The Blog

Ever wonder how we control spam on Small Farm Central sites? We use a system that you have seen many times throughout the web called CAPTCHA (which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart).

This is a series of distorted letters and words that is difficult (or hopefully impossible) for a computer program to decipher, but is easy for the human brain to translate.

It's not really important for you to understand the specifics except that a CAPTCHA makes sure that a human is at the other end on comment submissions, emails from the website, mailing list submissions, and anywhere else that we take input from the user.

We use a really interesting implementation of the CAPTCHA called reCAPTCHA (starting in fall 2007) from Carnegie Mellon University which is coincidentally just a few miles down the road in the same city that Small Farm Central is based.

Each CAPTCHA word on Small Farm Central sites is scanned in by a project that is seeking to digitize the literary public domain. There are always certain words that the computer cannot understand as they attempt to encode these books, so the reCAPTCHA project takes the collective brain power that was heretofore wasted on CAPTCHAs and puts it to the task of deciphering these words so that these books can be searched and read digitally in the future.

I won't hope to match the reporting skills of the Wall Street Journal, so that covers the basics: read this Wall Street Journal article for all the interesting details! Thanks, Patrick for the link.

If you want to test a reCAPTCHA for yourself, you are welcome to try leaving a comment on this very entry.

This week we are adding a little theory to go along with the practical marketing advice. One of the key ideas of modern marketing is called "permission marketing" -- most of you are already doing this, but it is a helpful to have a framework and label for what you are doing to keep you on track.

Permission marketing is Seth Godin's term coined in a 1999 book which explains how businesses can effectively market themselves to their best customers without spending a lot of money and by providing value for the customer's attention.

In Godin's words: "Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them."

This is in contrast to "interruption marketing" like television commercials, billboards, spam email, and junk mail which clutter our physical and mental worlds without adding value.

As farmers providing healthful products that add a lot of value to a customer's life, it is easy to get that permission to market to current and prospective customers. Godin says, you are using permission marketing if customers complain when they don't receive your messages. So, do you customers complain when forget to send the weekly newsletter?

Provide value every time you connect with your customers whether it is a story about your experience producing food or practical information that the recipient can use like recipes, product availability, or nutrition information.

An Agrarian Example

Get permission to send a weekly newsletter to your farmer's market customers. Be timely by sending out product availability for the market the night before. Be relevant by splitting up your list for different markets so only the people who go to a certain market get the message. If you muddy the message by including all your markets for the week you are wasting the attention that your buyers are giving to you.

Try to send this message for the first 10 weeks of the season and then see what happens on the 11th week if you forget to send the message. I think your customers will complain!

Further Reading on Permission Marketing

• A recent blog entry from Seth Godin's blog explaining the tenets of permission marketing.
• Want to get really deep into the subject? Read A Comprehensive Analysis of Permission Marketing.
• Some good practical advice on how to get permission and how to approach contacting the customer.
  

Do sales stop "cold" after the farmers market closes or you shut the doors on your farm stand in the Fall?

In October and November, there is usually hardy produce in the garden, meat in the freezer, and the chickens are still producing their eggs. Customers are still hungry for local food and it is finally cool enough in the kitchen to do some real cooking.

If you have been collecting email addresses all summer for your mailing list, your customers are just an email away. Use the Small Farm Central mailing list manager or send one on your own to let your customers know about your availability this fall.

Of course the ecommerce extension makes this process easy and efficient. Just set up your inventory, send a note out to your customers to tell them that the online store is open for business, watch the orders come in with email notifications, and then print a report when you are ready to pick and pack.

As you just sweat through another muggy summer day, it seems a bit premature to start thinking about the cool days of fall. The idea of heavy coat is so foreign at this time of year -- it is hard to remember being cold. But if you want to sell in that shoulder season, it is time to start collecting email addresses, planting a bit extra to sell during those after market months, and start informing your customers that this service will be available during the cooler months.

On a more summery note, I like the colorful ecommerce pages Green Gardens Community Farm in Battle Creek, MI created with Small Farm Central:

Or take a look at the "item detail" page for Kale that shows the customer exactly how this crop grows.

Angelic Organics is offering free recipes to promote their cookbook, Farmer John's Cookbook: http://www.angelicorganics.com/recipeservice

This is a nice service because you can download the recipe right in PDF or Word format and paste it right in your newsletter. I assume these are recipes straight out of the cookbook.

I have the cookbook and I really like the stories and photos that are sprinkled throughout the book; it makes a very attractive package. I have found some of the recipes to be a little untested or untasty, so I do not favor the cookbook. I am not sure how others have found the recipes.

This sharing of recipes is a great concept and something we have done from the beginning here at Small Farm Central. Each recipe that is added to a Small Farm Central is available for any other farmer to add to their site with one click.

It has been fun watching the database grow to over 500 recipes and counting. Farmers who just start a new website really like having all that content that they can quickly insert into their website. Search for chard, green beans, or bokchoi and find recipes ready for your site that you don't even need to type or categorize.

Whether you use Farmer John or Small Farm Central, it is a great resource to have all these recipes at your fingertips.

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.