Learn More About The NetPS Internet Plant Search Tool!

Internet Marketing For Garden Centers
The Original And The Best
The NetPS Customer Experience
Personal Plant List Feature
Fitting NetPS Into Your Website
NetPS Options
NetPS Pricing
Order Your NetPS Now!
NetPS License Agreement

Internet Marketing For Garden Centers

We like to ask garden centers why they have websites. It's a little thought provoking, but it reveals the primary reason that garden centers have been relatively unsuccessful leveraging the true marketing potential of the Internet. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers as they surf the web; why would they come to your website? Sure, they may need hours and directions, and they might want to see what's on sale this month, but once they know this, what reason would they have to come back?

A NetPS Internet Plant Search tool gives your customers a compelling reason to visit your website, and it gives them a reason to come back again and again. They will search through the thousands of plants carried by your business to find the ideal plants for their landscaping and gardening needs, right from the comfort of their own homes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even when your store is closed. You've turned your website from a passive brochure into an interactive powerhouse, a wealth of information for your valued customers. You now have a resource that is as knowledgeable and powerful as your best horticultural professional on staff. Your customers can make more informed choices, selecting the right plants for the right applications, driving up satisfaction and driving down warranty costs.

Why is this tool valuable for your customers? They will spend hours on your website captivated by it while accessing your inventory in a way that's both fun and informative at the same time, even in the off-season when the plants aren't on your shelves. They will be exposed to plants they never even knew existed, and they'll get excited about them because they'll see photos of the plants at maturity and with their finest attributes on display. And most importantly, they will know that you really care about them as they develop trust and confidence in your website as a source of knowledge. The credibility of your business will skyrocket in their minds, and they will reward you with their loyalty.

We know this is the case, because we have the proof. The plant search tools of some of our garden center clients have been used as much as 100,000 times in ONE MONTH! Just think what you'd pay to advertise in a magazine that gets 100,000 impressions in a month. In fact, most of our clients have been able to dramatically reduce their overall marketing expenses by cutting out more expensive and less effective promotional tools when they get NetPS, and they still are able to grow their businesses to new heights. Welcome to the marketing power of the Internet!

The Original And The Best

You may have wondered why NetPS is tucked away in the back of the Northscaping.com website, given that it's so important to this industry. It's true that we suffer from a minor "identity crisis". To millions of gardeners and home landscapers across northern North America, Northscaping is the best resource and community website for gardeners on the Internet. We've operated this free website since 2004 as a service to the gardening community, and we're proud to say that we really don't make any money off of it!

What does this mean to you as a plant retailer? This means that we've been advocating for the horticultural industry since 2004. More importantly, we've been catering to millions of gardeners on the Internet since 2004 - and these gardeners are, not coincidentally, your customers! We've learned how they use the Internet, what they want from it, and what they expect it to do for them. This knowledge and experience may not make us any money, but it sure can be put to work making you money!

We know who pays the bills here - which is why NetPS was not designed for us, or for you, or for a coffee house full of university botanists; it was designed for your customers. They'll find it easy and intuitive to use, and that's no coincidence. We had lots to draw from when we set out to make it this way; NetPS is based on Northscaping's pioneering Landscape Plant Search tool which has 8+ years of development behind it. It's been a showpiece on our own website since 2004, and over that time we've learned a whole lot about how gardeners use the Internet to search for their plants. No other online plant database packs this much real-world experience!

We're also experts in the field of search engine optimization (SEO). If you aren't familiar with this, you should be - because if you don't place in the top one or two pages of results for the searches that gardeners run on the big search engines like Google, you're missing out on the #1 promotional tool on the Internet. We're proud to say that we understand the search engines like Google, and we've "figured out" how to use NetPS to get you awesome search engine results.

It's a known fact that when someone searches for a plant by name and adds their location, they're probably looking to buy that plant. Try typing the following searches in Google;

Autumn Blaze maple Frankfort Illinois
Dwarf Korean lilac Winnipeg
Goldmound spirea Milwaukee

Do you see a pattern? Now, we can't promise this will always work for all of your plants, but these kind of search results are no coincidence - we know SEO. Can your website deliver these kind of results?

The NetPS Customer Experience

Here's how a typical plant search session will go. Your customers will access your own customized search page from your website. They can search for plants using specific keywords or phrases (for example, plant names), a series of up to 36 different search parameters (with the advanced search option) which include detailed plant characteristics, landscape attributes, ornamental features and site conditions, or a combination of keywords and parameters. It's very flexible!

Our proprietary NetPS plant search engine consults the massive NetPS plant database which contains over 5,800 trees, shrubs, groundcovers, roses, perennials, ornamental grasses and ferns, and which has been cross-referenced to only show the plants that you carry. It tests against 92 different data fields for each plant to produce a set of results that best matches your customers' search criteria. The results are prioritized according to relevance, and each result includes a snapshot of key plant information along with a thumbnail photograph of that very plant. Yes, this search uses cultivars to differentiate the results, not just species - your customers will see distinctive photos of each and every cultivar!

By clicking on a plant in the results, they will bring up a comprehensive information page for each plant, which includes a summary of key plant information along with details on how to grow it, where to grow it, and how it will grow in their yard or garden. Each and every plant information page has between 1 and 3 indicative photos of its primary attributes - they'll never see a "Photo Not Available" message with NetPS! Think of it as having a detailed care sheet for each plant you carry available on your website. Best of all, the printable versions of these pages can be customized with your company's logo and letterhead!

As if that weren't enough, have a look at the awesome "myPlants" feature!

Personal Plant List Feature

With this optional feature, your customers can build their own individual and personalized list of plants from their search results simply by clicking on the "myPlants" checkbox beside each. They can add plants to their list, they can remove them at any time, and they can even set quantities for each plant. They can use this feature to "park" plants of particular interest for later reference, to narrow their selections after searching, or to generate a plant list which they can then print out and bring into your business to request a quote, see the plants, or even place an order.

So with this option, not only are your customers able to search through your current catalog of plants on your website with this tool, but they can build up a list of their selections as they search. They can prepare an order for an entire landscape plan or garden design based on the plants available at your business (by the way, your professional landscaping customers will love this tool)! It sure beats skimming through hundreds of pages of paper brochures or scrolling through endless online lists, doesn't it? And best of all, this is not online shopping, it's "pre-shopping" - NetPS is designed to lead customers into your store, because that's where you're at your best.

Fitting NetPS Into Your Website

NetPS is a database-driven technology hosted by Northscaping and which resides on our web server. You pay an annual license fee (like a yearly "subscription") to link the tool to your website, and we run it for you. The advantages of this "hosted application" model are enormous for you; it amortizes the cost of the tool over decades, and updates to the technology are automatic. At the end of each year's term, you can either renew the service for another year, or if you're not happy for any reason, you simply don't bother renewing it and that's that. Yes, it's a bit of a gamble for us, but we're betting that you'll be using this service for a long time to come - your happy customers will see to that!

Even though NetPS is powered by our proprietary plant search engine technology, it's designed not to resemble Northscaping at all! This has been designed to be YOUR search, on YOUR website, with YOUR colors, graphics and corporate identity, so that your customers associate this as YOUR tool. The only people who need to know that Northscaping is involved are you and us - plus a little tag at the bottom of the pages just in case someone else is interested!

It's actually quite easy to configure a NetPS Internet Plant Search tool for your website. There are numerous settings that can be tailored to your own identity; text fonts, sizes and colors; background colors, bars and images; single or dual-column layouts, alternating row colors, and more. The plant search is very easy to set up as a stand-alone web page, but it's much more effective if the tool is framed in your own HTML code (which we strongly encourage) to make it blend seamlessly into your company's website. That's why we charge a small one-time setup and integration fee; it covers the costs of us aligning this with your corporate identity, fitting it into your website and getting it to your complete satisfaction. We do it for you!

Your existing website will require some minor modifications to properly integrate the NetPS tool. At a minimum, you'll need to add a link in your site menu which leads your customers to your plant search application. You should also consider adding a splash promo introducing and promoting the new service. You must also cross-reference your current plant inventory against the NetPS database listings, initially and then periodically thereafter. We recommend updating your list at least once per year, usually in late winter with your new season's catalog. Other than that, this tool pretty much runs itself!

NetPS Options

NetPS comes as a basic configuration, with three primary options; the Advanced Search option, the “myPlants” plant list feature, and the Plant Data Customization tool. Obviously, we're going to try and encourage you to go for “the works”, because this is where the NetPS technology will really make your website excel!

Here's what you'll get with each option;

Basic package includes:

myPlants feature includes:

Advanced Search option includes:

Plant Data Customization tool includes:

NetPS Pricing

Prices do not include applicable taxes

*Plant catalog data entry fee only applies if Northscaping is requested to load plant inventory; all customers have free and open access to cross-reference their own inventory at any time at no charge.

**Plant adder fee waived for all plants accompanied by high quality photo with unrestricted access.

Get NetPS Right Now!

How do you purchase a NetPS plant search tool for your website? Click here to send us an e-mail, and we'll step you through the setup process. You'll be surprised at just how quickly you can go from having a one-way "brochure" website to a totally interactive powerhouse that your customers will love!

Don't wait for your competition to be the first in your market area offering this tool to your customers - Get Yours Today!

NetPS License Agreement

As part of our ongoing commitment to customer protection, Northscaping requires all NetPS customers to agree to and accept the following license agreement as an integral part of the formal sales contract. Click here to view or print a copy of the agreement (in Adobe PDF format).