Online life for smallholders can be a mixed blessing. Long hours spent working outdoors in all kinds of weather can mean smallholders and small-scale farmers have little time and inclination for sitting in front of a computer screen in the evenings, especially if it’s business-related.
But increasingly, the internet is the first port of call for customers looking for the sort of wholesome produce grown by smallholders, such as members of the WFA, and I’ve had a few queries from our members on this topic.
When my elderly car needs attention (bear with me, this is relevant), I use a local repair garage run by a man who is reliable, explains mechanical problems to me in words of one syllable and charges fair prices. He doesn’t have a website. And yet I would never have started using him if I just had to pick him out of the Yellow Pages, because I wouldn’t have had enough information to trust him. He was recommended to me by a friend.
A simple, basic website setting out his skills, the length of time he’s been in business and a few customer recommendations would have given me a greater initial level of confidence in his business.
Not many smallholders trying to sell produce, especially at the farm gate, have the luxury of being easy to find, and customers don’t always get round to making recommendations to their friends.
I suspect that for many small-scale food producers like our members, the problem of creating what marketers call an online presence is likely threefold:
- Not enough time
- Not enough know-how
- Not enough money
We may also be able to add to that not enough interest and a healthy distaste for marketing! And in a few cases a commitment to a very simple life may mean no computer or internet access.
In fact, most WFA members do have their own websites, and very good they are too.
But for those who do not, and for anyone else interested, I’m going to run a series of occasional posts detailing easy and very cheap ways of getting simple details of your organisation online so customers can find you.
Look out for the first one soon.
Photograph by Josef Stuefer, used under Creative Commons License