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  • From: "Mark Hall" <MHALL AT georgianc.on.ca>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Lucy's site
  • Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 12:30:03 -0500

Hi. I'm on digest so I don't always get to reply very quickly.
Here are a couple of comments. Take them as you will.

* I'm assuming your site is aimed at retaining existing CSA customers
and attracting new members. *

* The site could use some better navigation between pages - some kind
of consistent set of links that would let me move back to the home page
at least. On the home page, have a kind of index at the top or the left,
showing me my choices at glance so I (as a reader) don't have to do all
the work of digging around to find that interesting reading.

Something like this that's now at the bottom of an inside page:
------------------------------------------------------
The CSA Page
The Farmer's market page-Spring is Coming
The Organics Page
The Chicken Page Learn about our pastured poultry and eggs
The Row Cover Page A workshop I gave at the 2000 OEFFA
Conference-updated 10-02
The Farm Journal Lucy writes
-------------------------------------------------------------

The site is really interesting to me as another farmer and has lots of
good information. (Great idea to change the photos regularly and to tell
me about life on the farm, your approach to farming and commitment to
the local community) but from a CSA customer point of view, I think it
could be improved.

Try to remember to look at your material from the customer's point of
view. It's the old "what's in it for me?" idea.

So, if I were a potential CSA customer, I'd want to know right away
what kind of delicious crunchy veggies and fruits I could look forward
to eating. Sure, I am probably really interested in the idea of helping
to support a local farm, I want to know where my food comes from etc, so
much of the detail on your site is of interest. But please, give me some
mouth watering appeal at the front of the site.

There's nothing wrong with having an "arty" photo, but keep it to one
larger pic on the home page, so you can focus readers' attention. How
about a close up of seedlings coming up in the hoop house? Expectations
of spring etc.? If you want to use photos to introduce other sections
of the site, make them smaller, like thumbnails. They could be full size
on their respective pages.

The photos are a great idea but the snow shots combined with the blue
background make for a rather dreary look right now, considering the long
drawn out winter we're having. Maybe you change the background colour
with the season? I think you can't go wrong with green as a background,
esp. for horticultural venue. Consider a warmer colour?

The farm journal's a good idea but the entries are hard to read in bold
type and in great big paragraphs. Try breaking it up a bit.

Call me old fashioned in this Internet age, but I think you need to
make it easy for people to contact you. I know people worry about having
their phone numbers and addresses on the Web, but at least have an
e-mail address in a prominent place on the home page.

Be sure to get someone to proofread the text on your pages ('several'
reads 'sever,' for instance on the home page, and watch your apostrophes
in words like farmers - not farmer's). It's really hard to proofread
your own stuff, and even harder online. Print it out to check your
writing for best results.

Oh! Where did the name Boulder Belt come from? It's an intriguing name
but I didn't see anywhere on the site where you got it from. It might be
worth explaining -- anything that can help make your name memorable to
your customers will help over the long run. Our farm is named for
Lover's Creek (named after the Lover family), which ran through our
first farm. It turned out to be a great asset when we were selling
mohair/wool blankets. People snapped them up as wedding gifts, based in
part on the farm name.

Hope I haven't gone on too long and that this is helpful.

And whenever I get a farm Web site up in a few months all of you can
take a whack at it too!

Mark

Mark Hall
Lover's Creek Farm
Grenfel Ontario Canada

mhall AT georgianc.on.ca
------------------------------------------------------------------
Grassfed beef
Pastured pork (new)
Preserves, goat milk soap, and a few assorted vegetables in season
Breeding stock for commercial goat dairies

>
From: Lucy Goodman <goodows AT infinet.com>

Since we seem to be on this subject I invite any and all to take a
look
at my website and give me constructive criticism. It covers many
aspects
of my farm on several pages.

Photos are changed monthly, more or less.

This will take you there http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/boulderbeltcsa

Lucy Goodman
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Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 12:16:51 -0600
From: Willie McKemie <mckemie AT austinfarm.org>
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On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 09:59:44AM -0500, Ira Wallace wrote:
> Dear Friends,
>
> Due to popular demand, we've scheduled a SECOND WORKSHOP on Principles and

What in the heck is the "winmail.dat" I found attached to this message?

--
Willie Time for a Kurdish state?
Are YOU an html abuser? http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Linux system uptime 111 days 19 hours 29 minutes
>From steve AT mrlucky.com Fri Mar 14 13:46:55 2003
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> > >those ultra slick sites make me suspicious that a farmer is not really
> > behind it all and there is some
> > > kind of advertising team hired.

Been swamped but wanted to add my thoughts. The above makes me laugh. I
understand the thinking but for me, being "branded" is half the fun and a
lot of the success. There are many crunchy-granola types selling their
boring root vegetables and more power to them! There are also lots of
hillbilly types selling Round Up Ready Corn and they have a place too. And
lots of things in-between. But in my short life as a market farmer, most
people aren't buying food to eat but as an "experience". They don't cook
much but they like food. They want to know the stories about the varieties
so they can pass them on as their own. They want cooking hints because they
are not creative or able in the kitchen. So when they buy my food, they
really are buying into the Rancho Gordo experience.

I can't beat my fellow growers on price or quantity so I have to have a fab
product and a great experience when you buy from me. If you think my website
is over the top, you should see my stall. I have people wanting to buy my
display crates for the graphics.

I'm not sure what my point is except there is room for the branded product.
I can not understand why any farm that deals with the public would not have
a nice logo, even if it's homemade and funky. just carry that image through
all you do.

Re the websites- it's too painful a subject for me! Pick a color pallet,
understand the use of caps, bold and normal type, don't bore me and let me
find what I want within three clicks. how's that for a start?

re: PDFs- they are essential and standard among professionals. They can be a
bandwidth hog if done wrong, but not understanding graphics and layout, Word
documents can be hogs too. There are alternates to buying Acrobat if you
want to create a PDF file.

re Word- save the doc as .rtf (rich text format) and virtually any one can
read it, except WebTV- and maybe even them.

Steve
www.ranchogordo.com





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