatically when I upload them, without having to prepare each one myself. I want the site to load quickly on a phone, not just on a computer. I want to see the PageSpeed Insights score, before and after.
Don’t be fobbed off with “it runs fine on my laptop”. Your customers buy on their phones, on the move, in a hurry. That’s where the order is won or lost.
A fast website isn’t a luxury. It’s your shop window: if it’s blocked, nobody comes in. At Superflori X we build fast websites for flower shops, by florists for florists, because speed is exactly what counts.
