How Geranium Rozanne Increased Website Traffic by 500% in 1 Year

How much time do you have to worry about website traffic? As a plant breeder, grower, or garden center owner, you may have limited time for marketing. You may be wondering how you can get your gorgeous products in front of consumers. After all, you work hard to perfect your plants, why not introduce them to as many people as possible?

In today’s modern era of consumers turning to the internet to research and buy a majority of goods, it’s only natural for those in the horticulture industry to seek a better online presence.

Geranium Rozanne

Geranium Rozanne, an outstanding perennial plant from Must Have Perennials®, is a great example of how you can elevate your online visibility. Since introduction, Geranium Rozanne has sold more than 20 million plants to date. In 2014, the team behind this purple variety contacted a marketing agency to start work on bringing awareness to this plant and publicizing it to consumers. We launched a consumer-focused website and social media campaign. Since that time, Rozanne has become the most popular flower on Facebook with over 107,000 followers!

Building on this success, the Must Have Perennials team decided to take it to the next step. By revamping the Geranium Rozanne brand to include “Rozanne and Friends” on the new rozanneandfriends.com website and refocusing on the power of digital marketing for the horticulture industry, their positive results have multiplied!

One Year Results

In the scope of just one year, website traffic increased by more than 500%. That’s five times the amount of web visitors the site was getting just a year ago! Through a variety of technical, design-focused, and content marketing efforts, the brand focus now is on how Rozanne (as a personified flower) shares news about her “friends”—other perennials with great garden performance.

Because of the brand awareness Rozanne has gained through this process, Must Have Perennials has also benefitted greatly through association. Which means if you are a breeder, and your flower is one of Rozanne’s friends, you’ll receive much of the same brand recognition. Similarly, growers can get in on the action by becoming a partner with Must Have Perennials. Everyone in the perennial flower supply chain can reach new heights with the right online strategy, and ours is most definitely working.

To help you understand a bit more about website traffic and how this supports you as a breeder, grower, or garden center, we’re happy to share the data for you to peruse.

Why Website Traffic is Important

Website traffic is identified as one of the key performance indicators for the Rozanne and Friends™ brand. By tracking and increasing visits to the website, we can increase overall brand awareness in the public – especially for Geranium Rozanne herself. It also helps move the website up the list in rankings on search engines such as Google, thereby establishing more authority for the site and the brand.

In addition, it helps us gauge the interest of the audience. For example, we can track which site pages are the most popular and where people are spending the most time. This is where we can capitalize on their interest to bring them the perennial varieties they love (like ours!). Having your varieties or company name linked on our  websites means direct association with our already-successful, trusted brands. Our smart content marketing process pulls people through the various website pages, giving you tons of time in the limelight.

Now, in case you’re curious, here’s a breakdown of how we increased the website traffic.

How Geranium Rozanne Increased Website Traffic by 500%

Let’s take a look at some of the fast facts. 

Stellar Results

• • Total individual visits to the site increased by 502% compared to the previous year.

• • In 2017, Rozanne averaged almost 10,000 page views a month, compared to just over 2000 page views a month in 2016. Page views have increased 285% in one year (January-September 2016 vs January-September 2017).

• The website now ranks for over 500 important keywords on search engines. This is more than any keyword competitors in the market. Keywords are very important, as they drive targeted traffic to our Rozanne and Friends™ website. These are words or phrases customers enter into search engines to find websites that match what they are searching for.
• Geranium Rozanne is now ranking #1 on search engines for many targeted consumer keywords! This means it appears at the top of web page search results and drives traffic to rozanneandfriends.com.

So, how did we do it?

Here are the most important factors in Rozanne’s success.

• Brand Strength: By building up quality content and a strong brand presence through social media (Facebook in particular) for Rozanne in a period of a few years, this social presence and engagement gave the brand a very strong base.
  • We used social media to “break Rozanne out of horticulture”.  We grew Rozanne’s online presence, spreading her popularity to those who love plants but aren’t interested in gardening as a hobby. Many of these people don’t frequent garden centers and retail nurseries and are unlikely to know about Rozanne’s easy-to-grow attributes. So, using social media, we focused on making her as lovable as possible to all types of consumers.
• Website Redesign: In February 2017, our team redesigned and revamped the website to shift focus on Rozanne and her friends. The brand name subsequently changed to “Rozanne and Friends” with a more modern look, dynamic interface, and mobile-first design elements to accommodate the majority of website visitors who view from their smartphones and mobile devices (see pie chart below—only 30% of visitors are not on a mobile/smart device).
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Most importantly, Must Have Perennials, with the help of our SEO experts, ran a full website audit and overhauled the site for improved search engine optimization. Here are some of the steps we’ve taken:
  • Migrated the website to the safer, more SEO-friendly HTTPs
  • Performed keyword research and made metadata optimizations
  • Delivered a comprehensive Technical Audit highlighting all website issues
  • Crawled and mapped the website to find any underlying issues
  • Made website updates to fix issues found during the audit
  • Performed On Page optimizations to boost speed and user experience
  • Tracked improvements in keyword rankings and reported wins
  • Provided in-depth SEO reports each month to continue to optimize based on results

Increased Website Traffic

Of course, to get even better results, the goal is for the Rozanne and Friends website to keep improving. Our team continues the momentum by regularly producing and promoting quality content. Similarly, they employ many sophisticated search engine marketing techniques and SEO optimization.

If you’re a grower who produces finished plants for retail, get listed as a source of supply for retailers here. And if you’re a retailer who already sells any of the Rozanne and Friends varieties, make sure you’re listed as a supply source on rozanneandfriends.com.

For breeders, contact us if you’re interested in having your plant variety considered as one of Rozanne’s “friends.”