Is my plant site too simple to launch?

[mekon]

I’m getting ready to launch my project (getanyplant.com) but I’m not sure if it’s really ready. It’s a site to help users explore and discover plants. It aggregates plant offerings and info from across online stores. I think the site looks good and works well but my concern is that it's too simple and that I should spend more time adding to it before launching. Current state is:

• Plant database: about 6,000 unique across ~20 stores
• Plant details: all plants have summary, fun facts, structured data
• Images: about 50% have images, 50% don’t
• Search: text search on name and various filters and categories (carnivorous, fern, etc.)
• Wishlist: save plants to wishlist and add notes on saved plants

And that’s it. Some of the things that I would do with more time are

• Images: Find more sources of images I can legally use
• Monetization: no way to make money atm
• SEO: Invest in doing SEO / content marketing
• Stores: more integrations
• Features: lots of ideas for different features

I’ve spent a long time on this so I’m eager to get something out. But I also don’t want to release too early and find that I don’t get any traction. What do you all think?

 

[dbg]

@mekon I think it's awesome - you should definitely launch!

Don't put a lot of pressure on the "launch". You should be doing many launches as you add new features and improve it. The main thing is that it takes time to build traffic so just launch and trust the process

 

[mekon]

@dbg Thanks for the encouragement! I think you're right. One reason I'm hesitant is that I'm also using this "launch" to more or less validate my idea. If it doesn't gain any traction it might be time to move on to something else. But I think I've delayed long enough.

 

[searching4the1]

@mekon That's not how you should think.

People buy plants. Your site helps people buy plants.

There's nothing to validate -- the concept is sound.

You just have to do the work of building out the full asset.

The main thing is figuring out a source of traffic.

I have a similar concept, cameralenspicker.com. I'm working on using organic social to drive traffic for this.

 

[mekon]

@searching4the1 Thanks for your perspective, I hadn’t thought about it like that.

Also your site is so sick! I was into photography a couple years ago and I would have loved something like this. Might reach out after launch with a couple questions about how you’re driving traffic and whatnot if you’re open to it. Nice work.

 

[searching4the1]

@mekon Yeah, businesses are systems at the end of the day.

The idea of "validation" is really toxic, because it implies several untruths.

First, as a beginner it implies that if something "fails to validate" that you should give up or move on to something else. It implies that you need to have a "correct idea."

When the correct position is that with enough tinkering, you can make just about anything work to some degree.

Think back to when you were learning to program. Imagine if you had to give up the project and start on something else if you got an error! That would be a ridiculous way to learn. You didn't need to give up, just change how you approach different parts of your program until it worked well enough to satisfy you.

 

[hestilllovespenguin]

@mekon You will (and should) launch many times.

Just launch it. None of our feedback will be as meaningful as either:

1. People using it and spending
2. People not using it

Your projects live and die at the feet of your target audience, no one else.

 

[lukas741]

@mekon It looks great. I love the simplicity of the UI

 

[mekon]

@lukas741 Thanks! I took a lot of inspiration from other sites so can't take too much credit for the design

 

[madgirlsec]

@mekon Cool!
Where did you get the data from?

 

[mekon]

@madgirlsec Source data is being scraped from different sources - primarily plant shops, wikipedia, etc. I have a partially-manual partially-ml approach for labeling products as plants (using recognized scientific names for the most part) and using ML to extract info and summaries from that data to include on my site

 

[madgirlsec]

@mekon Nice!

 

[mation77]

@mekon Launch your website and let it develop naturally. Its simplicity is a key asset, and feedback from actual users will guide any future improvements