Tending Technology

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Tending Technology

• Simon Huntley
• Lead Developer, Small Farm Central

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Introduction

• Who am I?
• Small Farm Central introduction
• Who are you?

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Reasons to have a website

• Professionalism
• New customers
• Increased connection with existing customers
• Prospective employees/interns
• Creative expression and show your uniqueness
• Sales
• Create an alternate, predictable income stream
• Unique connections
• Maui macadamia nut farm
• Communication efficiency

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9 Steps to a web presence

• Develop a strategy
• Choose a web address
• Get hosted
• Developing and updating
• Navigation
• Adding photos
• What do visitors want?
• Sell
• Keep it fresh

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1a. Develop a strategy

• Personas
• Define desired outcome for each primary persona
• Local vs. national
• Define expectations success
• Updates
• Models
• Who is doing it right?
• Plan for five years down the road

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1b. Consider a dynamic strategy

• Plan for future customer expectations
• Be on the cutting edge
• Does not necessarily require more money or
  knowledge just know the tools
• Create conversation and community
• Leading to even more direct sales and committed
  customers
• Be unique and exceptional

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2. Choose an address

• Kinds of addresses
• Domain http//www.yourfarm.com
• Subdomain http//yourfarm.somecompany.com
• Subdirectory http//www.somecompany.com/yourfarm
• Is yours available?
• http//whois.net
• http//godaddy.com
• Dot-com or Dot-other
• Costs

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3. Get hosted

• Try
• Bluehost.com
• Uplinkearth.com
• Godaddy.com
• Small Farm Central
• Consider email addresses
• Costs

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4. Developing and updating

• On your own..
• Dreamweaver
• Pro and con
• Cost 300
• Any text editor if you are willing to learn
  HTML/CSS
• http//www.webdesignfromscratch.com/
• Or with help..
• Online content management system
• Search CMS
• Mac.com Homepage
• Yahoo! small business
• Small Farm Central

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5. Navigation

• Stick to one style
• Keep organized
• Dreamweaver templates
• Watch customers or a family member use your site

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6a. Adding photos

• Creates an instant connection between farmer and
  eater
• Choose a camera
• Inexpensive is o.k. for the web
• External hosting options
• Flickr
• Snapfish
• Picasa

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6b. Use Flickr for photos

• Use existing Yahoo ID or createhttp//www.flickr.
  com

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6c. Resizing

• Resizing photos for the web
• Detail vs. speed
• 640 by 480 pixels is enough
• Consider dial-up connections especially for rural
  customers
• Optimize photos that will be load often
• Picasa

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7a. What do visitors want?

• Basic page elements
• About
• Contact Us page
• Farming philosophy
• Photo gallery
• Staff bios
• Updated news/blog section
• Recipes
• Currently available products
• FAQ

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7b. Beyond the basics

• Be different allow feedback and connection
• Forum
• Comments
• User generated content such as recipes
• Customer profiles
• Be creative!

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8. Sell

• Single items
• Google checkout
• PayPal
• Shopping cart
• Yahoo Small Business
• 40/month 1.5 of sales
• Etsy
• 20 cents to list an item, 3.5 of sales
• Local Harvest
• 10 of sales
• Small Farm Central

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9. Keep it fresh

• Make a schedule and keep to it
• Set a reminder
• Make it easy!
• Take photos every week
• Delegate the task
• Include dates of last update

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A guerilla marketing idea

• Start with a good base site coupled with
  ecommerce
• Send product samples to food bloggers
• Include recipes, information about the farm, and
  an offer to guest post
• Be different, get written about, and let the
  sales come in

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Testing

• Always test in major design changes in multiple
  browsers
• IE 6
• IE 7
• Firefox
• Maybe Opera,Safari
• Remember that each browser / operating system
  combination will render differently

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Getting right with Google

• Submit your sitehttp//www.google.com/addurl/
• No direct control over what Google lists in
  search results
• The key get other sites to link to your site

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Getting listed

• Related farming organizations will list your farm
  and link to your website
• List with
• LocalHarvest
• New Farm Locater
• Regional or niche organizations
• Each link helps with Google ranking and gains
  human visitors!

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Statistics

• Google analytics

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Email lists

• Emails are a central part of modern communication
• Average American checks email 5x a day
• Drive traffic and sales to your website
• Collecting email addresses
• Legally
• Successfully
• Farmers markets
• On website
• Be consistent
• Weekly with product lists
• Monthly with regular updates

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Software for email lists

• Constant contact
• 15/month for up to 500 addresses
• Zoodoka
• Free blog digests
• PHPList
• Ask your host
• Small Farm Central
• Mail merge with Microsoft Word and Excel

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Blogging 1/2

• Defining blogs
• Try different terms if you are uncomfortable with
  blogs
• Reverse chronologically listed posts
• Often takes comments and tries to stimulate
  conversation
• Define blog for yourself!
• Advantages
• Consistently posted content keeps visitors coming
  back
• Creative outlet
• Frame the conversation
• Rancho Gordo vs. Slow Foods
• Personalizes the business
• Long term goals books and other opportunities
• Try to integrate into main site

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Blogging 2/2

• Consistency
• Tiny farm blog
• If you are going to do it, do it right
• Photo for each entry
• Can be very short and to the point
• Just explain one challenge of the day or week
• Great examples
• Tiny farm blog http//www.tinyfarmblog.com
• Rancho Gordo http//www.ranchogordo.typepad.com
• Ladybug Letter http//www.ladybugletter.com/

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Blogger

• http//smallfarmcentral.blogspot.com

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RSS feeds

• What is RSS?
• The future of web browsing
• See Google Reader
• Comes with most blogging software (including
  Small Farm Central)
• Feed Burner to track subscriptions
• Daily digest emails

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Add a map to your website
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Showing up..

• The best thing Seth Godin did for his web
  marketing in 2007
• I showed up.
• Underrated, but important.

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Comments or questions

• ..your turn
• or lets see your site