The Blog

An option we haven't discussed much here at the Small Farm Central blog is having a website custom designed from the ground-up by a designer or developer. This is not the approach we take with the Small Farm Central service (though we can get a custom design done for you, if you like) simply due to the cost incurred in custom development. For some farms, the cost of this work is justifiable.


How much does it cost?

For a good designer or developer, expect to pay at least $40/hour; the most expensive designers can cost much more more than $100/hour. At an average rate of $50/hour, you should not expect to spend under $1,500 on a custom designed website. This of course depends on the features: if you want ecommerce, a mailing list manager, or a blog expect to pay more.

These are initial development costs, so you should expect to pay more for hosting, domain registration, and on-going maintenance of your site.

Questions to ask your designer

It is perhaps a bit obvious, but ask the designer to provide samples of previous work. One thing to account for is that a farm website is going to look vastly different than your average social networking or hard rock band website. You need to make sure the designer has a feel for the agrarian or you will be really disapointed in the product and will likely spend a lot of money getting it right.

I heard the story of organization that supports urban agriculture in a particular region getting a website redesign. They hired a respectable local designer that has done a lot of good work in the past. When the first draft came back to the organization, the header of the website had a large corn field as the main graphic. Of course, it is excusable for an average person to think that corn is an urban crop, it was not excusable for a designer doing work with urban agriculture organization. After a few more rounds of redesigns, it became clear that the relationship was not going to work and another design firm had to be found. This mistake lead to a few thousand dollars wasted on these capable designers who couldn't work with an agricultural look.

Make sure the designer has experience creating some of the advanced features you want on your website like websites and blogs. While these elements should not be a problem for a capable developer, it is hard to know what you will get if you have your designer "learn on the job."

Friends? Students?

I hear from a lot of farmers who had a friend, customer, or student develop their website for them. I imagine that many of these arrangements work and that I only hear from people who are dissatisfied with their website. Many new Small Farm Central members get tired of contacting their designer to make changes or having someone who isn't a complete professional in the position.

Ask for a Content Management System

A competent web designer does not want to be contacted each time you want to update your product list or add a photo to your website ... they have better things to do. A content management system allows you to login and make basic changes to your website like wording, prices, or photos. This will likely cost you extra in the short run because it is more work for the person you are hiring to design your website. In the long run, it can save you a lot of money. I hear about farms really having to measure how often they can update their website because their designer will charge a full hour rate for any changes made -- think $50 to change a misspelling or add a paragraph.

You will still have to contact your designer for more drastic changes, but most of your pages and your photo gallery should be readily accessible 24 hours a day at no cost to you.

Next week: How to Find Great Designer

Next week, I'd like to talk more about how to find the right designer. I'd also like to post links to some designers that specialize in agricultural web design. I know of some, but I am sure there are many more that I haven't heard of. Do you know any? Please post in comments if you do.

I read the following quote about the fashion industry in a New York Times article a month or two ago:

"We as a business cannot afford to have a customer take a second look and ask, ‘Do I need this?’ ” said Bud Konheim, the chief executive of Nicole Miller. “That is the kiss of death. We’re finished, because nobody really needs anything we make as a total industry.”

This quote reminds me that as a farmer, rancher, or local food producer, the marketing is the exact opposite. You want people to take a second look at their purchasing habits and think why they have to pay a few dollars more on food or spend a few minutes searching for a local producer each week to eat more locally.

Your argument is that everyone needs what you produce for personal health, environmental health, a strong local economy, reducing the amount of oil used in this country, and all the other arguments that help people understand why they buy from you.

The most successful farmer's market vendors always find a way to offer a tasting to customers. This is a chance to experience the difference between, say a peach shipped in from California in February versus an August, tree-ripened, Redhaven peach is obvious and will be remembered for a lifetime after that first taste.

I don't think we need to bang people over the head with the differences between local food and airplane shipped produce and why each food choice is so important. People want to come to their own conclusions, so keep gently nudging your customers and the "lococurious". What you do is vitally important to many aspects of our lives and with a little suggestion over time it should be possible to bring many new customers in-line with your cause.

Have you ever gotten an email from a relative that you have to piece together by scrolling around the photo because it is much bigger than the screen? This is mildly disconcerting because you worry what Uncle Larry took a picture of at first and annoying because it takes so long to get the full picture.

The same problem exists on some farm websites. Photos need to be optimized for web viewing which means they need to be small enough to view on a single monitor and load quickly even on slower connections. Since photos immediately connect your customers to the production of their food, it is important to get this right.

Modern digital cameras take very high quality photos that are perfect if you are zooming into a photo or want to make prints, but in their unprocessed form they are almost unusable on a website.

The software that powers Small Farm Central automatically resizes photos to an acceptable size, but even then some farmers have problems getting the photo to the servers because there is so much unnecessary data in the file. Try resizing your photos first -- if it was taking you a few minutes to upload your photo before, after resizing your photos it should take around 10-15 seconds to get the photo to upload.

If you run Windows, a great piece of software is Picasa which allows you to resize photos in large batches. Read this help document to learn how to resize photos with Picasa. The software has a great interface and a lot of other photo editing tools, so it is definitely worth the download.

If you are on Mac, I don't have as clear of a recommendation. I found this video which explains how to use Apple Mail to resize photos. Perhaps there is a better way? Let the community know in comments.

This advice stands for any farm website you are running, whether it is Small Farm Central or not. We do take care the smaller details of creating thumbnails and sizing the photos correctly, but if you are running your own website, look to resize your full size photos to around 640 x 480 pixels.

(Photo by tanakawho)

It is almost June. It is time to start or restart your summer mailing list.

Some thoughts, suggestions, tips. Feel free to add your own in comments.

Punctuality

How often do you send a notice to your mailing list? Perhaps once a week during the summer and once a month during the winter. It is important to create a clear schedule that you can communicate to new sign-ups on your website or in person. They want to know how often they will contacted and once you have made that promise, don't contact them more often or less often.

Unsubscribe

Mailing list recipients must have a mechanism to unsubscribe from further messages. A simple message at the bottom of your email to reply with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line is  sufficient. Professional mailing list managers, like Small Farm Central, will have an automated way for recipients to opt-out of your email so you don't have to manage the list.

Fill your list

Don't settle for a small list of committed friends and customers. If you are going to take the time to compose and send messages at regular intervals, it makes sense to send to as large a list as possible. I wrote many tips for gathering new email address late last year in Collecting Email Addresses.

Please don't BCC or CC

As you start your list, you may be sending your emails through a regular email client with all of the addresses copied and pasted into the BCC or CC fields of the email. This works for email lists under 100 recipients, but as your list grows, the technology solution must change. You run the risk of having your email message or worse, your email address, marked as spam if you are sending hundreds of emails through the BCC or CC field.

A professional solution sends each message individually. One positive aspect of this approach is that your mailing list members cannot see each other's email address. Also, many Internet Service Providers have a limit on how many messages can be sent per minute or hour; a professional approach will send the emails in small bursts to make sure the email gets to it's destination correctly.

Break it up

I imagine your farm has different kinds of customers: CSA members, beef buyers, regular Monday farmers market customers, or egg subscribers. It may be desirable to send different messages at different times to these groups of customers. One new aspect of Small Farm Central 2.0 (which came out in March of this year) is that each farm can create customer groups and send targeted emails to those groups.

For example, perhaps you send an availability list out to farmers market customers the night before the market. If you have one market on Monday and one market on Friday, it doesn't make sense to send the same message at the same time to both of those groups. So with the new system you can send a pertinent email to each group.

There are many other uses for this functionality: surely chefs at the restaurants you serve do not need the same information that farm stand customers want. Break it up as far as you want while still being able to manage the lists.

I presume that most stand-alone email solutions also provide a service like this.

Your customers love to hear from you!

You have a superior product and agricultural ideals - your customers want to buy your products, but it is often hard to remember to visit the farmers market, farm stand, or pick up the CSA box. It is not your customer's responsibility to remember that sides of beef are available in the Fall.

An email mailing list is a perfect way to remind customers of what you are offering, where you are offering, and why it is important. Americans check their emails numerous times per day (six times per day is the average), so an email is a great way to reach people and get attention.

More on sending mailing lists

Want to know how to get emails from here to there safely? There are lots of options, check out:
Sending Emails Professionally

With the recent focus here on this blog on how to use analytics software, I think it is also important to step back from the numbers.

I received an email from a Small Farm Central member who has become a friend:

Have been enjoying learning about Bounce Rates, etc. Our numbers go up and down like GM stock, but I think the real meaning is who it reaches, not necessarily the numbers.

He goes on to detail some interesting connections he has made through the website such a local reporter and a customer looking for fertilized eggs.

That's exactly right: your farm website is never going to get traffic like Amazon.com or Ebay and that isn't the point. You are looking for quality over quantity.

People in your area want to create a long-term relationship with a farmer just like you. What is a website visitor worth who will buy a CSA share every year for the next 10 years? will become a great friend or ally? or order a side of beef every fall?

Having friendly and open communication on your website is a step in turning these visitors into supporters.

It doesn't matter what your bounce rate or new visitor percentage is: keep making connections consistently and it will be good for the long-term health of your farm and your local food economy.