[Functionality notes:
Typing in any search terms in the Banner search bar above, takes user to a Results View page where species relevant to the search terms entered are listed.]
Search by Use Category • Search by Botanical Family • Browse by Images
[Functionality notes:
Each of these “Search by” texts are links that bounce the user further down the page to the respective areas.]
Search for Species by Use Category
Other Use Categories:
Resin Cultural Importance Oil
Alcoholic Maceration Living Fence Pollinator Attractor
Nut Vegetable Firewood
Fodder Soil Improvement Other
[Functionality Notes:
All images above, and text names below “Other Use Categories” are clickable links. Clicking on an image, or on the caption below images (which is the Use Category in text), or clicking on one of the text links under “Other Use Categories” will lead users to a Results View page with all species from that Use Category displayed.
The list of Other Use Categories should be cleaned up to look sleek. This current version clearly looks crappy.
Non-essential “whistles and bells”: each time the user loads this page, the Use Categories represented by images in the gallery above change. (And thus, the Use Categories represented as text links under “Other Use Categories” will also change accordingly. We always want all Use Categories to be available here, some with images and some text only. We assume the image blocks will gather more clicks than the text only “link pile” of “Other Use Categories.” And we assume that having the diversity of Use Categories represented by images will fuel traffic to more of the categories. (We also assume that displaying every Use Category with its own image will be too big of a group of images for the user to look at.)
On the backend we’d have the “stock” of images defined to represent each Use Category, of which only 8 would be displayed each time a viewer views the page, with the rest displayed by text name alone.]
Search by Botanical Family
[Add here: a drop-down list of botanical families to be selected.
Either selecting a family here or searching in this search bar, leads the user to a Results View page with all the species from that botanical family.
Other functionality desired: the search bar can have auto-fill in such a way that when you begin typing in a family name, options appear below the typing, supplying the user with clickable options.]
Some Important Botanical Families
[Notes: here the idea is that we fuel clicks by adding some “popular” families. Ideally this would be set up such that each time a user reloads the page, a different set of 4 families is randomly chosen to be displayed.
On the backend we’d have a “stock” of families that are represented by an image. We don’t need to feed All botanical families in here, only a list of say 10-20 important families, of which only 4 would be displayed each time a viewer views the page.]
Browse the Feed
Click on an image below to discover more about the plant or tree species it comes from…
[Functionality notes:
Here the idea is to give the users irresistible click bait.
Ideally, each time the user loads this page, the images displayed are selected at random from out of the tree database. We can set this up so that ANY image of any plant can appear. Or, even better, could we set up the tree database in such a way that we could add a feature where we can Star or Heart individual images, and then only have these favorite images eligible to be fed into this area?
Visually we want to mimic the look of the Instagram feed. Meaning, a nice amount of “padding” between images, and only 3 (or 4) square images per row. Displaying 3 or 4 rows to start with. At bottom of images block, we would have a “Load More” button – or have the ability to scroll down to reveal more photos. This will be the bottom of the page, so we could allow for “infinite” scrolling down to keep revealing more images.
Clicking on an image will take the user directly to that species’ individual profile page.]
[This would be the end of the page, for now.
When we get into the part of adding tree planting locations, then we could add another block here about Finding Trees. But that’s in next steps further down the road.
I do think it could we worthwhile to offer users the chance to jump right into the grid of trees as shown in AirTable, but perhaps we could visualize them in a more compelling way than what the AirTable API provides (here below):