SI 622 Assignment 6: Comparative Analysis Authored by: Group 3: The Garden Club Alyssa Kata Marlon Phillips Jim

Rampton Han Kyong Yun Jun Zhang Prepared for: David Michener, University of Michigan Peony Garden March 26, 2013 Word Count: 3,635

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Executive Summary
Our team conducted a comparative analysis of the UM Peony Gardens website with five other sites, based on Newmans Taxonomy (Newman, 2011). The sites we chose were: 1) Peonys Envy (direct competitor)- http://peonysenvy.com/ 2) Alaska Peony Growers Association (indirect competitor)http://www.alaskapeonies.org/ 3) The New York Botanical Garden (partial competitor 1)- http://www.nybg.org/ 4) Missouri Botanical Garden (partial competitor 2)http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/ 5) Google Books (analogous comparison)- http://books.google.com/ We compared all five competitor sites and the UM Peony Garden site using specific criterion under four main categories: 1) Website Organization, 2) Aesthetics, 3) Website Features, and 4) Usability. Each of our group members rated each site in each criterion using a 0-4 scale (0= non-existent, 1= needs improvement, 2= satisfactory, 3= good, 4= excellent). We then compared our ratings and decided on a final rating for each criterion for each site. After looking for significant differences in ratings between our clients site and the competitors sites, we developed five findings and corresponding recommendations. They are as follows: Finding 1: The UM Peony Garden site does not provide event information on its homepage slider like other garden websites do. We recommend adding information on events and special attractions to the UM Peony Gardens homepage slider to make the information easier for users to see. Finding 2: Unlike some of its competitors, the UM Peony Gardens website does not have a dedicated events page. We recommend adding a page showcasing all of the events at the Peony Garden under the Plan Your Visit tab. Finding 3: Compared to its competitors, the UM Peony Gardens website lacks diversity in its images. We recommend adding more images of flowerbeds and the garden overall to supplement the photos of single flowers. We also recommend adding visual learning aids or diagrams next to textual information, such as how to care for peonies or how they should be planted. Finding 4: The UM Peony Gardens online peony database is an excellent resource for researching peonies in comparison to its competitors databases or catalogs. We recommend continuing to add photos to the database to entries that do not already have them. We also recommend moving the Browse by Photo page to the Peony Database section of the site to make it easier for users to find. Finding 5: Unlike most of its competitors, the UM Peony Gardens website has some unfinished pages and a blog that is in need of updating. We recommend removing the placeholders for unfinished content, updating incomplete pages, and creating blog posts on a more regular basis. We also recommend making most current blog posts easier to navigate to.

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Introduction
The University of Michigan Peony Gardens website (http://mbgna.umich.edu/peony) is a subsite of the larger Matthei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum (MBGNA) site, as the garden itself is a part of the Nichols Arboretum on UMs Central Campus. The sites global navigation toolbar breaks the site into five different sections: About the Garden, Plan Your Visit, Peony Database, Peony Resources, and Get Involved. Accordingly, there are a few different ways that users would potentially use the site. The first way would be to find out general information about the garden, such as garden history, news/events, and information on the gardens historic peonies. Secondly, users might come to the site for information on planning their visit to the garden, such as when the peonies are in bloom, how to get to the garden and where to park, tours offered, and photomaps showing them where to find their favorite peonies once there. Users may also come to the site in order to search for specific peonies in the Peony Database section, or browse by cultivar, cultivar group, breeder, form, color, season, or country of origin. Users may also take advantage of the Peony Resources section to find information on how to care for their flowers, peony diseases, peony organizations, where to find other peony gardens, as well as watch informational videos. Finally, users could potentially use the site to find out how to give back to the garden with their time or money. (Kata et al., 2013) To better explore the UM Peony Garden site, we conducted a comparative analysis, looking at five different websites, which represent possible competitors based on the categories defined by Newmans Taxonomy. (Newman, 2011) The research questions we developed for our comparative analysis were 1) How does the UM Peony Garden compare to its competitors in the categories of website organization, aesthetics, features, and usability? And 2) How can the UM Peony Garden improve its website in order to better compete with similar or competing resources? Because the UM Peony Garden has two types of potential users that could possibly overlap- peony researchers or enthusiasts and garden visitors- we chose sites whose audiences would cover these user groups to varying degrees. We also tried to identify sites that had comparable features but again did so to varying degrees based on Newmans taxonomy.

Methods
In order to complete a comparative analysis of the UM Peony Garden website, we chose five comparable websites according to the categories for comparative analysis defined by Newmans Taxonomy (Newman, 2011). The sites and the categories they fall under are as follows: 1) Direct: Peonys Envy (http://peonysenvy.com/) 2) Indirect: Alaska Peony Growers Association (http://www.alaskapeonies.org/) 3) Partial 1: The New York Botanical Garden (http://www.nybg.org/) 4) Partial 2: Missouri Botanical Garden (http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/) 5) Analogous: Google Books (http://books.google.com/) We found these sites by doing some online investigation using search engines individually, discussing our options as a group, and choosing the sites that fit the best into each category.

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Competitor Profiles: Peonys Envy (Direct Competitor): According to Newmans Taxonomy a direct competitor is a system that provides the same function in the same way. (Newman, 2011) Peonys Envy, a privately owned nursery and display garden in Bernardsville, New Jersey, can be considered a direct competitor to the UM Peony Garden because both sites have similar user groups, peony enthusiasts and garden visitors, and provide the same functionality to these users. This means that both sites allow users to plan visits to their respective gardens, look up information on peonies via a database (although, at Peonys Envy, this takes the form of a catalog featuring peonies that are for sale), as well as look up information for planning their own garden. Both sites are also focused exclusively on peonies and a specific peony garden, and do not provide information on other types of flowers or plants. Alaska Peony Growers Association (Indirect Competitor): The Alaska Peony Growers Associations website primarily consists of information on a membership program for peony growers and enthusiasts within the state of Alaska. The site provides information on peonies, how to join the association, links to other peony resources, as well as a database for users to search for peonies available for sale at different peony farms by color, variety, farm name, or availability date. The definition of an indirect competitor according to Newmans Taxonomy is a site offering the same functions in a different way. (Newman, 2011) The Alaska Peony Growers Association website is offering information on a peonies in a different way through a membership program, which is not associated with one specific garden like the UM Peony Garden. New York Botanical Garden and Missouri Botanical Garden (Partial Competitors): A partial competitor is defined as a competitor that covers some but not all functions of the comparable site. (Newman, 2011) The UM Peony Garden could be considered a partial competitor of the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and the Missouri Botanical Garden. Both botanical gardens have websites that contains information on their peony gardens, how to grow peonies, as well as plant/flower databases which contain information on specific peonies. Also, both sites contain information that is similar to the information on the Peony Gardens site such as information about planning garden visits (including event information), information on how to care for a home garden, and a searchable database of information on the types of plants found at the garden but it encompasses a much larger scope with several different types of plants and gardens, in addition to their peonies. These sites could also be considered niche competitors according to Goodman, et als taxonomy (Goodman, Kuniavsky, & Moed, 2012) because they compete for the attention of the some of the Peony Gardens website users but not of all them. Those peony enthusiasts who are looking to do research on peonies or peony gardens specifically and are not concerned with other types of flowers would likely find more value in the

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UM Peony Gardens site, which has a more extensive set of peony resources, whereas general garden visitors (who are not so much concerned with the type of flowers or plants grown at a garden) who are looking for gardens to visit might be interested in using all three sites. Google Books (Analogous Competitor): An analogous system is a non-competitor that might give ideas about how to provide functions better. (Newman, 2011) The UM Peony Garden website has a fairly extensive peony database that could potentially benefit from a comparison to Google Books book database. Google Books database is both searchable by keyword or title and easily browsed by predefined book categories. It also can be browsed by book cover photo. We decided to compare the UM Peony Garden website to each of these sites using the following four categories: 1) Website Organization, 2) Aesthetics, 3) Website Features, and 4) Usability. Under each of these categories, we specified more specific criterion, which we then rated using a comparative matrix to evaluate each of the competitor sites as well as the UM Peony Garden website. Each of these features were ranked based on a numeric scale we developed: 0: Non-existent 1: Needs improvement 2: Satisfactory 3: Good 4: Excellent Each group member rated each competitor site and the UM Peony Garden site individually and then we discussed our ratings to determine a final score for each criterion for each site. We recorded these numbers in a final comparative matrix, found in the Appendix. If there was a significant difference in the criterion ratings of the Peony Garden site and its competitors, our group then discussed whether it was a significant finding, and if we could recommend any solution.

Findings and Recommendations

Finding 1: The UM Peony Garden site does not provide event information on its homepage slider like other garden websites do. Other garden websites, such as the sites for the New York Botanical Garden and the Missouri Botanical Garden, utilize the sliders on their homepage to showcase upcoming events and popular attractions at their gardens. The UM Peony Gardens homepage slider alternatively contains general information about the garden and their website, particularly one slide about their websites database and one regarding the historic peonies found at the garden, but nothing that showcases upcoming events and popular attractions. We also found that event information

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is important to garden visitors based on our interview and survey studies of potential UM Peony Garden website users (Kata et al, 2013).

The New York Botanical Gardens homepage slider, which contains upcoming event information

The Missouri Botanical Gardens websites homepage slider, containing a separate Events & Exhibits tab Recommendation: In order to make better use of the slider on the homepage, we recommend that our client place important event or special garden attractions information on the slider. By providing this key information on the homepage, the site provides users quick and easy access to information about what is currently going on at the garden. Providing pictures or visuals of these events and attractions will also help facilitate garden happenings because users will be more aware of when they are taking place. An example of utilizing the slider in this way could be

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adding a slide announcing when the garden has bloomed, along with pictures of the peonies to attract website visitors to the garden during bloom season. Finding 2: Unlike some of its competitors, The UM Peony Gardens website does not have a dedicated events page. Unlike the other garden websites we researched in our comparative analysis, the UM Peony Garden website does not have a dedicated events page. The homepage of the Peony Gardens site has a small section that shows events at the garden but does not show an extensive list of all the events that occur. As seen below, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the New York Botanical Garden, and Peonys Evny have pages dedicated solely to their garden events. This information is provided either in a calendar format or by date for users to easily browse their upcoming or past events. Although this may not be necessary for the Peony Garden because their bloom season is so short, a page dedicated to events might be helpful in presenting this information to users in another way, especially if they are looking for this information from a page other than the homepage, where event information is currently located.

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The Missouri Botanical Gardens events calendar page

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The New York Botanical Gardens event page

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Peonys Evny event page Recommendation: Our recommendation is for the UM Peony Garden staff to create a separate page for events on their website. Having an events page allows users to find all events that are occurring during the bloom season (or other times) faster and more easily. This will allow users to find events in advance and plan their trips accordingly. We also recommend making this page accessible from any page of the site by including it in the sites global navigation bar drop-down menus, in this case under the Plan Your Visit tab. That way if users are looking at another page of the site and decide they want to next browse event information, they do not have to actively remember that they must return to the homepage to do so. Finding 3: Compared to its competitors, the UM Peony Gardens website lacks diversity in its images. When compared to New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden and Peonys Envy websites, it can be seen that the Peony Garden website lacks a diversity of images. These websites provide not only pictures of individual plants and flowers, they also provide pictures of flower beds, entire gardens, scenery of the garden, and garden events (as seen below). We also found that in some sections of the UM Peony Gardens website, the pages do not contain

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any visual elements along with the text. It may be easier for users to remember information on gardening techniques or particular types of flowers if it is visually represented by photographs or diagrams.

Example of an interesting garden shot from the NYBGs website

Example of a photo showcasing an interesting point of view at the Missouri Botanical Garden

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Recommendation: Providing images of the overall garden, images of what the garden looks like in bloom season and individual flowerbeds along with the already existing photos of individual flowers will help to convey a better overall perspective of the garden and give clue to users of what their experience at the Peony Garden will be like. We also recommend adding pictures and visuals in page where there is just information in text form currently. Adding pictures and visuals will help give visual context to what is being explained on a webpage. An example of where is implemented is on the Peonys Envy website. The website utilizes visual diagrams and pictures to supplement the text (see below). If the Peony Garden also utilized this technique it would allow users to better understand, as well as potentially be more interested in, the content.

Peonys Envys website diagrams

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Finding 4: The UM Peony Gardens online peony database is an excellent resource for researching peonies in comparison to its competitors databases or catalogs. The UM Peony Gardens database is specifically dedicated to hundreds of different varieties of the peony, and our group did not find a comparable peony-only database. Peonys Envys site has a peony database of sorts, in the form of a catalog for buying different varieties of peonies but it does not provide nearly as much information on the specific types of peonies as the UM peony database does. Also, Peonys Envy only allows users to look at information on specific peonies if those peonies are available for sale, whereas the UM Peony Gardens main purpose is not selling peonies and therefore, users can search for and look at the related information for any of the peonies in their database at anytime. The New York and Missouri Botanical Gardens also have databases but these are not specific to peonies. The Missouri Botanical Gardens provides a lot of information on peonies but they only have 55 peony varieties entered into their database. We cannot comment on the depth of peony information in the New York Botanical Gardens database because a basic search for peony never actually returned any results (the server stopped responding to our request after a few minutes and returned an error message), which also showcases the UM peony databases superiority.

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Peonys Envy catalog, where users can browse by color of peony, but cannot click on, and therefore read the information about, the peonies that are not available for sale

The Missouri Botanical Gardens database only has 55 peony-related entries compared to the hundreds found in the UM Peony Gardens database

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Result of basic search for peony in the NYBGs flower/plant database Recommendation: We recommend continuing to add photos to the UM peony database to make it more valuable to users. We also recommend showcasing that the flowers can be browsed by photo somewhere in the database section. Right now, that functionality is found under the About the Garden tab on the global navigation toolbar and it is not clear to those users who go directly to the database that this function exists. Finding 5: Unlike most of its competitors, the UM Peony Gardens website has some unfinished pages and a blog that is in need of updating. We were unable to find any obviously unfinished pages or broken links on the pages of the competitors of the UM Peony Garden that we analyzed (except for the issue with the NYBG database previously mentioned). The UM Peony Gardens site does contain some unfinished pages, however, including their Share Your Story page (http://mbgna.umich.edu/peony/shareyour-story) and the About the Garden page, which contains a lot of useful information but also has placeholders for future content, making it look unfinished. The UM Peony Gardens blog is also not updated as often as some of the other blogs we found, particularly the one on the NYBG website, which appears to be updated almost daily (http://www.nybg.org/plant-talk/).

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Placeholders on the UM Peony Garden sites About the Garden page

Recommendation: While we realize that updating the UM Peony Gardens blog daily is unnecessary and likely unfeasible, we recommend adding blog posts on a more regular basis. This will hopefully produce some regular visitors to the site, even during the off-season of the garden. We also recommend adding content to the unfinished pages and removing the placeholders for unfinished content, or at least making them invisible to site visitors. Also when users click on the Blog link under the About the Garden tab of the global navigation, they are directed to a page that does not contain the most recent blog post by the garden staff. Instead, they must click a link at the bottom of the page taking them to the main blog page. We recommend removing this step and taking users directly to the most recent blog content from the Blog link.

Discussion
Since there are not many websites solely dedicated to singular peony gardens, like the UM Peony Garden, our options for choosing direct competitors were limited to mainly websites of commercial gardens or peony farms, hence the reason we chose Peonys Envy. Additionally, because our group only searched for competitor sites using Google, our choices for analysis were limited only to the sites we could find using this tool. We may have found more appropriate samples if we had examined more resources, such as peony magazines and related journals but our timeframe and resources did not allow for this. We did not compare the Peony Gardens website to any analog tools, such as books or brochures about peonies or gardens because we did not think any such tool would cover the depth and breadth of the information found on the peony website in a way that would allow for a valuable comparison. For example, a book about peonies would not have a database, blog, or mobile site to compare to.

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In our Comparative Analysis Matrix, some of the criteria could be more specific. For instance, when comparing different website features among the competitors, we should have specified more detailed criteria for our ratings. Specifically, we could have identified the database as an entire category rather than just mention as a single feature. Having a more in-depth analysis such as how robust is the database, the quality of the results from the database and the difficulty of use of the database would have allowed us to better analyze the websites. Also, the criteria variety of images and quality of image is not applicable to the analogous system Google Books. Even though Google books has images, they are only the book covers, which is not comparable to photos of flowers or gardens. The results of our analysis were based on only our teams opinions and we may have been had certain biases that affected the results, especially since none of us are garden visitors or peony enthusiasts or researchers. It may have been more useful to get the opinions of actual users of these sites. Therefore, a good next step might be to survey actual users and perform usability tests of the UM Peony Gardens website to see how easily common tasks are completed on the site and how aesthetically pleasing the site is to current users.

Conclusion !
With our comparative analysis, we were able to identify, the strengths and weaknesses of the UM Peony Garden website by analyzing other websites that serve a similar function. The findings and recommendations represent the common trends and features that were found on competitor websites. These findings show, that highlighting important information and events, providing diverse high-quality and effective visuals, a robust database, and a complete website can help improve the overall functionality of a garden website. Focusing on the strengths and improving upon the shortcomings of competitor websites can help to improve the overall user experience of the UM Peony Garden website.

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References
Goodman, E., Kuniavsky, M., & Moed, A. (2012).Observing the user experience: A practitioner's guide to user research . (2 ed., pp. 73-93). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann. Kata, Alyssa, Marlon Phillps, James Rampton, Han Kyong Yun, and Jun Zhang. (2013). SI 622 Assignment 4: Interviews, Personas, and Scenarios. Newman, Mark. (2011). Report Writing & Comparative Analysis.

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Appendix

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Comparative Matrix
Client Direct Partial (1) Partial (2)
New York Botanical Garden
3 4 3 4

Indirect
Alaska Peony Growers Association
3 3 3 4

Analogous
Google Books

UM Peony Peony's Envy Garden Website Organization

Navigation Limited redundancy Information categorized Use of text

Missouri Botanical Garden

3 4 4 4

3 3 4 2

3 4 4 3

4 4 4 4

Aesthetics
Color scheme Font size & type Variety of images Consistency across pages Makes good use of real estate Quality of images

4 4 2 4 2 3

3 3 4 3 3 3

3 3 4 1 4 4

4 4 4 4 4 4

2 3 1 4 3 1

4 4 N/A 4 4 N/A

Website features
Database Blog Events calendar Map for parking Map of garden

3 1 1 1 1

1 0 3 0 3

2 4 4 0 4

3 3 4 2 2

2 0 1 N/A N/A

4 N/A N/A N/A N/A

Usability
Mobile accessibility Information is offered in a variety of formats (video, pictures, graphs, etc.) Limited incomplete pages or broken links

2 3 3

3 2 4

4 4 4

4 4 4

2 1 3

4 4 4

KEY
0 non-existent needs 1 improvement 2 satisfactory 3 good 4 excellent