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Ah springtime, when a young man's thoughts turn to gardening — or something like that. And when you think gardening, venerable seed and plant catalogers — and their respective Websites — come to mind. Lawrenceburg, IN-based Michigan Bulb Co. sells horticultural delights ranging from fruit plants and hedges to roses and perennials and, of course, bulbs. Our critiquers gave the merchant's site a thorough review, with Amy Africa, president of Helena, VT-based Web consultancy Eight by Eight, examining the site's content and functionality, and Brian R. Brown, a natural search consultant with Madison, WI-based SEO agency Netconcepts, testing its search capability. Is the site an online Garden of Eden or a thorny briar patch? Read one to find out.
AMY AFRICA
No dictionary? No thesaurus? Good Lord. For a gardening site where it's easy to misspell over half the products? You've got to be kidding.
A few weeks ago, Michigan Bulb's featured product was Lenten Roses, commonly known as Hellebores. Hellabores and Lenton Roses, both common misspellings, yield 0 results. Helleborus and Helleborus Orientalis both get you one. Did I mention this product is a front door (entry page) feature? Yowza.
If that's not bad enough, hedge plants gets you 0 results. Hedges, one of the top tabs, gets you two pages' worth, however. The site has 20 pages of perennials but no sun perennials and no shade perennials? Interesting. Where else would you grow them?
Search the site on Endless Bloom Perennial Garden. Chances are you won't find it. (You'll get a vanilla message that says “There are currently no products in this category.”) On the off chance that you stumble upon it somewhere else, though, make sure you have a cryptologist standing by to help you decipher how to order.
Assuming you can find what you're looking for, there's a nice line drawing of what the garden would look like and gorgeous photos of all the products that make up the assortment. But after that it goes downhill with a long list of teensy, sized-for-a-mouse copy and huge, purple “item detail” and “buy item” buttons.
The problem isn't that the buttons are too big — they're actually a good size — or the copy too small (it is way too tiny a font). Rather, everything is just one big jumble. And when users are in the middle of the list, they may not know if they should be clicking on the buttons that are below or above the copy as everything is just, well, so smushed.
Plus, if you click on any of the individual items that make up the collection, you lose the collection itself, and there aren't always references to the collection at the individual item level.
The Plant Digger feature is nothing short of a train wreck. The concept is good, but in practice it's almost impossible to use. First, you choose the category (such as roses, bulbs, trees, shrubs), then the color, next the sun exposure and, finally, your zone. If you aren't a master horticulturist, you're more than likely to get that lovely blank no-finds page.
(Hint: If you can't find what your user wants, at least show them five products that they might be interested in. Something is way better than nothing.)
Don't know what your gardening zone is? Click on “Find Your Grow Zone” (hidden at the bottom of the Plant Digger box). A pop-up appears that asks you to type in your zip code so it can tell you what zone you should be shopping in.
After that, though, when you're sorting products, you have to figure out whether you're in a “high zone” or a “low zone.” What's zone 5? High? Low?
Ordering from a mailing? There's a nifty box for that in the right-hand column too. Unfortunately, if you make a mistake while typing in your code, you will get “error ‘80020009’ Exception Occurred. /prg_offer_login_rightnav.asp, line 84.” I'm not sure what kind of discount that implies, but it doesn't look all that promising.
There's a sign up for the FREE e-mail specials in the right-hand plug. (A plug is a non-animated banner.) You'll get a thank-you-for-signing-up message and then the box reverts back to what it once was. Was my sign-up lost? Do I need to do it again?
And even if that was clear — which it isn't — what a colossal waste of space in one of the site's big hot spots. You already have my address? Show me something new and different.
This site is full of nifty functions. It's obvious that someone put a lot of time and effort into thinking about them. If only they worked.
Take the “Quick Order” function in the right-hand column, for instance. If you type in an item number incorrectly (dropping the first zero from item #02690, for example), you'll receive a message that says “pricing for item 2690 does not exist. You may have entered a quantity below the minimum quantity required for this product.” Good golly Miss Molly, what does that mean? Error messages should be clear.
If the product doesn't exist, tell me it wasn't found, but don't confuse the issue by saying something about quantities and pricing. Shopping on the Web is complicated enough — which is why so many people make so many mistakes. You need to make it quick, easy and painless.
Michigan Bulb offers a Garden Solutions Club savings card for only $14.95 a year, which entitles you to 10% off, among other benefits. The merchant handles the messaging in the cart incredibly well — “if you were a Garden Solutions Club Member you'd save $3.27, click here.”
The site could improve it, and make it much easier for the users, if it didn't force you to go to another page, scroll down and add the item to your cart, instead just allowing you to enter it in at the View Cart level. (You'd still want to have a link to the page for people who wanted more detail.)
The site also does an excellent job of putting your recently viewed items in the right-hand column along with “other items you'll enjoy.” Both of these are fantastic additions to most any site. Unfortunately, Michigan Bulb has them listed in the same box as its Hot Sellers, so they get lost.
