IndigenousPlants.com barks up the e-commerce tree

An online nursery selling plants native to Southern Africa looks set to capture a niche market. IndigenousPlants.com has a broad selection of available species, which it says covers virtually every plant and tree requirement for the successful planting of an indigenous garden.

As one might expect, this site uses a lot of colour (primarily green). There is also lots of leafy texture, which works very well in the overall look and feel of the site. There aren`t any pictures of the plants on the site, but ITWeb is assured that the site developers will soon be adding this to the site`s offerings.

The search engine works quite well for simple word searches, yielding intelligent and helpful results. It doesn`t fare quite as well with more complex conceptual searches - throw it a curveball, and chances are you`ll get something like this: a maximum of 30 results are shown in this search. Please be more specific if your search does not yield the results you were expecting.

This site indulges one of my pet peeves - clicking on any link from the front-page opens up a second browser window. Things don`t improve once you`re in the second window - more of these sneaky pop-ups spring to life with each click of the mouse. At one point I had five browser windows open.

A very useful feature is that plants are listed both by their scientific classifications and the names (in the majority of South African languages) by which they`re more commonly known.

You`ve got to register before you can make a purchase from this site; payment is made via bank deposit or direct electronic funds transfer. Plans to enable credit card purchases are in the pipeline, and will be implemented once the site has reached critical mass, says the company.

A colleague of mine purchased plants from the site, and received delivery within a week - true to the site`s promise of delivering anywhere in Gauteng within that time frame. Presumably, it takes longer for orders placed from elsewhere in SA.