In response to these demands, the brand-new Syngenta Professional Products GreenCast Web site offers immediate, easily-accessible lawn care information to industry professionals – available with one or two clicks of the mouse, rather than eight or nine, pointed out Joe DiPaola, golf market manager, Syngenta Professional Products, Greensboro, N.C. The site, which the company launched April 1, provides timely, accurate visual information on soil temperature, pest outlooks and reports, solutions to pest outbreaks and more. These features are all updated on a weekly basis, said Sara Reiter, Internet marketing manager for Syngenta Professional Products.
Inspiration for the site can be traced back four years, when the company began distributing lawn care information in the form of fax-delivered TechNotes. “We had a commitment to deliver timely information, on a conversational-type basis with information such as soil temperature,” DiPaola remembered. Over time, the TechNotes information transitioned from written copy to an online format, but with limited capabilities. “There were only three to four things you could see on the site,” he said.
Consequently, Syngenta began developing the GreenCast site during the fall of 2001, building and rebuilding a new site that would provide more information in an expedient and easily navigable manner. Ultimately, this planning resulted in the GreenCast site unveiling on April 1. “The major revision for GreenCast was going from three items to about eight to 10 key offerings right now,” DiPaola stated.
These offerings include a variety of topics, from industry news and pest alerts to weather conditions and pest solutions. Visitors can access much of this information directly from the front page of the site without logging in, which positions the data to a wide variety of users, DiPaola said. “The front page is open to all visitors, and we offer an objective third-party science-based look at and understanding of the industry,” he said. “We act as sponsors, and it’s important to understand that we’re trying to provide these services without a personal spin or skew.”
As users move further into the site, additional features require registration, which simply allows Syngenta to learn more about the site’s users and customize the content accordingly. “As users drill down into the site, they will expect to hear back from Syngenta,” DiPaola explained. “And when we know who you are and what you’re trying to do, we’re in a better position to know and understand what you need from us.” In addition, registered users have the capability to customize features such as soil temperature, weather and crabgrass germination maps to their particular demographic areas.
Synthesizing overwhelming amounts of technical information into a format that lawn care operators and other industry professionals can realistically use has been a daunting challenge along the way, Reiter noted. “We’re trying to take huge amounts of technical information and what’s meaningful to a lawn care operator and make it accessible in a quick and painless way,” she said. As more users experience the site, their feedback will help Syngenta tweak features and make the site more navigable, she added.
But development is an ongoing feature of the GreenCast site. For example, a scouting reports section will eventually incorporate a team of scouts scattered nationwide. Members of the team will then report lawn care information directly from the field, on a weekly basis, so site users can easily view up-to-the-minute data about current field conditions. “It will give people a pretty good sense of how things are developing each season – sort of a best management practices type of approach,” DiPaola related.
However, the combined package of updated industry news, pest alerts and solutions and lawn care forecasts, and not just one specific feature, is the true value of the GreenCast site, Reiter stated. “There is power in each of these pieces, and when you add them all together it’s a powerful tool,” she said. “In many ways it’s day-to-day lawn care management.”
Even though the site has only been active for just under two weeks, DiPaola has already witnessed a variety of users accessing and registering for the site. In fact, Reiter noted that one-third of the people that visit the site end up registering. Ultimately, DiPaola hopes the accessibility of the site, combined with its wealth of information, will drive more users to GreenCast. “It’s a function of time,” he said. “Quite a bit of it can be customized so that you can something again quickly without having to jump all around the site.”
The author is Assistant Editor – Internet of Lawn & Landscape magazine.
For more information on the GreenCast site, sponsored by Syngenta Professional Products, visit http://www.greencastonline.com.