Seed Supplier Websites

Ive struggled to find a seed web site that hasn't suspended its web shop due to demand.

Tried Suttons and they are open but have a queuing system which shows the volume of traffic on the sites. Not a bad situation to be faced with for the suppliers.

 

Did you hang about to see if you actually got connected? I saw that yesterday and wondered if the site was actually down and showing that as a consequence. I know a bit about ecommerce websites, and back-in-the-day of DotCom Boom we had sites with seasonal interest (e.g. Xmas run-up) where we throttled "new connections". But that was servers-back-then in 2000, not now, and even back then we comfortably handled 5,000 concurrent shoppers ... and it was a very feature-rich, server-intensive, site.

I'm very sceptical that Suttons actually have a store-full and are having to run a waiting queue of 2,000 people ... happy to be corrected though.

How ironic that a website has a "please queue outside 2M apart" at the front door

 

#Just like us all...........they never saw this coming.

 

I certainly agree with that ...

... but have Suttons really got 10,000 new customers a day wanting to plant veg? and those people are not "going elsewhere" when they find a queue outside the door?

That's the bit I'm struggling with. Coz if not then their normal website would be coping just fine.

(That image is showing 2,000 people waiting, and the wait time to be 20 minutes. So that is 100 people a minute arriving ... and also "100 people a minute MORE than the website can actually cope with" ... and I would be surprised if a modern website couldn't handle 10,000 concurrent customers.

In my head "them's big numbers" (100 a minute is 48,000 a day ...assuming they are only busy for 8 hours a day) even allowing for the number of Dig for Victory people who are ripping up their Astro Turf front lawns in their Barratt-Taylor-Wimpey's and planning to plant veg in the brick rubble that the builders left behind ...

Hope no one thinks I'm opinionated?

s/thinks/minds/

 

Chiltern seeds are open on and off, as soon as they finish orders they open the website again.

 

I waited and connected around the time that they said. Delivery is 7 to 10 days and they have a reasonable amount of stock still available. They have a fast track section where you can get quicker delivery but choice is limited

 

I think its there to deter the browsers and to ensure that they get people who want to buy. The queue volume is probably there to put of the less hardened seed shopper.

I cant help but think that there will be a lot of seed purchased and thrown in the bin

 

I'm just wondering how this is going to work out.

They are all keen now, but if the restrictions come off in a month or two there will be loads of stuff just left in weed infested gardens.
I've seen the spring rush in normal times on the allotments around here and it lasts for a couple of months until the novelty wears off.

 

Could get to sleep last night, got up with a cuppa and looked at Suttons website, yes at 3am there was a queue of several thousands. Same as the food shops sites.
Please, can we fast forward 3 months

 

But if they don't? ...

I'm designing potato padlocks to stop the locals knicking my crop ...

 

Helpful to hear, thanks.

I'm back to being a bit sceptical as to "why" then. But it might be a technical reason on their particular website. Once a website gets to the point of slowing down all hell breaks loose. You click on a product, the system trundles off to look up that product in the database, get the picture for it, and the description, work out your particular pricing / whatever. But system is busy, so that takes a bit longer than usual ... you think it is not working / whatever so you press REFRESH and then : "the system trundles off to look up ... " BUT ... your original query is still running (it may abort at a convenient interruption point, but on an "average" website it might well run to completion - and only then find that you, the customer, had given up).

So now you, personally, have two separate queries running. Maybe you press REFRESH again (it wouldn't be an unreasonable action ...) and thus that bad situation goes downhill really fast. Restricting the people in the shop solves that at a stroke. But even at 3AM?

Oh well then, that may well be the case. I've come to the conclusion that Black must be White after all

 

We will all be back to living in caves.

 

Well blow me down with a feather ...

I wanted to get a Picture of some seed packets, including Suttons. Can't do that of course, without queuing up for the privilege for 20 minutes ...

But I noticed that the page I was after (following a Google Link to a Product) came up and was then immediately replaced with the QUEUE page ... which was actually a Redirect (second additional page view)

So I pressed BACK (it did the same redirect forwards again) and then immediately [X] to stop the browser. Took a few Back-Stop goes but then I landed on the actual page. Then when I clicked on anything I was in the site ... without the wait.

Going to see if I can dodge past the bloke or the door at Waitrose next ...

 

These are the guys I bought mine from.

Grass Seed & Lawn Seeds - UK Supplier - GSS DIRECT LTD

The seed mix is much better than what you get in packets from a garden centre. And being farm suppliers, it looks like they're still running.