google

The Google Analytics Dashboard

Last week, you installed Google Analytics on your farm website. If everything worked correctly, the software has been quietly collecting statistics about your visitors. Now let’s look at that data and see how it may affect your web marketing.

The Dashboard

Login to your Google Analytics account and the first screen you will see is “The Dashboard” which gives you a good overview of what is going on with your site.

At the top right of the screen you will see a date range such as Apr 5, 2008 – May 5, 2008. Click the gray arrow to right of the dates to select the range of data you will see throughout the analytics software. As you get more data, you may want to view data for a single day or for a whole month.

One very useful tool is comparing date ranges. This is only applicable when you have a bit more data in your site, so if you just installed last week, just keep this in mind. When you click the down arrow to the right of the date range, select a date range and then in the “Comparison” drop down menu instead of “site” select “date range.” Then you can select the comparison date range that you would like to look at.

See the screenshot below for how this will look. The original date range will be shown in blue while the comparison is shown in green. Hopefully throughout the months and years, traffic on your website is growing and this is a great way to determine success over time.

One question that people often ask is: how many hits should I be getting? I suggest thinking in trends – as long as traffic is steadily increasing, you know you are you going in the right direction with your web marketing.

The comparison feature is very valuable for this type of assessment. If you are following some of the basic marketing tactics that I suggest: keeping your website fresh, sending your web address with each email in your footer, distributing your web address at markets or wherever you connect with the public, sending a weekly mailing list, you can’t fail over the long run.

Just keep doing the right thing every day by connecting consistently with your customers and the time you spend on your website will pay off.

Going further

Now go further into the software – there is a pretty amazing amount of detail you can get on your visitors. Take a look around. Keep these terms in mind as you look around:

Bounce Rate - Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site…

First Time Unique Visitor - The number of Unique Visitors to your website that had not visited prior to the time frame being analyzed.

Keyword - A keyword is a database index entry that identifies a specific record or document. Keyword searching is the most common form of text search on the web. Most search engines do their text query and retrieval using keywords.

Referrals - A referral occurs when any hyperlink is clicked on that takes a web surfer to any page or file in another website; it could be text, an image, or any other type of link.

Unique Visitors - Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period.

View more terms at: http://empoweryou.ca/2007/04/22/glossary/

Is there more?

There is a lot more to talk about with Google Analytics, but I’ll let this be directed by the readers. As you look around are there any specific questions you have on how to use the software?

Most of Small Farm Central's farmers are focused on their local communities for sales, but some are looking outside of their locality for sales of shipped products. This is a challenging, but potentially rewarding market.

This morning, I was viewing my personal email on Gmail and I saw the following advertisement at the top of my screen and couldn't help but click on it.

I couldn't resist clicking on it to find out about the "Fruit and Veggie Guru"! This is an example of a perfectly executed text ad. I like strawberries! I know they are red and tasty...but I am sure I can learn more, so I clicked. And look, now I am writing a blog entry about the site.

The key in these ads is creating interest and excitement -- with the limited space of about 100 characters that is no small feat.

This advertisement is part of Google's Adwords program which allows you place small text ads in the search results of Google pages, affiliates, and in this case, Google mail. This can be a very inexpensive way of advertising your goods or services because you pay by the click and you can set a budget.

Perhaps you want to spend $100 per month or $5 per day, you can tell Google your exact budget. Maybe you only want to pay 20 cents per click or maybe you can pay up to a dollar -- just tell Google what you are willing to spend and they will show your ad on related searches only.

Google Adwords may even be viable for a locally based business because you can geo-target the ads to a specific region.

This a very large subject and it would take many more blog entries to explain fully; there are whole blogs devoted to the subject. I am not sure how many farmers out there are interested in this subject.

Do you want to learn more about the Google Adwords system?

Adding a basic, interactive map to your farm website is easy with the wonderful mapping tools that have come out in the last few years. My favorite is the Google Maps package. Have you seen street view (2)?

Google maps makes it easy.
To add an interactive map to your website (like Stargazers Vineyard):

1. Go to http://maps.google.com
2. Type your address in the main text box and click "Search maps"
3. Once you have located the spot you want to map to, click the "Link to this page" link in the top right corner of the map.
4. In the resulting menu click "Customize and preview embedded map."
5. You will be given some customization options. When you are done, simply take the code shown in the "Copy and paste this HTML to embed in your website" box and put it in your website.
   

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Small Farm Central provides website and ecommerce service to direct-marketing farms of all types. Come get to a free demo to see what you are missing!

Seth Godin recommends that we start the year by running a Google search on ourselves.

How do you want your farm to be seen by customers who will idly search for you on the web? That search may come at a pivotal time in their local food life.

Let's say your small farm sells at farmer's markets. Picture a customer who has just started coming to the market and has bought food at different stands, but really likes your stand because you are friendly / organic / helpful / sustainable / tasty / attractive (pick one or more).

This customer is interested in your farm enough to remember the name, so they are sitting at work near the end of the day and they are considering a trip to the farmer's market that evening. They type your farm name into Google, not necessarily expecting anything to come back.

Do they find a professional, active website that explains the farm philosophy, encourages feedback, and gives the customer a view into the work that is done on the farm?

Does this fictional customer go to the farmer's market that evening? If so, what stand do they visit?

If you don't like what you see, plan what you are going to do about that in 2008. Start a blog, learn basic web design, or get a Small Farm Central site.

Photo by: asifthebes

A rich, informative farm website deserves to be discovered. (This is Part 6 of the "Farming the Web" farm web design course)

Google has become more than a search engine -- it is the gateway to the Internet for most users. In my discussions with farmers and other clients, I realize that it is not exactly clear how Google works and how your farm gets listed on this very important search engine. First off, let me say that this is a topic that has spawned an entire industry called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but I believe I can relate a few basics that will bring you up-to-speed quickly. For most farms, there is no reason to bog down in the minutia of SEO.

The basics:

• You do not have direct control of what google lists or what results it returns for search terms.
• Google will find you and your content over time, but it is a good idea to submit your site when you first release your site into the wild.
  
• Google's innovation, and one of the reasons that they are able to return very relevant results to searches, is that they value your site higher if other sites link to your site. (Hint: this is the key to ranking in Google.)
• If you return incoming links with outgoing links, Google will value the cross-linked pages even higher.
  

Search engine traffic is probably not an important aspect of most farm's marketing unless you are producing and shipping added-value products through an e-commerce store on your website. But it is worthwhile to take some time to get people to link back to your site. You should always list your site on Localharvest and New Farm Farm Locator and any other local directories that exist in your state or region. I should put together a "directory of directories" to help make the search for regional directories simpler.

A few more ideas for links: local Chamber of Commerce, farmer's market websites, member/customer blogs, farming associations that you belong to, and local farmer friends websites'. Just send a simple email message to the webmaster of the site to ask for a link.

The great thing about links is that they help you in Google search results, but they also get your farm visibility on related websites that people will click through and find out about your farm and what you offer. This implies perhaps the overriding principle in getting search engine traffic: do right by "human" users -- create links on relevant websites and generate solid content on your website -- and you will get right with Google.

I think for the average local farm that is not worried about capturing a national market for value-added goods, there are a few simple real-world marketing suggestions to get your website noticed by the people that matter:

• Create a "web-card" on cheap stock that advertises your farm in a few words and prominently displays your web address. Put this card in every single bag that you give out at the farmer's market or wherever your farm meets the public.
  
• Put out an email mailing list sign-up on your table the market to collect addresses and send regular emails during the season and the off season that highlights what you are doing on your website.
  
• Put your web address in the signature area of your email software so that each time your write an email your web address is sent on to the recipient.
• If you get any exposure through local media, ensure that they list your web address so people can find you.

Of course, all of the suggestions in this post rely on a well-designed website that engages your visitors and customers when they visit. This takes time and commitment that will pay off over months and years. A comfortable balance between content generation on your website and low-tech search engine optimization techniques will lead to a very effective website for your farm. If you can stick with it over the long term, you will have more informed and dedicated customers. For more information on how to engage visitors you may be interested in:

• But I grow food not blogs - starting your farm blog
• What does the customer want from your website - Farm web design part 2
• What I learned during an interview with Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo

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