We received the following email not too long ago. I swear
I did not make it up, I have copied it here exactly as it came
in, nothing added, nothing deleted except Peggy's last name:
you had distinguished by having one of the worts web sites i
have ever seen
i am looking for hostas with very large leaves to compete with
an invasive week
how can i search on your site for that?
Regards
Peggy
Well, aside from the grammar, spelling, and typing, and the
fact that she thought she needed to preface her question
with an insult (always an effective writing technique), what
would she search for?
I searched the site for "large leaves" and got two
hits, one about watering and the other about the size of the
plants we ship.
I got no hits on "compete with an invasive week".
Then I searched for "large hostas" and got two hits again.
Then "large" and got 314 hits on 43 pages.
The point is, our site is very large and almost totally
devoted to hostas. The same words keep turning up over
and over. But only the words I choose to use. I use
"mini" for miniature hostas. I don't use "dwarf"
because the AHS classifies very small hostas as miniature,
not dwarf.
So if you are looking for small hostas, if you think it
might help to search for "dwarf", you'll only find one
(and we're going to change that), but look for "mini" and
you'll find one on almost every page. So what have you
accomplished. Even if you look for the right word you
haven't really narrowed it down much.
I know, I could make lists so you would only have to look at
miniature hostas, or large hostas, or blue hostas, or
fragrant hostas, or hostas that compete with invasive weeks,
but it just gets too complicated. Our catalog changes
constantly and we can't have plants sold out on one page and
available on another. I'm getting too old and
befuddled to handle that.
"Befuddled" is used only once on this site. (Oops, twice
now) But then, I like the word, so I'll probably use
it again. And when I do, I'll
have to remember to come back and change this paragraph.
Wish I could just search for it.
