Your farm’s website is one of the most critical components of your online farm marketing strategy. It can be the deciding factor in whether your digital efforts end in success or frustration.
I recognized common mistakes and patterns from auditing hundreds of farms' websites over the years. I’ve identified four major design pitfalls to avoid so you can set yourself up for success and avoid the steep learning curve of optimizing your website from scratch.
Your website alone won’t change the fate of your business, but once you have an optimized one, it will maximize the success of all of your digital marketing efforts that follow.
If you keep these mistakes in mind while building your website, you not only put your farm in the best position for success, but you avoid the typical customer experience of visiting a poorly designed website and leaving you frustrated with a sour taste in your mouth.
Luckily, Local Line offers a farm website builder that uses pre-built templates that automatically avoid the following design mistakes from the beginning.
More than 50% of the internet’s traffic now comes from mobile devices. You must consider this when choosing which website software to use and how to design it. If you edit your website from your laptop or desktop, preview the mobile experience before publishing.
To emphasize the importance of mobile-friendliness, most of your marketing efforts will likely be on Instagram, whose traffic is nearly entirely mobile. It is a common experience that I see. A farm's marketing content catches my eye. I visit their Instagram profile and click the link in their bio, but their website isn’t mobile-optimized.
Poof – a lost opportunity for a potentially new customer.
Avoid this mistake by leveraging Local Line’s farm website builder, whose pre-built templates are optimized and responsive for all browsing experiences, including mobile, tablet, and desktop.
The fold is a crucial design focal point that must be prioritized when laying out each page on your website, not just your homepage. The content that loads first is known as “above the fold,” while everything else beneath is “below the fold.”
Planning what to place above the fold is critical. It is your opportunity to connect with your visitors, share your values and what you offer, spark their interest, and invite them to explore more. It is an opportunity to make a clear and concise introduction to your farm.
Here are some ideas to incorporate when designing “above the fold”:
We only get one chance to make a first impression, especially online, so make it count.
Elaborating on the previous point, you must guide the visitor throughout your website. The easiest way is to provide buttons directing them to crucial information.
It is your job to decide the objective for your website and guide the visitor to that end.
Whatever your objective, be concise and design your website to make it straightforward for your visitors to achieve that goal. If it is to sell a CSA membership, visit you at the farmer’s market, or order products online, create corresponding buttons that guide and call your visitors to action.
The last thing you want potential customers to feel when visiting your website is frustration. This point is essential. When new visitors stumble across your website, they will either leave in frustration because they can’t find what they were looking for, or they will act.
Use precise terminology inside your buttons. Don’t say “click here”; instead, mention “Shop Meat,” “Join CSA,” or “Get Directions.” Be clear and design with the end objective in mind.
There is an overarching rule in web development and user experience design: “Don’t Make Your Users Think.” Steve Krug, author of the best-selling web usability book Don’t Make Me Think, pioneered this rule.
Each time a visitor has to pause to think about something, even for a split-second, it distracts them, causes frustration, and will most likely end in them leaving your website.
The goal is to make your website as effortless and frictionless as possible. Don’t strive to make it complicated or fancier than necessary; less is usually more.
If you want your customers to purchase something, show them exactly where to go and minimize the steps to checkout. What about a single step?
If you want your customers to find out which farmer’s markets you attend, show them exactly where to find that information, but whatever you do, don’t make them dig for answers!
Don’t make them think, not because they don’t know what they are doing, but because you want them to have the most pleasant experience interacting with your farm. You want to avoid the opposite experience at all costs. Achieving this takes multiple iterations and asking your customers for feedback. Tools like Hotjar and Google Analytics can help you remove the guesswork and see in real time how your visitors are interacting with your website so you can make confident decisions based on that data.
One of my favorite ways to build websites is to start by finding inspiration from farms doing a great job online. Hop on Instagram, search for common farming hashtags, find content that resonates with you, visit their profile, and then their website.
With these four common mistakes on your mind, look for areas of opportunity for them to improve. It will train your eye for web design and give you the confidence to iterate and upgrade your existing website. And if you don’t already have a website, then you are in luck!
When you use Local Line’s farm website builder, you can choose from templates that are pre-built, optimized, and ready to plug in your farm’s logo, copy, and pictures. You don’t need any coding or development experience, as the easy-to-use drag-and-drop features allow you to customize and launch your farm’s website in hours! It’s never been easier to avoid these common design mistakes most make when building their website independently.
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