The Green Geek:  Planning Your Online Presence

 

Last month, we answered Penny Pincher’s question about how to get a budget web site up and running. However, which technology you use for your web site, and no matter if you go it alone or hire a web designer to help you out, all of your efforts will be for naught if you do not first step back and ask yourself, “What do I want this web site to do for my business?”

 

 

To be brutally honest, the majority of Australian nursery web sites are basically just online brochures that are rarely viewed and therefore of questionable value. Think of a five-page web site that gets perhaps 10-20 visitors a month as being akin to a pile of printed brochures sitting on the back shelf of your office gathering dust: not really that effective or useful.

 

The problem with most nursery web sites is that there is a mistaken idea that if you “build it, they will come.”  On the Internet, nothing is further from the truth.  First of all, you need to market your website to get the right sort of visitors (that is, people who actually want to buy plants from you). Then you need your site to be compelling enough to have those visitors take a real-world action, like placing an order or even driving out to visit your nursery.

 

Therefore, before you start investigating how you will make and run your web site, it’s important to figure out exactly who you want to come to the web site and what they will want when they get there. Armed with that information, you can begin to plan your website and other online (or offline) activities needed.

 

 

Once you start thinking about the types of people you want to visit your web site, you will quickly realize that they all reached in different ways. For example, if your business is a general retail nursery and home centre your would likely be aiming for general consumers in the local area.  In this case, you will want to ensure that your web site is linked into Google search and is also present on local area ‘business directory’ web sites.  But if you ran a specialist wholesale nursery, your target would be buyers in lots of small retail nurseries – or even buys in the super-retailers like bunnings!  In these cases, you will want to have banner ads on web sites where those buyers go to find products.

 

Google is a powerful, but fickle, ally in getting people to your web site. Entire books have been written about how to get ‘top search rankings!’ However, two important things are required in order to get good rankings in Google search.  

 

First, your web site should contain well-craft text that contains the sorts of key words and phrases that users will be looking for.  If you are selling roses, then using the word “rose” in your web site text is good, but adding more lots of full descriptions, like “Magma Rose” will get you a better ranking. This is especially true if you can have these works in your web page titles. But be careful not to overdo this!  Google is smart and if its thinks you are ‘spamming’ key words into your site, it will knock you back down the rankings ladder.

 

The second important way to improve your ranking is to cross-link your site with others. The more web sites (and blogs and forums) that link to your web site, the better your ranking.  Be warned that some conmen have taken this idea too far and offer ‘cross linking’ or ‘link farm’ services for a fee. Keep away from these scams, as Google severely penalises them.  

 

Instead, look around at web sites of other nurseries, local business directories, and trade associations and ask if you can place a link or banner advertisement on their site, in return for placing then on your site. This is called a ‘link exchange’ or a ‘banner ad exchange.’

 

To help out, I’ve set up a small (free) ‘banner exchange’ facility for the local nursery industry. Just email me bannerexchange@tytags.com and I’ll send you details, but basically you simply register and upload one or more banner ads, then we swap these ads and links between each other. This not only helps with search ranking, it also means all nurseries get some free advertising... which brings us to the next issue... advertising.

 

Buying advertising on Google’s “AdWords” is a very powerful way to get just the right people to your web site. The idea is that when a person types in a search term to Google, Google displays some ads from advertisers that are linked to those search terms.  Google lets advertisers bid for these search terms. If you bid high enough, then people see your ad. If people click on your ad (and therefore visit your web site) you pay Google whatever amount you bid.

 

The secret to making this sort of advertising work is to choose search terms that you think people who are seriously interested in your products would type in. For example, “orchid” is too general a search term, but “buy native orchids” or “native orchids Queensland” would indicate that the person is really interested in purchasing!

 

It is also possible to purchase banner ad spaces on web sites, in much the same way as you would buy a billboard on TV. There are plenty of such services, but for many of us in the horticulture world, costs can add up fast.

 

 

The other important thing to consider is what you want your visitors to do once they are on your web site. 

 

If your site is just a simple online brochure telling people about your nursery, then for goodness sake make it easy for them to follow up with a phone call. Have you phone number and contact details clearly displayed on all pages. Also, ensure that you have clear street directions (and a map) showing the location of your nursery.  For a online brochure web site, these two items are perhaps the most important things to give your visitors. 

 

Growers with specialised or unique plants should probably provide visitors with catalogue of plants, including a photos and detailed description of each plant. In these cases, it is important to stress to visitors that the plants are “rare, unique and not available anywhere else.”  See what we did there? We sold the visitor on the exclusive nature of the plant -  you need to think of the web site as an automated salesperson.

 

If you have a retail nursery than can provide products by mail, you may wish to consider setting up an online shopping cart to allow visitors to buy directly from your web site.  Many shared web hosting providers now include free (or very inexpensive) shopping cart solutions with your web hosting. However, technology is not the problem – knowing what products to put online and keeping your shopping site updated it.  You will also need to consider how you will take payment. In the old days, selecting products online and then waiting for a call back from the merchant was acceptable. This is no longer the case. If people cannot pay online, then they will usually cancel their shopping on the spot. This means that if you want to offer online shopping, you will also need to get a ‘online merchant account’ to process credit cards or alternatively set up a ‘PayPal’ account. 

 

A really simple service that consumer visitors appreciate are plan care tips. These not only keep people on your site longer (which encourages them to contact or buy from you) but also may improve your rankings in search engines because you have more opportunity for key words in your pages.  Consider placing a ‘feedback’ facility on web site and allow people to ask questions. You can then answer these on the web page for everyone to benefit from.

 

There are a lot of other things you can do with your web site – from discussion forums and blogs to wikis and even live customer service. While it is important that you web site offers the right sort of services needed to keep visitors happy and moving towards a sale, it is also important not to clutter your web site with unneeded features.  Don’t get sucked in to thinking you need every fancy web feature on the planet. It is actually better limit the services on your site to those that meet your specific needs – usually getting a phone call or sale from the visitors.

 

In summary, always keep in mind who are you are targeting and what they want. If you know those two things and build your web site around them, you will not only have a more effective web site, it will be cheaper to build and maintain.