Gardening Website Feedback

Hi, I'm the creator of Lulebe.com and I am in need of some feedback for it. I've hit a spot in the project where I'm not sure, once launched, if the project will succeed. That's where I'm looking to get some feedback. Right now all of the features are working, except the marketplace (it's about 80% complete). I've also been thinking over the feature set and I feel I may have gone a little overboard. It was suppose to be only about plants and the gardening community, yet I added nearby places and the expert articles. Thought the articles match the feel of the site, I really feel the plants themselves should be the main focus. Anyway please let me know what you think. You can leave a reply on here or email me at daniel@lulebe.com

Currently all you'll see is a coming soon page, but if you add click "Join the Waitlist" I'll happily send you an invite.

What were to be future features:

- Mobile app (planned for early next year)
- Simple Bloom / harvesting / planting gantt chats for each plant
- Global hardiness zones
- Ask experts questions (Q&A)
- Pest encyclopedia that ties into plants
- Weather alerts for frost and other plant damaging weather

An interesting idea.  Beautiful photos.
Is all the content going to be hidden behind a login wall?  

r ranson wrote:An interesting idea.  Beautiful photos.
Is all the content going to be hidden behind a login wall?  

Once fully launched everything will be visible. But right now the site is in beta so only people that are invited can look around. If you want an invite just let me know. I would just need you're email address. You can email it to me at daniel@lulebe.com or request one on the site by clicking the yellow "Join the Waitlist" button.

Great news.  I find login walls discouraging.  

Keep us updated on how it goes.

A site like this would be really handy with planting times and related info for a given plant! I sent a waiting list request via the site.

I turned off beta last night. The site is live. Keep in mind not all of the features are finished, but I thought why not let people play with it

https://lulebe.com/plants/ornamental/kinnikinnick

Text on the left is running onto the image for me - using palemoon browser - a firefox knockoff

Near the top of that page, there's a few links, flower color, special features etc. It would be better if those lead to a page on that actual same plant rather than a category where people have to look up/choose that plant again. Less steps/clicks to get to info, the better. Three clicks and their out.

Home page. Give a little better clue as to what the site is/does. Just a subtitle so people aren't forced to hit the About page. The link to that is at the bottom and some people never scan that low. It's also a light color font on a light color background so it doesn't stand out. If you don't want a sustitle aka tag line, put a link to a short about page at the top of the site and have more links on that about page, leading to fuller info. (note* about page states three gardeners and then has pic of guy in a suit and a dog - ???)

I did a search for "permaculture" and came up with zilch. Same deal with "companion" -  "legume" same. Legume is the biggie. Even most regular gardeners know the importance of them.  

Do some image fade on the register page. It's a little alarming for a full screen image to change in a blink. Or just swap the pic weekly. Makes me blink. Glad I'm not epileptic.

Could not successfully register.

Now nothing will load

I think I broke the site

Got potential though.

Oh and the about page, I lost my other two founders (they back out of the project). The whole site almost didn't make it. Since I was the one who built it, I thought I would carry on. One of them was my copy writer so I need to go back over the text for everything and make sure it good.

I'm not sure that a site that promotes miracle gro is quite the sort of thing we want links to here on permies. Is it really necessary to have that stuff on your website?  I'd be far more comfortable if it was promoting better ways.

It's a good idea for a site, the pictures are gorgeous.

A real quick look and a few things already jump out.  Here's a snip from chard 'canary yellow'

As beautiful as the picture is, it's a mangelwurzel, (which is also a variety of Beta Vulgaris) not a chard.  

I can't read the part of the text that is in the photo.  I have to copy and paste the text into another programme to read it, and I'm far too lazy to do that unless the content shows promise.  Making the text easy to read is probably going to be your best tool to capture and keep users.  Keep in mind at approximately 20% of the English Language population are born with a language disability.  More people develop them as they age due to vision loss or brain changes.  I've seen studies suggesting less than 20% of native English speakers have a brain structure that is perfectly structured to understand the written word.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, these people are the ones who make signs, advertizements, books, websites... etc.  They sometimes forget that their audience may struggle with words.  Taking the time to make things as easy to read as possible will draw more people to your site.

Privacy policy needs work.  Some people still read these things, so keeping it short and sweet will help attract more people to sign up.


I'm with Burra about the chemicals.  It doesn't interest me and I generally ignore sites that encourage its use.  They always seem such a waste of money to me and I would much rather read about ways I can reduce monetary investment into my garden through creating my own soil, techniques for reducing watering needs, things like that.  There are already hundreds of sites out there that talk about these things... it's boring.  A site that talks about better ways, now that I find interesting.  That's a site I would join and participate in.

As for posting on permies.  We have very strict organic or better requirements for anything promoted on this site.