Helping a local nursery

[Erika_B]

Hello Gardeners!

I'm a student website designer and amateur gardener. I'm trying to find out the needs and frustrations of gardeners when searching for or shopping for plants online. My goal is to help a local, family-owned plant nursery improve its website, make it more user-friendly, and ultimately be more competitive with big-box stores. This local nursery sells more native plants, which is better for the environment and should be promoted. I want to help local nurseries that offer better services, education, and care more about their plants.

I would really appreciate your input. Your responses may be used in my portfolio but your username/identity will remain anonymous.

Some prompts:

If you shopped or ordered plants online what was that experience like?

What have you found frustrating about these websites or apps?

What have you found makes them more enjoyable or user-friendly?

What would you like to see improved?

And if you can give me any examples of sites/apps you really like or love that would be great.

 

[DirtMechanic]

oh boy. this makes me sad.

 

[Erika_B]

oh boy. this makes me sad.

Exactly what part of this makes you sad? If you aren't interested in my post you don't have to respond.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Exactly what part of this makes you sad? If you aren't interested in my post you don't have to respond.

you cannot do what you ask us to help you do and you do not know why. One reason is georealistic context.

 

[Erika_B]

you cannot do what you ask us to help you do and you do not know why. One reason is georealistic context.

My post is about user research which is done for most apps and websites you enjoy using. I meant it in good faith. What you said was negative and unhelpful. If you have something helpful to say then please do.

 

[DirtMechanic]

I cannot. Your proposal is far too broad. This is what indicates both your economic effort and interests and your lack of awareness of that you propose to sell with detail.

Lets narrow it down. Restrict all your questions to tomatoes and ask again below this post. Tomatoes are exceptionally popular to grow and results should not only be forthcoming but also possibly focused enough for you to extract useful information for your economic modelling efforts. please note that plant websites are actually shut down when the growing season is over.

Also be prepared for seed versus live plant normalities in these order processes.

The sheer quantity of all plants being for sale is too daunting for me to approach.

Additionally, as a person approaching a well established channel of distribution, what would you offer to be different? Would you be able to understand that sometimes crops fail and you could possibly establish a unique website for tomatoes that are 30 days away from fruiting? How would you find that supply?

 

[Erika_B]

I cannot. Your proposal is far too broad. This is what indicates both your economic effort and interests and your lack of awareness of that you propose to sell with detail.

Lets narrow it down. Restrict all your questions to tomatoes and ask again below this post. Tomatoes are exceptionally popular to grow and results should not only be forthcoming but also possibly focused enough for you to extract useful information for your economic modelling efforts. please note that plant websites are actually shut down when the growing season is over.

Also be prepared for seed versus live plant normalities in these order processes.

The sheer quantity of all plants being for sale is too daunting for me to approach.

Additionally, as a person approaching a well established channel of distribution, what would you offer to be different? Would you be able to understand that sometimes crops fail and you could possibly establish a unique website for tomatoes that are 30 days away from fruiting? How would you find that supply?

I am a student designer and not getting anything for this. I cannot be an expert on every business I would like to design for but I'd like to learn more about the pain points experienced by people who want to search for and buy plants online. I want to know more about the experiences people have buying from these websites and what issues people face.

To clarify, my question is about live plants since that's what the nursery sells. They sell different tomatoes, and other vegetables, flowers, herbs, grasses, and native plants. My questions were intentionally broad because the website I want to redesign sells many different plants. I would be happy to hear comments on any types of specific issues people face but it's not realistic for me to make separate posts about every type of plant being sold on the website. Perhaps for a bigger project but that would take more time than I have right now.

What I am asking is about the functionality of the websites. I would like to know issues people may have with having plants shipped. Or the ways people would like to see information organized on a website. Whether or not sites are selling right now doesn't matter since people still remember experiences with these types of sites.

 

[DirtMechanic]

What I am asking is about the functionality of the websites. I would like to know issues people may have with having plants shipped. Or the ways people would like to see information organized on a website.

These are pretty good points. I would actually discard the question about functionality and focus on the last two. The reason being the answers to improving the last two questions are improvements in functionality. In fact I can roll both into one, and improve functionality by suggesting sites use pictures of what is actually being sold, whereas currently they use pictures that probably should be referred to as an "artists rendition".

 

[Erika_B]

These are pretty good points. I would actually discard the question about functionality and focus on the last two. The reason being the answers to improving the last two questions are improvements in functionality. In fact I can roll both into one, and improve functionality by suggesting sites use pictures of what is actually being sold, whereas currently they use pictures that probably should be referred to as an "artists rendition".

Thank you. This is good to know.