What your website has in common with a garden
At first glance, the topics seem far apart. On closer inspection, there are more similarities than you would have thought at first glance.
Planning and strategy
When you plan a garden, you pursue a goal and derive a strategy for achieving it.
After all, visitors should be able to find and view your garden. Do not erect high walls and entry barriers for your website. These walls can be poor on-page optimization, a lack of mobile display or slow-loading pages.
To properly care for your garden, you need tools, fertilizer and water. And in the right proportion to the planned garden. Is another plot of land becoming available that you would also like to plant? Make sure that you can react flexibly. Your website needs an infrastructure that is adapted to its size and objectives: web server, CMS and employees with the know-how to maintain the site.
Don’t forget that an allotment garden is a whole community. Do not obstruct the paths to communicate with the neighborhood or to celebrate a garden party. And if you give your neighbor with his tomato monoculture a salad or swap vegetables and flowers, there will be more variety on all plates and they will enrich each other.communities and social media are the forms in the digital world. Communicating openly with the industry and customers makes everyone stronger. Share findings and studies, link to other sites – your visitors appreciate openness and further information.
Do you have different beds in your garden? If the vegetables are ripe in all the beds at the same time, you will not be able to make optimum use of the harvest, so plan the contents so that you can harvest again and again throughout the year.
In order to reach each bed quickly, the paths should be laid out appropriately.
The navigation of the website is crucial for your visitors. Get the information you need with just a few clicks. Find your way around “your garden” easily, quickly and intuitively – nobody knows all the plants and all the vegetable varieties. Describe your offer clearly.
Blooming flowers in the garden attract the eye, arouse emotions and tempt you to take a closer look at the planting, while an appealing visual world with great photos helps you to quickly grasp the theme of the website.
By the way, showing off your neighbor’s flowers is taboo (no picture theft).
At some point, of course, the question of usability arises. Depending on preference, vegetables, nightshade plants and fruits are discussed here. Don’t forget the herbs for that certain something: offer different content that meets the needs of your visitors based on the customer journey.
For websites and gardens alike, skillful planning, constant care and a large portion of heart and soul will ensure a good regular yield – don’t let your website run wild! Sure – there will be some “evergreen content”, but the branches of old trees are also pruned so that there is more strength for the fruit and the harvest turns out as desired.
Some say it’s not possible – it’s not a garden without it, others say. Take on controversial topics and defend your point of view; you will gain profile.