In this week’s Community Spotlight feature we’re looking at Shoot, an award-winning gardening community, which helps users get green fingered online.
What is it?
Shoot is a gardening community with a number of facilities for users to design, create and showcase their own garden online. Once you’ve recreated your real (or soon-to-be real) garden, Shoot sends you monthly emails telling you what needs to be done to the various plants and flowers you’ve got growing.
Members can also keep updated with news in the gardening world, share seed tips with others and upload images of their garden.
Shoot was founded by Nicola Gammon, a ‘self-taught’ gardener who yearned for a gardening resource with all the necessary tools. The website was launched 2005 and it’s grown steadily since then, with a paid membership option opening up.
Who’s it for?
Green fingered surfers.
Number of users:
140,000 unique visitors a month and 20,000 members, growing at about 2,000 a month.
Countries
Currently based in the UK.
Key Features
- Design and create your own garden
- Upload images of your garden in progress
- Ask experts and other members for guidance on particular plants
- Care reminder emails every month on the plants you own
What people are saying:
Shoot Gardening now has a database of 11,000 plants, and 10,000 subscribers. Gammon aims to convert a higher proportion of the monthly 140,000 site visitors to subscriptions through the new website.
Without exception my clients have been extremely receptive to the idea of receiving maintenance reminders via Shoot’s excellent service, and the addition of the maintenance videos, e.g. How to Prune Roses etc., means that Shoot is not just a mine of information but a really effective teaching tool.
Helen Allison, Garden Designer
Nicola has also cannily secured white label deals with garden centre groups. She’s won numerous awards and has achieved link endorsement from the BBC.
Tempero on Google+
