If you’ve spent any time here on the blog you know how firmly I believe in relationship centered online marketing as the key to your success on your farm.
In this post, I walk you through how to make 2 easy tweaks to your website to make more profit so you can start making your farm sustainable, not to mention have more peace of mind!
3 Seconds to Keep a Website Visitor
Do you know… you have 3-5 seconds to grab the attention of someone who happens upon your website?
In 3-5 seconds they want to know if you have what they need. They want to know if you have the solution to their problem or if you have what they are looking for.
Even if they were sent to your website by a trusted friend – if they don’t clearly and immediately see that you have what they need, they will move on to somewhere else.
Here’s exactly what I’m talking about: Click Hereto download case studies of 6 different website headers and you’ll see exactly what makes a website effective.
Have the info they are looking for in the header of your website.
If you sell grass fed beef, or eggs, or poultry, or whatever you sell, that needs to be reflected in your header.
If they have to scroll down below the header to see what you’re selling, then you’ve already lost them and they will click away or click back to the search they originally entered.
And all that work you’re doing to drive people to your website is wasted.
When I give my free webinars this is often the item that people take action on immediately and then I receive emails from them telling me how it made a huge difference in their customer calls/orders already!
You need to have listed clearly in your header what you sell or what you do.
If your header says, “Rolling Acres Farm” and underneath is some verbiage about who you are but the visitor needs to click around before finding out you sell chicken or eggs or sheep, well, they’ve most likely left your site without even clicking around to find out what you do.
In my research for this post I did a few google searches of farms. The first 10 farms I looked up did NOT say in the header what they did. I had to scroll or click once, twice, sometimes 3 times to find out exactly what they produced or sold.
So look at the positive side – at least you’re not alone!
Your potential customers looking for info will not be this patient – if they aren’t immediately able to decipher what it is you’re doing they’ll be gone. And not come back.
I’m no different
When I started my farm 7 years ago I had just the words “Champoeg Creamery” in my header.
I just thought since that was the name of my farm that’s what I’m advertising, right? (not!!)
Over the years we expanded to the point where we now sell grass fed beef, pastured pork, pastured poultry, eggs and raw milk! And a few years ago, no one would have known that within 3-5 seconds of finding our site without poking around a bit, which research shows people don’t take time to do.
I redid my website about 4 years ago to reflect all we do and it has made my website traffic so much more engaged!
(The only exception I’d make is if you sell many things than just list your top 5 most popular so it stays clean looking.)
In 3 Seconds Here’s What I Sell
In 3 seconds or less the visitor knows immediately that I sell grass fed beef, pastured pork, poultry, eggs and raw milk. And the next thing they see on our site is a sign up form to get on our email list.
I prepared a case study right here for you to see what I mean: Click Here
The Second Tweak
An email list signup form is the 2nd tweak you want to make – be sure you go through our free email course to find out why you need the signup form to collect emails and 3 ways that doing so will save you time and money (and links to my 2 favorite email systems).
Technology has made it so easy for you and I to access powerful marketing tools for low cost or sometimes even free – you can use a signup form by using Mailchimp, a free email marketing software tool. I use Aweber, which I pay for but it’s paid for itself many times over!
How to Keep Your Customers Coming Back
Once a visitor comes to your site they will click away and most likely never make it back… unless you have an email marketing system collecting their emails.
Most people go to a website and then leave. They don’t come back to the website unless they are reminded of it and have a reason to go back. When you send regular emails to your customers reminding them them about what you do, they will know to click back to your website/place an order/etc.
Only then will you be able to reconnect with them and start building a relationship with them through email and direct them back to your site time and time again.
Without their email you cannot build relationship with them. Without a relationship, you will not make many sales.
Hope you see the dots connecting here…
1) Make sure visitors to your website know immediately what you sell and then
2) collect their email so you can begin building a deep relationship with them and you will have loyal customers for life!
When you make these 2 tweaks, which won’t take you but a few minutes each, combined with all the info I teach in my free email course, you’ll see an increase in sales.
Your confidence will strengthen, too, which will help you do the other things you need to do to make more sales and build a farm that flourishes!
Do Give It A Try
These are not difficult techniques or tasks, but they don’t come without work. You have to sit down and make the time to integrate this into your website. Everything I teach is something you can easily do, too, even if you don’t feel like you’re ‘techy’ at all. I encourage you to give it a try!!
I’ve got a great little bonus for you here, too – click the bar below and you’ll get our case studies of 6 website headers from farms around the country, including our 3 Cow Marketing Graduates who’ve taken this bull by the horns and are very clear on what they sell on their website headers!
Share the marketing genius – I’d LOVE if you’d forward this post to your friends wanting to increase sales.
And one last thing – scroll down in the comment section below and tell me what you’ll be putting in your header now and post a link for us to enjoy!
Much love and happy tweaking!!
Charlotte
