July 2001

All buyers and suppliers can benefit from participating in the PLANTAMERICA marketplace, a state-of-the-art tool powered by PurchasePro, a leading eCommerce marketplace enabler, and America Online partner. It’s a low-cost, low-risk opportunity for green industry buyers and sellers to realize real time savings, improve order accuracy, and ultimately, add to the bottom-line. 

Additionally, suppliers immediately benefit from exposure to nine million small business AOL users and millions of buyers from PurchasePro’s 200 global marketplaces.  Buyers immediately benefit from access to the full range of business suppliers, from green industry businesses to suppliers of business essentials like Gateway computers, Office Depot, Sprint, and AOL.

Suppliers pay only $50 per month and $3 per transaction (special offer until July 1, 2001) or no monthly fee and $9 per transaction.   Buyers pay nothing to use the marketplace.

The PlantAmerica marketplace is scheduled to launch in mid-March.

If you’re an independent garden center or landscape professional, the AnswerBook can become a powerful way for you to reach and retain customers and to build a loyal customer base.

If you have a current web site, the AnswerBook can become an important way to deliver content, promotions, design ideas, or features to the customers of your business.

By using AnswerBook in this way, you can:

• increase site traffic and drive sales to your brick-and-mortar location

• build a customer base that relies on you as a provider of content and valuable, relevant ideas and help

For you as a knowledge supplier, the PlantAmerica AnswerBook is a versatile, flexible, and powerful tool for distributing and delivering the knowledge and content you want to the audience you want to reach.

…that combines the knowledge you use everyday…
To provide you an unparalleled online resource for reliable, accurate, and up-to-date information and knowledge specifically for green industry professionals, we have aggregated content from major green industry organizations and suppliers of products and services to the green industry…

Well, you’ve built your web site—your online garden center. Now what?

Like any business, a web site doesn’t just achieve all your goals—increase revenue, build customer loyalty, and improve your brand and name recognition in your area.

No, your site, like any other part of your business, requires strategies to ensure your site brings you the benefits you want.

use your brick-and-mortar location to drive traffic to your online garden center

When you first create your online garden center, one of your first priorities is to tell your current customers about it. 

To drive traffic to your online garden center:

• include the web address on all your collateral, receipts, bags
• display the address on all your in-store promotions, direct mailing, and flyers
• have your staff tell your customers about your site as standard part of customer interactions

use your online garden center to market your brick-and-mortar location

As you use your brick-and-mortar customers to your online garden center, you should also market reciprocally—use your online garden center to drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar location. This is especially important because your online garden center may be your first interaction with prospective customers who have used the web to find a garden center near them.

To drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar location:

• include basic contact information, address information, and, ideally, an online map so prospective customers who find you on the web can easily call or visit you from the information provided on your site.
• provide incentives for web visitors to visit your location, including online coupons, promotions, or special offers

think of content as a knowledgeable sales person

Everyone in business knows the value of a knowledgeable sales person—a customer asks a question, the sales person establishes themselves as a knowledgeable, trusted provider of information, and the customer then moves from the information to rely on the sales person to help them make the right purchase.

In your online garden center, you may not have a traditional sales person—but you do have online sales person—content. Like your knowledgeable sales person, the content you provide in your site helps you establish yourself as a trusted, valued source of not only products, but also valuable information that is essential for building lasting, loyal relationships with your customers.

To turn content into a knowledgeable salesperson:

• develop feature articles for a range of topics and establish a consistent rotation of features so you’re customers keep returning to your online garden center.
• provide content that guides your customers to specific services, products, or features you provide. For example, a feature about design ideas offers an excellent opportunity to drive customers to your landscape design services.
  Keep your content fresh—rotate content regularly and communicate with your customers how often the content is rotated so they know when to return to your online garden center
• develop a online newsletter, complete with features, tips, and design ideas—use this newsletter to highlight the products and services you provide.

be sure to have tools to see site traffic

In your brick-and-mortar location, you make a range of choices about how and where you display your products based on your understanding of how your customers move about your store.

For your online garden center, you must have the same ability to evaluate how your online customers move through your site. Beyond your home page, which is the prime location for all your highest priorities, be sure your site is supported by reporting tools that enable you to see how and where visitors are going in your site so you can reorganize or redesign as needed. 

The basis for evaluating your site traffic is page views. A page view is simply an instance where a visitor views a page in your site. Ideally, you will be able to see how many people viewed each of your pages—either by day or by month. This is a useful way to evaluate the success of promotions or incentives you’re using to bring customers to a particular part of your site or for your site in general.

A web site is fast becoming as important to small businesses as business cards, fax machines, and cell phones. What was once a highly expensive, confusing and uncertain endeavor has become far simpler, potentially inexpensive and, best of all, you have more choices than ever before.

While there are many different options for building and maintaining a web site, this article focuses on the two principal choices available to green industry firms: custom sites or template-based sites. Here is a brief overview of each choice, with the pros and cons of each. As you’ll see, the bottom line is that your choices will create trade offs that you must consider.

Custom Sites

A custom site is one that a web development/design firm builds for you. A custom site can range from one page or more than 100 pages. A custom site can either be static, meaning that you cannot easily update it yourself, or dynamic, meaning that you can update it yourself.

Advantages

The major advantage of a custom site is that you get a site that looks exactly like you want and does exactly what you want it to do. Of course you could spend anywhere from $2,500 to $50,000 on a custom site and, here, too, you get what you pay for (less if you just want a static “Yellow-Page” type site). Want flashy graphics, rotating photos, tips, etc? That will cost you.

Disadvantages

The major disadvantage of most custom sites is that they are extremely challenging to keep up-to-date and interesting. Typically, you either need to submit changes to the designer (who makes them according to his/her schedule, for a fee) or hire or train someone in-house to make the changes (with webmasters commanding high salaries in today’s marketplace, you’ll want to think carefully about this option).

According to design firms, you can expect to spend about the same amount as your original design in yearly maintenance and hosting, unless you don’t update your site very often. For example, if you spend $5-10,000 on the original design (not excessive if you want to build a very nice, functional site) you should budget a similar amount for hosting and maintenance. Plus, you will learn that you want new functions, etc., after the site is built and this will cost money, too.

Template-based Sites

This type of site will allow your content to be placed in pre-designed graphical templates. Template based sites can cost anywhere from $29.95 a month (those free sites have largely disappeared) to several $100 dollars a month depending on what features and functions you want.

Advantages

The major advantage is that virtually anyone can make most updates quickly and easily at no additional cost. Secondly, with a template-based site you will typically get lots more features and functions that you could afford to build in your own custom sites. Equally important, the cost of ownership is typically much lower than a custom site—and very predicible. And, if you ever decide that you really want a custom site, then the switching cost is relatively low, as you have not invested thousands in custom design work and programming. The same is NOT true of a custom site.

Disadvantages

The major disadvantage is that there are some limitations in the look and feel, navigation, and functions of the site. For example, most programs have a selection of templates from which to choose—if you don’t like them, then that’s a disadvantage. If you want a particular feature, and the site doesn’t offer it, then you don’t have that as an option. 

What Do You Value?

In the end, the question is value: You have to consider the variables of cost, functionality, and flexibility and decide what makes the most sense. Template based sites can be a great value, offering power and benefits for a small fee. However if having an original design and the flexibility to have exactly the features and functions you want, and money and time are not as important, then the custom route is clearly for you.

You’ve probably considered building a web site for your garden center. Cost was probably an issue, and you might have had questions about the real value a site would bring your business.

Web sites are for large corporations, right? Internet companies, right? Does an independent garden center really need a web site?

Contrary to what you may think, web sites are powerful tools not only for large companies, large retailers, and internet companies, but are essential tools for small businesses to increase revenue, reach and retain new customers, build a loyal customer base, and provide value-added services and features to online visitors. Small budget or million-dollar budget, businesses of all sizes have a lot to gain from the Internet.

Whether you’re a garden center professional, landscape professional, or a grower, you should build a web site because:

• your customers and prospective customers are already there
• the web lets you showcase the full range of what you offer
• you can use the web to extend your sales reach

your customers are already there

The basic value of a web site for your business is that your current and prospective customers are already using the web in their daily lives—locating information, buying products, finding services—all online.

This is especially important for you as a way of reaching new customers. Today, your prospective customers are using web search engines and yellow pages directories to find businesses that provide what they want. When the businesses they’re looking for are displayed, some have just business contact information, like a phone number, address, and name.

Others displayed by the search also have a link to their web site—which can include a visual map, a directions service, and additional contact information. Even better, their site may also include promotions, online coupons, and a description of products and services that can help drive the online visitor to visit the brick-and-mortar location.

For you, the presence of a web site attached to your business is a value-added service to current and prospective customers and increases the possibility they will find out about the range of what you offer.

To leverage your web site to build and maintain a loyal customer base, include the following as standard parts of your site:

• a map
• contact information
• product or services catalog and portfolio
• promotions
• features

showcase the range of what you offer

For many of your customers, a visit to your business probably goes something like this—the customer decides she needs certain products, then decides to go to your location. She’s been there before, so she moves quickly, moving from product-to-product and to the register—quickly and efficiently to get back to work.

Did they see that you provide landscape design, maintenance, and installation services? Do they know you’re running a special offer on a certain product? Did they put their names on a mailing list so they can receive your newsletter or direct mailings?

Your online garden center provides you an opportunity to introduce your customers and prospective customers to the range of what you offer— the pace is more leisurely, your visitors are likely to explore, and you stand to get wide exposure of all you offer. An online garden center offers you an opportunity like nothing else to showcase the range of your offerings by letting your customers and prospects explore your offerings in a no-pressure, relaxed environment.

Include easy links to each of the basic offerings you provide—

• online catalog of products
• section devoted to your services

extend your sales reach

A well conceived and organized online garden center is a powerful way to extend your sales and brand reach. As we talked about earlier, your online garden center will be your first interaction with many prospective customers and should provide basic contact information, maps, and some incentives for turning a visit to your web site to a visit to your brick-and-mortar location.

Your online garden center gives you the opportunity to provide your visitors with valuable content—content that not only helps educate your visitors, but also can help drive traffic to your priority products, promotions, or services.

For example, a content area devoted to landscape design tips and ideas can become an important gateway to your landscape design, installation, and maintenance services.

Like your sales professionals in your brick-and-mortar location, content and information can help drive sales by educating your customers and prospective customers about the range of what you offer.

• use content to attract repeat visitors
• use content as a gateway to related products or services
• use your site to display your portfolio of your products or the projects you’ve worked on

…that combines the knowledge you use everyday…
To provide you an unparalleled online resource for reliable, accurate, and up-to-date information and knowledge specifically for green industry professionals, we have aggregated content from major green industry organizations and suppliers of products and services to the green industry…

For you as a knowledge supplier, the PlantAmerica AnswerBook is a versatile, flexible, and powerful tool for distributing and delivering the knowledge and content you want to the audience you want to reach.

…that combines the knowledge you use everyday…
To provide you an unparalleled online resource for reliable, accurate, and up-to-date information and knowledge specifically for green industry professionals, we have aggregated content from major green industry organizations and suppliers of products and services to the green industry…