Your website has 7 seconds to answer 3 questions

You’ve got seven maybe only five seconds to answer these three questions on your website. Welcome to Small Farm Nation Academy where we’re gonna help you learn everything you need to know about how to market your farm or craft food business.

There’s been a lot of talk about this since basically the inception of the Internet. Time magazine did an article I think back in 2014 that you had 15 seconds to capture someone’s attention.

There’s been a lot of people talking about… You’ve got seven seconds eight it, it’s even five seconds, before someone’s ready to move on.

I think the right number is you have about seven or eight seconds, but you’ve gotta be fast, and here’s what you gotta do.

Someone’s gotta get your website and know what is it that this website offers or does to right away? They’ve gotta get it. What does this website to?

Second thing is, does it interest me am I interested if I go to a website and I see clearly what they do but I’m not interested, I’m out of there if I go to a website and I have no idea what they do unless I’ve got a lot of time to kill and I don’t, I’m out of there, but if I go there and see it, I know they do. It’s clear and I’m interested. It passes those two.

The third thing I need to know is, Okay, what do I do next, what do I need to do right now?

Now, some people think that means that, okay, you gotta go to the shop, button or sign up for the email list or whatever.

Those are good things. And I do those things as well.

What we live in an age where people are scanners. Part of this problem is social media. How does social media work? We have vertical phones, devices, for the most part, and we’re summing it we’re looking at the scroll. Just keeps moving. So that’s how we look at websites now as well. We see something. Okay, I’m intrigued by this picture. I’m intrigued by this headline. I understand what they offer, and now I wanna go to see what I’m supposed to do.

This is where we all mess up, we mess up this way. Particularly more than any industry I’ve ever seen in the farming world because in the farming world we have lots of different products we think. So do I want to tell them about my grass-fed beef… How about my pastured pork? I’m also raising some heirloom vegetables. Or do I wanna tell them about my farmstead cheese. Oh, we’ve got farm tours, we’ve got agrarian events we have all kinds of things that we wanna tell them about.

There’s no different than in the “B2B work where you have products, in our product categories as well. I think on your homepage of your website, you really need to have some macro value proposition. What is it that you stand for? We try to carve out that spot.

This isn’t the place to try to SEO optimize you wanna do that with your blog post and all kinds of other things that are gonna filter people into your website, but people need to see right away what it is that you do and get a sense of whether or not, they’re interested in what they need to do, next.

Now I’m gonna show you a couple of examples I’m gonna slide over here to my computer and show you a couple of examples of sites that I think have done a pretty good job of this.

Alright, I’m gonna start with my own site and just explain to you what the design is. I think that people should be able to immediately see what it is that I do work press website and marketing support, for your foreign business. So if you come here, and you’re a pharmaceutical company, you’re probably not interested in this unless you’re gonna leave your pharmaceutical job in sort of forum which many people do.

So right away, it’s clear what to do and what I want you to do schedule called I’m using an image here for an emotion to show the kind of people that I work with. A farmer in this case, a visual farmer. But if I left the screen, go to the next page.

You’ll say that it’s not just for called Farmers is for soap makers distilleries or livestock producers, all these kind of people. So the goal here, in this section is to make it very clear what I do.

So if a farmer comes here and they’re looking for a website or marketing support, they may be interested and then they might wanna scroll down to get to the next section, and I won’t take you through my whole site because you’re probably just a more to farm site. I’m gonna show you a couple of others that I think do a good job of this.

This is Eden Creamery out in Boise and I think this is a wonderful way to do it. It says right here, handmade artisan cheese farmstead got theory near Boise, Idaho.

So right away, if I’m a consumer and I’m in that marketplace and I’m in testing look there it is, it’s so clear what this is it’s a pretty good motivate image. And by now what they want you to do next or scroll down, sign up for the email list. I can see the people here, this is drawing me in, I’m interested in this, I can learn more about them.

I think this is well done.

It’s a good job, it’s good way to do it.

Here’s another example, this is outpost family farms pasture raised poultry and port near Austin, Texas. Am I near Austin, Texas? Am I interested in something like this, yes, there it is. Again, email in, I can read their story I can get right into it, I mailing list. So it’s pretty clear what they do. And I think that this is good advice that we want to consider, we wanna make it clear right away. Let’s not argue whether seven seconds or five seconds, we wanna grab their attention right away make it clear what we do and we have to do it in such a way that it’s gonna interest them.

This is where people get confused a little bit about the ideal customer. who’s my ideal customer, how do I make it interesting for them?

Don’t worry about that so much on the web because if you try to make it right for one person on the website you can be wrong for everybody else, so don’t fall into that nonsense, but think clearly about what it is that you offer, and what you stand for and let that come through right there and choosing a mode of image. We’re lucky to be in the farming world we are who are the landscape and the product that we produce lend themselves to great… Emotive images that people are interested in.

I think Jerry Seinfeld quote is excellent, when we talk about Where is five seconds, eight seconds, or whatever the fact is if you do a bad job with your website or in your emails, you don’t even get three seconds. It’s like, I get emails and I just delete looking at the subject line. I don’t even open them. And if you do a great job as sinful, it says in this quote, then people don’t have an intention, span they will keep reading, they will keep learning about you.

So what we’re trying to do is capture their interest right there in the header, and then create a page that lures them into, our content so that they want to learn more about us and develop a relationship with us and that might be sign up for the email list and that’s where it’s important but then have a great auto-responder sequence, where you develop and submit that relationship with them, or it could be going to your shop on your web page, but going to the shop on the web page as your Carter action. If they know nothing about you.

They’re probably not gonna wanna do that. And if they do, they’ll probably be a one-time purchase.

Really what we want them to do is learn about us as a farm and our value system and what we stand for, so they could become part of our tribe once we get them there and get them on our email list, then we can send them emails communicating what’s happening on the farm, making them part of the fan experience, and of course, inviting them to shop in our store.

If you wanna learn how to market your former food business head over to Small Farm Nation Academy, and you’ll see all the courses you need that will give you basically in in the AI market, but if you want your own custom design, website at Small Farm Nation Academy and we’ll be glad to design one for you.