DIY Website Toolkit for Farmers & Food Producers: Ecommerce Tricks, Tips & Tools!

20 minute read

Are you looking to move your business online, transition from what you’re currently using, or integrate Point of Sale with your online sales for your farm or food business? This article will provide a toolkit for farmers and food producers who would like to build or manage their own online business, or be better equipped to work with a web or marketing professional.

Consultants and agencies can be hired to build your site for you or customize certain aspects of plug-and-play software or standard theme designs. Marketing professionals can help you build out an amazing plan and teach you how to strategize and set up monthly calendars for your posts.

Shauna Fidler, a permaculturist and web professional with Design Farm, a one-stop shop that specifically supports farms and food businesses, wants you to “remember your job is to grow the food. Find someone whose job it is to support you selling it on-line. You don’t need to stress out about learning a whole new language to get online and start selling, you just need the right tools and the right people to help you.”

When working with a professional it’s always helpful to be armed with some fundamentals in order to best communicate what the needs and vision for your site or online presence are so they can help you make it a reality!

Whether you’re going at it alone or working with someone, having a clear idea – a roadmap – of what it is you want before you start building anything – website, farm, business – should be step one.

By the end of this toolkit you should feel ready to make an informed choice for the online and ecommerce components of your farm or food enterprise and have a clearer vision of what your specific roadmap is.

Quick Links:

• So, what’s ecommerce?
• Why is ecommerce important for enterprising farmers and food producers?
• Components and features of an ecommerce website
• Site design and user experience checklist
• 10 common things to try to avoid on your website
• 4 considerations for choosing the best web platform for your business
• 7 DIY website building platforms with ecommerce (BigCommerce, Local Line Sites, Shopify, Square/Weebly, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress)
• How to source and sell ethical merch
• Communicating value and brand identity
• Online strategies to reach more people in your community
• Ecommerce tools for all stages of growth
• Who’s online? Let’s go shopping!

So, what’s ecommerce?

Ecommerce generally encompasses any way we sell online or conduct a transaction with the help of the Internet. You’re engaging in or with ecommerce in some way when you buy from Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Wish or a website built on the platforms discussed later on. You’re also doing it when you sign a book out from the library, get tickets to a show, donate to a Charity, download a song, book a Message Therapy appointment online, or when you swipe your card in those tiny white squares at the Farmers’ Market. The list goes on, but you get the picture.

There are many things nowadays, however, that you can do on your own (and for FREE!). Before we get started, let’s take a moment to get familiar with some other resources for farmers already out there on the world wide web!

There are a number of software tools that support farmers in online sales in different ways. Some create online marketplaces (think an online Farmers’ Market), online stores (like an online farm gate) and farm directories (like the yellow pages). Some do it all. For more information on these platforms (and info on CSA management, digital record keeping, and Point of Sale), see our Software Tools for Small Farms blog post. More resources for farm and food businesses can be found on the YA business tools page and U-Map, too.

For the rest of this article, we’ll focus on tools that serve the “online farm gate” function, and ones that are generally more customizable, not only geared toward food businesses and marketplaces (more on that distinction below). However, many of the tips in this article can be applied to other types of platforms as well.

Why is ecommerce important for enterprising farmers and food producers?

Having an online presence in 2020 can be pretty fundamental for the success of your business and it is even more paramount if you do choose to have a website that it is mobile friendly. I say this because more than half of online users are now using mobile devices.

Did you know that the vast majority of online experiences start with a Google search and one-third of clicks on Google happen on the first page?

Not only is being online important but also how you’re online. Merely having a website up from 1998 “on the web” that your niece made you in her grade 8 Computer class will not mean anyone will find it, engage with it or care about it if the experience is uncomfortable or slow. In fact, in terms of how you communicate your brand, it’s probably better to just have an updated Facebook page for your farm or food business than an out-dated or unattractive website (less is more!).

I asked Shauna from Design Farm what you should think about when going online.

“It’s important to understand the purchasing experience you want for your clients. Before you jump into developing your e-commerce platform think about the specific and tangible options and messages you want your online store to share with your consumer. Online shoppers don’t get that farm stand experience, so put yourself in their shoes and image how you want them to experience the essence of your farm.”

DON’T FORGET! Communicating your brand effectively and selling things on your website won’t mean anything unless people see it! Don’t forget to funnel traffic to your website through word-of-mouth at Farmers’ Markets, Google and/or social media posts, campaigns and ads!

This post doesn’t go into detail on social media marketing since there’s a lot of great info out there already! The numbers in this blog say it all! “Google’s search engine alone accounts for more than 2 trillion searches each year. Facebook has roughly 214 million U.S users, and Instagram is estimated to have 105 million users in the U.S. Between the millions of U.S. Google searches and millions of users on social media, these two channels have the potential to drive significant traffic and revenue to an ecommerce site.”

What are some components of an ecommerce website for enterprising farmers and food producers?

TRY THIS! Check out a few of your favourite websites. Make a list of the things that draw your attention in positive and negative ways; things you’d like to replicate and things you’d try to avoid. How have they designed the flow of their home page sections? Is their video first? Do they have a newsletter sign up at the bottom?

They don’t need to be farm or food related. Selling your zucchini or carrots online may not be exactly like selling, say, your yoga instructor services, but the experience you have on the website and the tools you use could be very similar. Let’s touch on a few of the key components to consider for your own website!

• Pages are organized through the navigation function of your site in menus. A good website should have information split logically into pages.
• Product information that you’re able to input varies across platforms; for example, some don’t offer a place to input Cost of Production or Cost of Goods Sold fields natively without an accounting software or app.
• Videos convert! Integrating videos onto your home page or product pages can help to boost your sales!
• Testimonials leverage your current customers to help you appeal to new ones through social proofing, which is what makes them so effective for increasing conversions and sales.
• Themes sections can contain images, video, text, custom content, featured products or collections, testimonials and more.
• Social media on your mind? Consider integrating your Instagram feed into your home page. This way, your home page image gallery is always up-to-date with all your seasonal abundance!
• User experience and design should translate across mobile and desktop.
• Custom logo, got one? Telling your story through an eye-catching and unique image is essential! Broke? Don’t worry, free online programs like Logomakr or sites like Fiverr.com can easily get you started with something very basic on a budget. Do you want something more professional looking? Hire an expert to design you exactly what you want!
• Newsletter sign ups…. don’t forget to include one. Many sites have them at the bottom of the page as the last call-to-action and likely you can easily integrate marketing services like Mailchimp so that emails sync automatically to your lists.

HOLD UP! Don’t know what a call to action is? It’s a marketing term that refers to content, like an image, button or slogan on your home page, that invokes or calls you to take an action. This could be something like signing up your email for harvest updates, buying a CSA share or added value product from the online farm store or following you on your social media accounts. 

Site design and user experience checklist

Designing your website doesn’t have to be a daunting task. You’ve got other things to do, like grow food. Make sure to keep in mind a few simple design and user experience best practices and even a simple website will be a crowd pleaser! Ask yourself these questions to be sure…

• Can I easily navigate through the menus and read the text without zooming in?
• Are my paragraphs only 2-3 sentences in length?
• Am I using accessible language?
• Can I find any dead ends when I navigate my site?
• Is there consistency in my colours, text size and logo?
• Are my images high quality?
• Am I using no more than 2-3 fonts across my whole site?
• Have I used Alt text for all my images? Why you ask? It’s not only better for SEO, but more importantly for people that rely on screen readers, such as the visually impaired.

Wondering what NOT TO DO on your website, now that I’ve told you what to look for?

Here are 10 things you should try to avoid in your website experience and why. Keep in mind that anything that slows your website’s loading time down or negatively impacts the user experience is going to have negative impacts on search engine ranking because of search engine optimization (SEO). Generic content, domains or language may not speak to you or your brand.

TRY THIS! Write out a physical mind map of how you’d like your site to look and be navigated by your customers! What sections will you have on your home page? What pages will you have? What is the most logical way to organize the information about you or your business into these pages?

How should I choose the best web platform?

One size doesn’t fit all. It’s important to understand the differences between online sales channels, first and foremost. You need to understand where and how you want to sell. Being aware of what your options is crucial when trying to make the right decision for your business.

For example, you may not put Farmigo in the same category as Shopify or Squarespace from a website or ecommerce standpoint and here’s why. Farmigo would be considered a marketplace/directory. There are definite trade-offs being in a marketplace versus when you’re selling your products through your own online storefront, because you’re not competing with all the others in the marketplace at every moment.

Saying that, successful businesses often diversify and will sell on marketplaces (Facebook, Amazon or, say, Farmigo) and also have their own website with direct sales. This is where they can tell their story and communicate their unique value or selling proposition and usually get the highest return on their products due to direct sales with no ‘broker’. I’d put general ecommerce platforms in their own category and how they can be used by farmers, as opposed to software specifically for farm or food businesses or marketplaces.

1. Where you’re at in your business development

It’s also important to understand how sales channels differ in ecommerce (the ways you can sell) and understand what’s best for you for what your needs and goals are. Let’s look at a few examples of scenarios where each enterprising farmer would be using a different and unique combination of tools that suits their needs, capacity and resources. The website builder examples mentioned will be discussed in more detail in a later section.

In all of these scenarios, and when considering scaling up to a more expensive software or plan, consider the alternatives. Time is money – sometimes from the beginning and upgrading will save you hassle in the long-term if you may eventually need or want an online store that also integrates your inventory and sales with your Point of Sale, for example. If the trade-off is 30 bucks a month for this service but you spend 2 hours a week harmonizing sales invoices with your inventory, is it worth it?

• BUILDING SOIL: You’re in the midst of planning, prepping your land and building your customer base through word-of-mouth in your community; maybe you already have a newsletter sign-up on a website landing page.

• SEEDING: You operate a 10 or 20 person CSA in your community and all you need right now are some Google or Excel spreadsheets, Facebook, a cashbox and e-transfer.

• WATERING: You have a website on Wix or Weebly and you use social media but exclusively sell your sauce or salsa at the Farmer’s Market, where you sell out there every week taking cash, debit and credit on your Square reader.

• FLOWERING: You’re in your fifth year of operation, you’ve scaled up to a 60 member CSA, you offer web sales on Squarespace or WooCommerce, you sell at the Farmer’s Market, farm gate and retail. You’re either using a farm management software/CSA software that has an integrated online store option, or you have a separate website for your online sales that may or may not be integrated with your Point of Sale transactions and other sales channels.

• PRUNING: If you don’t want to spend time harmonizing sales data and inventory across sales channels, then you’re also using an integrated online and offline solution and making data-driven marketing decisions online to drive sales to your farm and food business on a platform like Shopify.

2. Feature considerations

Not all platforms, plans and templates or themes are created equal! Consider the following features when browsing your options.

• Pre-order capabilities
• Payment plans or deferrals
• Invoicing and accounting functionality
• Local delivery and pick-up
• Social media feed
• Image zoom
• Embedded video
• Image gallery or slideshow
• Related products to cross-sell
• Discount inputs
• Inventory size
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Access to Analytics and SEO
• Gift cards
• Newsletter sign-up and custom forms
• Menu style

3. Integrations 

The integrations offered that may help your business as you grow also differ across platforms. Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering platform integrations and plans that could have a great impact on your farm or food business success online and off!

• Available payment providers, hardware and rates: Credit card and debit, Amazon, Apple, Paypal, Point of Sale.
• Shipping integrations and usage fees, whether Canada Post Solutions for Small Business to send added value or non-perishable farm products by post or tools for local pick-up and delivery for fresh food to your community.
• Sharing and marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, youtube.
• Available apps, extensions and plug-ins for ecommerce – take a look at what’s possible on a platform with and without apps before choosing one! Check out the Shopify app store, BigCommerce app marketplace and WooCommerce Extensions to see what I mean!
• Custom fulfillment tool to cross-sell your farmer friends’ products and act as one another’s affiliate network – what up, localized affiliate model!

Thinking about these things from the start is important. On some platforms, for example, you may not be able to use in-house payment solutions that are powered by Stripe to process your payments for certain products. Products like CBD oils and tinctures are on the list of restricted businesses and products.

Pseudo pharmaceuticals and other products that “make health claims that have not been approved or verified by the applicable local and/or national regulatory body” are restricted. Community herbalists that are looking to sell their remedies online should this keep in mind when looking at profit margins in relation to going online. In this scenario, your transaction fees will no longer be waived, which could potentially double your online processing fees.

4. Cost consideration breakdown

Here are a few other things to consider from the beginning so that you’re not caught off-guard by unexpected costs!

• Apps for marketing, shipping, communication, customer retention etc.
• Themes can be free and paid (paid themes have more advanced features, ranging in price)
• Trial period length
• Plan pricing (monthly/annual/biannual)
• Credit card rates and transaction fees, which are usually plan dependent
• Domain & hosting expenses
• Platform ease of use (updates/add-ons)
• Customer support (time is money!)

All platforms offer some sort of free trial period. However, I would say that one of the biggest things to consider if you’re going to be managing your own website, even if someone else sets it up for you, is how and where you’ll access support if and when stuff goes wrong (because it’s inevitable). Generally, to save time and resources, consider responding to a problem with your website in this order:

1. Can you easily access help documentation online? You may find what you’re looking for in one Google search.
2. Does your platform offer real-time customer support or will you have to wait a week to hear back if your site goes down? A quick call or chat to customer support may get you on your way in minutes and maybe you’ll learn something else from them along the way!
3. Can you contact your web developer and get them to give you a quick hand for a 15 minute task or will they charge you for an hour’s work to upload a new photo? Don’t forget to talk about how you’ll access and be charged for continued support if someone else has set up a custom site for you on any platform!

Take note! If shipping internationally is part of your plan for your food business to take over the world, in particular starting with retailers, this recently published ecommerce blog about starting a food business online suggests checking the destination country’s rules around labeling and suggests a few resources for the US and Canada!

• FDA food labeling, ingredients, and packaging information (US)
• FDA Food Labeling Requirements Ebook (US)
• FTC Fair Packaging and Labelling Act (US)
• CFIA food labeling requirements (Canada)
• Canadian food packaging manufacturer directory (Canada)
• US food packaging manufacturer directory (US)

LET’S COMPARE! DIY Website Building Platforms with Ecommerce

Let’s take a look some ecommerce options mentioned in this review blog that are available to you, without having to know how to code! All of these options have templates or themes that are relatively easy to use and have a drag and drop functionality. Prices are listed in Canadian Dollars and subject to change at any time.

Some platforms like WordPress, Wix, Weebly and Squarespace are website builders with ecommerce functionality, whereas BigCommerce, Shopify, and Local Line Sites were designed as ecommerce platforms. The former have more template options than latter and are more geared to design and content, whereas ecommerce platforms have more sales channel integrations. WordPress is self-hosted and requires a plugin called WooCommerce. It is the platform out of the ones I discuss below that you’d be most likely to hire a professional to help you set up and/or manage.

When setting up your farm or food products on either type of site, if you know the dollar amount or flat rate that you’d charge, say, for a bunch of spinach or a pound of whatever crop, you can also add this as a product to an online store and your customers can add product by product to the cart. You’ll then have that order’s item list as the harvest or packing list, which can be done on sites like Shopify or Squarespace with ecommerce functionality and ready for pick-up or delivery to your community.

If you’re taking e-transfers as opposed to payments directly through a website like one of these, then you’d need to be reconciling your bank account with your online store orders manually. With platforms like Shopify, for example, you wouldn’t be charged transaction fees for e-transfers, cash on delivery or cheques, which are considered “manual payment methods“.

BigCommerce (USA)

Big Commerce is a dedicated ecommerce platform currently offering small business a three-month trial period, extended from the usual 15 days. The most accessibly priced ecommerce plan is $42 and includes most features you’d need to get started. They offer alternative payment options like Apple Pay and gift cards on this starter plan, which may not be available on other platforms starter plans but can prove helpful for sales.

Local Line Sites (Canada)

Local Line Sites was made specifically for farmers. It offers a free drag-and-drop website builder with a free logo maker, blog module, SEO module, custom domain, integrations with google analytics, Mailchimp, and more. A Local Line online store can then be embedded (for a fee). 

Shopify (Canada)

Shopify is also currently offering a three-month trial period. If you just need a website with no checkout functionality, plans start as low as $19. A shopping cart starts at $41. Shopify offers 24/7 phone, email, social media and chat support. Domains can easily be purchased or connected right in the admin and hosting is included. Shopify is the only option available in Canada with the integrated technology to sync inventory and sales across all sales channels including your Point of Sale from farm gate or market sales and mobile app for online store management. If you only need POS to use a card reader without a website, like when using a Square reader, the Lite plan is $13 monthly.

WHY NOT set up your farm store as a marketplace for your other farmer friends’ products as an affiliate! Using custom fulfillment, orders for products you don’t ship are automatically sent out to those who do ship them upon payment confirmation.

*If you are interested in trying out the extended trial, you can use this link and a portion of the revenue share received through the Shopify Affiliate Program if you move to a plan from this campaign goes back to Young Agrarians’ support for farmers and food producers like yourself! Once you sign up for a paid plan you’re eligible to order a free card reader for your POS payments.

Square / Weebly (USA)

Weebly is another website builder that has also teamed up with Square for their ecommerce component and Point of Sale technology. They offer a wide variety of theme templates to choose from. You can start an online store for free on Weebly, the shopping cart is enabled on all plans but advanced ecommerce features are included in the $30 per month plan. Free domains are available with the higher plans and hosting is included. They offer chat, email and phone support Monday – Friday, 6 am – 6 pm PST. The platform offers integrations for pick-up and delivery and sales channel integration with Instagram and Facebook.

Squarespace (USA)

Squarespace is a website builder that offers a 14-day trial and has landing pages for $23 and ecommerce plans that start at $36 per month. They have a lot of templates to choose from and support is offered through live chat, Monday – Friday and by email 24/7, though response isn’t immediate. They offer a free domain with an annual plan and hosting is included. Squarespace has an integration for POS with Square available in the USA for ecommerce through its Commerce App with the Commerce Basic or Advanced plans.

Wix (Israel)

Wix also offers a 14-day trial and has a $19 per month basic website plan. Ecommerce plans start at $27 per month and has has a wide variety of templates to choose from. The company offers phone support on Monday to Friday from 5 am – 5pm and don’t yet offer chat support. According to websitebuilderexpert.com, Wix’s “feature-rich plans are the best value for money”

WordPress / Woocommerce (USA)

WooCommerce for is an ecommerce plugin for WordPress. It’s free to start a WordPress account, custom domain will cost $20 per year and hosting will cost $120 per year, as it’s a self-hosted platform. The platform powers a lot of sites on the web and offers a wide variety of themes that cost anywhere from $20 to $100 per year and plug ins that can enable a WordPress site to do pretty much anything. The platform offers email and live chat with an account.

Design Farm works with this option so I asked why! “Farms needs vary greatly from robust CSA and nursery stock management systems requiring deposits, inventory and signifiant product variables, to simple order forms and payment gateways to process CSA sign ups. Understand what kind of functionality is beneficial to you and ensure your e-commerce is set up to work the way your farm does. The nice thing about a platform like WooCommerce (for a WordPress site) is the diversity of plugins available to grow with your online store.”

How can I source and sell ethical merch on my website?

Do you offer farm tours or have an online store and want to branch into supplementing your farm income with some ethical merch sales to your community or CSA members?

Companies like Fairware in Canada produce merch and swag that’s cool, functional and ethical! Check out their Zero Waste Lookbook, Upcycled Merch, and some other products made in Canada. Even better – support a local artist by commissioning some custom art you can sell that speaks to your farm or food brand or story!

Telling a Story: Unique Value Proposition and branding

People want to know where their food is coming from; where their money is going to, and most importantly how they build a better community. Hence the name Community  Supported Agriculture. Here is where you, as a farmer, shine through.

One of the advantages of selling through your website is that you can tell your farm or food business’s story in a way that you can’t on marketplaces or on social media. Michalina Hunter is our fabulous YA Online Community Manager. She also runs Green Bee Honey and gave me this advice!

“Many farmers shy away from including themselves in their communications, but that’s a lost opportunity. A big part of why people buy local, ecological food is because they’re also buying a story. They love to feel like they know a bit about the farmer and where their food came from. Don’t be afraid to use your own voice in text, include photos of yourself, and share silly or real stories about your farm and why you do what you do. I know many farmers hate being in front of the camera, but your individuality is what sets you apart from big ag. It feels weird at first to give live updates on Instagram, for example, but keep at it and it will flow!”

Did you invest in what you value for food certification? Using some language doesn’t require certification: bio-dynamics, regenerative, no-till, ecological, local, healthy, spray-free. Other terms require affiliation or certification: Kootenay Mountain Grown, Certified Naturally Grown, Certified Organic (check out our guide to the new BC organic marketing claim rules).

Are you a certified organic farm with COABC or COG? Do you have an Environmental Farm Plan? Have you won some cool award from your local Chamber of Commerce or have a wetland on your property to help local wildlife conservation efforts? Do you pay your farm employees fair wages? How would you like to connect to your consumers on a personal level? Do you have other special accomplishments? Tell your community !

All of these things are part of your brand story and should be communicated on your website through images, text, video or digital stamps. Because customers may see images (hopefully high-def!) of your beautiful greens and tantalizing tomatoes but can’t touch or smell them, these are other attributes of your business that can help set you apart online to retain customers in a competitive market.

How can I reach more people in my community online and grow my farm or food brand?

By collecting and using information and responding to trends, you can be data-driven when it comes to  your online marketing and sales strategy. This is a crucial to grow your business and most platforms will offer access to your analytics, which may get more in depth the higher plan you’re on.

Using something like Google Analytics will up your ecommerce game! How do you know how and where to sell to people online if you don’t know where they’re hanging out or where they’re coming to your site from? How do you figure out that your shipping prices are too steep if you can’t see how many carts are being abandoned at  this step of the checkout process and then asking yourself why that may be?

Warren Thompson is the Co-Founder at Ollo Metrics Digital Marketing and recently presented a Small Business BC webinar on Google Strategies for Food and Beverage Businesses. I asked him about Google My Business (GMB).

“Even if your customers are shopping with you online, they still want to know that you’re a real business that they can trust; this is where GMB will be your biggest asset. GMB improves trust by showing your customers that you’re a real business with real people that they can talk to when they need help. It also allows you to post updates, collect reviews, and significantly helps improve your SEO ranking with Google, especially for your local customers.”

Most platforms will now also easily allow you to update and add information for SEO purposes. For example, understanding how keywords or your domain name play into your search ranking in Google could end up being an important part of how you grow your business online. Google Trends is a great way to see what’s hot and what’s not in Google searches in real time and Google Page Speed Insights gives you information about your site performance in one click of a button!

Ecommerce tools for all stages of development and growth

You’ve already learned about a few cool tools but many more free and subscription tools exist online that you can use to make some awesome promotional and marketing material for your business, whether for your website itself or social media campaigns. Check out some suggestions below!

• Stock photos: Pixabay, Pexels, Unsplash, Burst (my personal go-to photo source!)
• Communications: Mailchimp, Klaviyo, SmartrMail (free to 1000 subscribers!)
• Social media: Later, Buffer
• Marketing: Pixlr, Canva (see the layout below!)

Who’s online? Let’s go shopping!

Looking for a few examples of farm and food businesses that are utilizing some of the sites I discussed above? Look no further!

Glade Organics and Forrest Farm are both small-scale farms in the BC, Canada, that use Wix as their online platform. Both farms set up and manage their own websites and Glade Organics also uses Cropolis to send out fresh sheets!

Confluence Farms also in BC uses Shopify with the Avenue theme to sell their farm products online. An American farm, Lavender Pond Farm, uses a combination of free and paid apps on Shopify to manage reviews, send newsletters, build forms, and send customer satisfaction emails. They use an online store for their added value lavender products that’s synced to their Point of Sale for in-person transactions.

Viva Cacao is a food businesses in BC. Their website has a sharp design and was created by our friends at Design Farm using WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin.

About the author: Hailey works with Young Agrarians as the Columbia Basin Land Matcher and regional events coordinator. She also offers ecommerce training workshops and consulting services, as well as Shopify site set-up for small business through her org, equalecomm.org.