| Overall: | 19 | 9 |
| Design: | 12 | 4 |
| Navigation: | ||
| Usefulness: | 10 | 5 |
19
9
DoLeaf is an online marketplace where gardeners can find and buy plants from specialty nurseries and independent garden centers. All of our sellers are professional nursery owners who can help you find the right plants and ship them directly to your door.
*Note: We only have 1 seller at this point, but hope to have many more in the near future. There will be many more plants to buy at that point. Until then, it's a little bare, but you can get the idea.
Would you buy the plants displayed? Why, why not?
What's the first thing you clicked on? Why?
Are the plant overlay icons clear and easy to understand?
Would you prefer to browse by category, or search on a term directly?
Would you ever even buy a plant online, or is that just stupid? ;)
I'll try to answer each in turn:
Overlay Icons - Most of these are (usually) instantly recognizable to anyone who purchases plants. If you go to Home Depot and grab a plant, you'll see that they all have a tag with some basic info like light preference and cold tolerance. It's the basic stats of the plant. We know they're not 100% intuitive, but they make sense to our target audience (we hope). Specifically on growth rate, it's very relative and subjective, but most people with a little gardening experience learn what it means. Fast = gets big quick, will fill out to its max height/width, then you spend all your time pruning it. Slow = will take a long time to grow, but when it's adult size you'll be the envy of all your gardening buddies. Also, for shipping form, it applies to how the plant will arrive. This could be: bare root (plant with roots, dirt has been brushed off, roots are wrapped with wet newspaper), potted (comes with roots in soil in a pot), bulb (small ball that you bury), or seed. Again, it's terminology that we hope is well known by our audience.
Location based searching - Yes, this is very important. We hope to make it easy to find plants that will not only grow in your area, but also were grown nearby. We want to weight the search results to automatically display things from local nurseries in order to reduce shipping time and also increase the chance of getting a plant that's already acclimated to the buyer's climate.
Buying online - We're worried that this will be a big hurdle. I think a lot of people will be scared to buy plants online for the reasons you mention. We bought a tree online and have been ecstatic with the results. I hope we can convince others that it's a great way to get stuff.
Nursery names - We want to be clear that we (DoLeaf) are just a marketplace and not a nursery. We want the nurseries to get the main recognition and provide them with an opportunity to brand their storefronts.
Thanks for the feedback!
For those categories that you don't have a lot of information, you should shade out the nav links. Not good practice to allow the user to go somewhere where there's nothing.
I would buy from here, but not cacti...need shrubs or trees.
I don't think it's stupid to buy plants online. In fact, I rather buy them online (as long as your have a pretty good money back guarantee program) because then I can search for more info. You could potentially also provide articles on how to plant, know when to water, know when to replant, etc.
I don't want to have to look somewhere else for terminology, it probably only took you a few mins to answer Brian's questions above...shouldn't take you much longer to add some brief description to your terms to help your user out. Otherwise, you are narrowing your target audience if you assume they know the terminology. I have been gardening for about 1 year now and I still like to know what "YOUR VERSION" of those terms mean. If you take a lil' time to spruce up your site with terminology and help out your buyer, you might start gaining a very appreciative and loyal audience.
I think your site is a good idea and I would buy a plant online provided that there was some sort of guarentee provided. I did not see any mention of that. Also I see you are working on shipping features which is another area I would have questions.
I clicked on the first plant to see what kind of desciptions are provided and to see it enlarged.
I would also like to be able to search by state or region to possibly save on shipping charges.
Your home page was not really eye catching, I did not care for the gray color of the category box. Maybe a little more info on your company or something. When you add more sellers I hope they do not appear on the home page. I did not like the design around the sellers name - is that your design or theirs? It was very dark.
Good luck,
bjm
Yeah, we'd like to offer howto guides, help with planning, and all sorts of before and after you buy info. But, at this stage, we're just trying to get the sellers interested and get some plants listed.
Thanks for the feedback, especially the tips about the empty categories. I'll bring that up with the team.
Hmm, good point about "our version" of what those terms mean. I can remember being fairly new and getting so frustrated at the phrase "medium sun" I guess I still get irritated at that.
So an FAQ or quick-lookup of terminology makes sense. I'll put it on the list. The hard part will be integrating it in a quick and easy way without cluttering things up. Guess that's always the hard part.
The guarantee / return policy is something we've punted on for now. Every seller has a different one, and we need to decide if we'll allow them to keep their own (easier for sellers, more confusing for buyers) or try to force them to go along with a sitewide policy. Perhaps we'll do a little of both, where they can have their own policies, but can also sign up for a sitewide policy. Sellers who honor the sitewide one will get a special icon or badge that makes this clear.
Thanks for the color / design ideas, too!
Feedback Requested
Would you buy the plants displayed? Why, why not?
I would buy many of the plants displayed because I have not seen them available from other online retailers I have visited and I have not seen them locally either. Many of them would not be hardy in my area but they would be suitable as house plants here. I like that you use the minimum temperature in your overlay icon but still include the USDA zone in the hover text. I know I'm in zone 4b but many people (even those who garden) don't know what zone they are in and probably do know the normal winter low temperature.
What's the first thing you clicked on? Why?
The first thing I clicked on was the "aquatics" link on the navigation menu. I clicked this because I have a couple garden ponds and I'm always interested in new plants to throw in there. Since I'm in a colder zone, many of my pond plants either are replaced each year or try to winter in my basement, with many of them not making it. I was sad to see their were no plants in this category currently available.
Are the plant overlay icons clear and easy to understand?
They are reasonably clear to me, however I think they should be below the picture, a little smaller, or a little more transparent so they don't cover up so much of the pictures. The icon for the pot and the bare root were intuitive, however the light-bulb for "bulb" took me a second to realize what it meant as I associated that image with light requirements for some reason. Also the growth-rate icon wasn't immediately obvious but the hover text on the first one I rolled over cleared up any confusion.
Would you prefer to browse by category, or search on a term directly?
I prefer to browse by category when I'm interested in something like "grasses" or "aquatics" but in some cases, when I'm looking for something specific, I really NEED to be able to search for a term. I think you need both to make a site usable for both approaches.
Would you ever even buy a plant online, or is that just stupid? ;)
I buy plants online all the time. Most plants I buy online are bare-root or bulb with the exception of the aquatics. I've had potted plants show up at my door completely dumped out and frozen solid before but that was a problem with the carrier and not the supplier. I even buy fish and live aquarium animals online and most of that survives the trip so I'm not as concerned about plants. It would be nice if there were some kind of "arrive alive" guarantee though...
Some general usability recommendations:
- The highlight color in your navigation menu would be better if it was different than the "active" highlight. Even if it is as simple as making the text color different and leaving the highlight the same, it should be more obviously different.
- The "Categories" link in the "bread crumbs" at the top of your page (under the search box but above the search results) takes you to a dead or non-existent page. Not sure if that's a bug or still to come.
- The search filters are neat, it would be nice to be able to undo a filter without manually editing the search criteria in the search text box
- It would be nice if you could see all of the plants available in a given state or from a given supplier from each of the specific results page. For example, if you search for "lily" and then filter by "Bannister Creek Nursery" it would be nice to be able to see all of the other plants from "Bannister Creek Nursery" without having to manually edit the search text box. You already provide this listing from the supplier link within a product details page.
- I like the product details page
- I like the map available from the supplier details page, would be nicer if that was bigger
- I don't like the supplier icon, not sure if they/you could create something that better fit into the space available.
- I like the cart for the most part, it might be nicer to have the '+' and '-' for increasing and decreasing the quantity be an image, or possibly remove the link underline. I think it would make the symbol more clear.
- I like how the cart breaks up the contents into sections by supplier, this is something that you do better than Amazon for example where it's harder to tell that something is coming from a reseller vs. Amazon itself.
- I like the "checkbook" type highlighting when you have multiple things in the cart from a particular supplier. This looks cleaner than have a grid or something of that nature.
- I would like to have the ability to add something to the cart directly from the search results rather than just from the product details page
- I like how you use tags for the different names, all items should also have the scientific name in the tags since for things like grasses, that's how a lot of people know them.
- The button on the "sign up" screen should be consistent with the buttons used for adding things to the cart and for logging in. Same for the "Reset Password" button, "Send" button on "Contact Us" page, and any others I may have missed.
- Help link is currently dead
- I'd keep your search bar at the top of the screen on every page, even when you are looking at a product or supplier detail (right now you are showing a banner for the supplier and remove the search bar)
- Have you thought about also carrying suppliers of hard-to-find seeds and things (possibly planters or something) too, in addition to nursery stock?
- Empty cart button also not consistent, would look nicer if it was an image like a few other buttons are.
- It's not clear how to "check out"... maybe this function hasn't been added, maybe I have to be logged in, either way I don't know what's wrong and should see a message or something.
Very good start on a nice looking page!
Random list of notes:
(Some of it may come across as a little harsh but its all in the spirit of constructive criticism.)
Home page
Navigation on this page is non-existent which is unacceptable. The top level navigation item "news" should say "blog". Where is the best seller list?
No reason to but the tag "Featured seller" on the second banner. This is meaningless to customers. "Special of the week" or "Most popular" but featured seller means nothing more to customers than that it suits the your sites business interests to have it there.
Product page:
Your product pages need alot of work. Why does the site logo shrink all of a sudden and why is the nurseries logo so big. I imagine you were trying to allow for more custom branded experience for the vendor but you are doing it at the expense of site usability. The company logo/header should look the same across the site. You need to preserve consistency in user experience.
Something is wrong with your images, http://doleaf.com/listings/44-webers-blue-agave-3-small-plants. This ONLY image is low res and even it was high res its still poor quality. I dont know if you or your independent vendors create these but right now there is now way I would buy from a site with that bad of a product page. Here are biggest things I see:
You need high res art shots. Meaning someone who knows how to taking compelling images needs to be snapping these shots. The photos will have a MASSIVE impact on your conversion rate and its unacceptable for the product images to be anything less than stellar. Additionally there should be multiple images for each plant. Also, you need way more content on each page. I mentioned pictures but you also need better descriptions from people worth listening to. This either means find an editor with personality and expertise who professionally reviews each plant, or get the vendors to do a good job. Either way, another scalable way to get more content is to port in content from other sites. Look to sites like mahalo and squidoo to see how this can be done. But there should as much useful information from other sites as possible. Pictures, a widipedia description, you tube videos, what ever is useful and relevant. The point is you could be doing alot more to increase user engagement on each page which ultimately impacts your overall conversion rate. Foodzie does this well on their product page
Vendor pages:
The vendor about page information should be proudly displayed on the vendor landing page, not one more click away in a vendor about page. The vendor pages need to have way more punch and do alot more to sell the vendor and create a connection there. Part of the process of getting new vendors on board should be have a backend built to help facilitate the kind of company disclosure needed to make the vendor page valuable to consumers. The key here is developing an internal sense of culture between plant vendors that fosters investment into your site. I would again mention foodzie and point to their vendor page for a good example http://sugardaddys.foodzie.com/
Navigation:
The site navigation is very very poor, this is going to cost you alot of money if you don't fix it asap. Where am I supposed to go from the home page? There should be a clear relevant navigation structure that caters to how plant lovers look for plants.
Every single page on the site should make obvious how I can get to other key pages on the site. Your product and vendor pages are a trap. I have no idea how to get around to other categories etc. At a MINIMUM you need basic FUNCTIONAL top level navigation. You really need to work on this.
About page:
Your about page is #435938475 of generic bland about pages on the web. Who are you? Faces, bios, interest, your story. I bet your team is really interesting and passionate about your domain. You are neutralizing all of those factors when you fail to tell people who you are in an engaging way. The more humble and earthy the better. Let your customers love you.
Contact page:
Again bare bones. Your company is hiding behind a form. Throw out contact information and then scale back when and only when you can no longer maintain the level of communication you are being inundated with. Remember, the most valuable thing in the world right now is for you to interact with customers and learn from them. You should be begging them to contact you, not hiding behind a generic form.
Overall:
Yes, I would absolutely buy plants over the internet so long as you could convince me it was cost effective and that the shipping process would not harm the plant. I can only suspect that this kind of model will work much better for small kinds of plants and younger plants that are still small. The one thing that I think will make a big difference is weather or not you are able to find and engage with your audience on and offline. Offline can be more expensive, but online is cheap. All you have to do is spend a MASSIVE amount of time in every single place online where plant lovers go to talk about their passion. What ever you do don't go spam them. Just join the conversation and start engaging with people about the things you have in common and can talk intelligently about. Build an audience in this way takes time but we tend to overestimate what we can do in short periods of time and underestimate what we can accomplish with consistent effort over the long haul. Your site should be primed to act as a platform for plant lovers (and vendors) to converse about their passion. A simple forum would go along way.
Additionally, your audience will thrive in high quality content produced by you all. The blog is a start. But what about plant buying guides. For my site I created a "Property Management Hiring Guide", which took alot of effort but is highly relevant for my audience. Overall I think this concept is highly valid, they key is spreading your plant passion by engaging your audience and building your site around their buying needs. I would recommend seomoz, the guys at futurenow inc, and gary vaynerchuck as worthy mentors for mastering these disciplines.
I would not personally buy the plants displayed because I would kill all of them. The prices seem reasonable though if I could keep something alive.
The first thing I clicked on was About Us to find out more about your company and what you do.
I find the plant overlay icons a bit unattractive personally. They were not clear to me being a gardening neophyte but the hover text helped with most. I do not understand climate zones so maybe that should link somewhere that has a map or something. I also didn't understand growth rate. What does "medium" mean? Compared to what? Last one I had a problem with was shipping form. Most of them say bareroot. I'm not sure what that means especially when I click on the first plant, Madagascar Palm and it says: Our Madagascar Palms for sale are approximately 12-inches tall. So do I get just a root or a 12" tall plant?
As far as organization, I think category should be the primary focus. It would actually be nice for me to be able to say "I live here" and you filter out plants that would die for me. Could also be nice/useful to browse by characteristics like color, flowering/not, etc.
I think a certain niche market would potentially buy a plant online but it's probably a really small number. It is nice to be able to find an exotic plant that you can't find locally but then you have to ask yourself "Why can't I find it locally?" I'm no expert but my guess is that normally the reason no local specialty nurseries have the plant you want is because it won't grow in your climate. Plus buying the plant online begs questions like "How long will it have not been watered?" and "Will the UPS guy have crushed it under a heavy box?" I see you address that a bit in your FAQ but I think people may still be worried. Maybe show some pictures of the packaged plants?
Overall I think the site looks nice. I like the simple, clean look and the categorical organization works for me for a site like this. I like the logo. I noticed when I went to an actual plant page (that madagascar palm) the image was blown up and low res thus looking pretty bad. I also question whether you need to display the nursery's logo/name on the plant page. Does the user care about that? Most likely not. Plus what happens when 5 of your sellers (I know you only have one) offer the same plant? You should pick the closest/most convenient one for shipping purposes in that case, like Teleflora does. I can't remember for sure but I don't think Teleflora is so obvious about what local florist they are using (although they don't hide it from you either which is important).