Will anyone buy from my website? www.seedneeds.com?

Question

does it look legitimate? does it lookm secure enough? are the deals good? please check it out :)

Answer 1

To be honest, it looks a little amateurish, which is completely forgivable if you do gardens and not websites, but you'll want to fix it soon. Obviously your knowledge and heart are there, and they jump right off the page. All you really need to do is tame the elements and wrangle them into something more contained. For a first site usually people are pretty eager to get everything out there at once, which can be a little overwhelming or confusing to a first-time visitor.

http://www.artisticlandscape.on.ca/nurse... and

http://www.knippelnursery.com/

are two examples of nurseries we have here, and I like their sites. The second site is very beautiful, but the first has easy navigation and most importantly, growing tips. Watching my mother develop her garden over the last few years, she tends to buy first by sun or shade tolerance, and then selects from there, so maybe you could organize your plants like that.

Your site could use a background pattern to take some of the harshness out of the feel of it, and try grouping items together so it's not all in a big list. The font size is also quite large, probably unnecessarily.

You could add a messageboard or support articles to complement your selection, or even create an area for shade plants and table-top or balcony gardening for plant lovers in apartments. If you do herbs, you can bundle and sell them by type used in different cuisine. Basils and parsleys for Italian, Cilantro, etc., for Mexican, and so on. The more people can get out of your site, the more they'll want.

Poke around the net and have a look at commercial sites you like and observe how they've laid out and presented their information and products. Obviously it's bad form to outright copy someone else's design, but there are certain elements common to all good sites such as top information bar and left-hand column navigation.

Visit http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ for critique and examples of bad sites and advice to make a good one. I have it bookmarked. (No affiliation with the owner, just came across it one day and thought it was useful.)