Week 4 Part 1

For this assignment I've chosen to focus on Armstrong Garden Centers and Rancho Vista Nursery. Armstrong is clearly the bigger company with multiple locations, specializing in various plants for indoors, outdoors, and landscaping, and Rancho Vista Nursery is more local and specializes in succulents. People who are looking to shop at Armstrong may be people looking for not only plants but access to a streamlined home garden "experience" with the website advertising online shopping, landscaping, and classes. Those who look to shop with the Rancho Vista nursery may be people committed to a local and more intimate plant shopping experience as their website advertises a local farm stand, farm shop, and links to local inspiration. 

The biggest difference between the sites is that one is much larger than the other with a lot of sub-pages while the other is smaller and has most of the information about the business available with minimal clicking. I think all the differences between the sites are kind of major and not quite subtle. The two types of customers for these sites are people interested in acquiring plants but one website offers more services than the other. I also think that these customers would be people looking for a more personal plant experience; these websites specialize in plants and while other locations that offer services such as Lowe's or Home Depot exist and have similar offerings, I would see how someone would feel more comfortable taking their gardening needs to one of these locations instead. 

The tone of each website is pretty different. The Rancho Vista site is very casual, very friendly, and very personable with phrases like "Let's grow something together!" and "Who can resist succulent plants?". Armstrong's website encourages you to find your location and is much more informative in tone than friendly, discussing their services and products very short-and-sweet. The website sits firmly in the "We are a business and this is what we offer" category while the Rancho Vista site is clearly a business but is much smaller in scale and friendlier in tone with the amateurish site coming off as charming.