Let your customers speak! This is Part 8 of the "Farming the Web" [1] course in farm web design.

Connecting with customers is the reason that you have a farm website; the newest push on the web (in what is often referred to as Web 2.0) is to have that customer connect back with you. And take it a step further and allow customers to connect with each other and you have a self-regulating marketing machine that does not require as much effort and is more effective.

On most sites, this push and pull takes the form of comments. If you have ever visited Amazon.com, you have probably noticed the reviews that people leave for each book, which are in effect comments directed towards a particular media item. I was just reading an article [2] that told the following story about Amazon comments:

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.
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What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller's software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.

Maybe you can't propel a book to the best-seller list, but you can create a feedback loop that generates excitement for your business or at least allows customers to give direct feedback. Comments do take a more advanced web technology system than your most basic HTML website, but most blogging platforms [3] offer comment extensions. Comments are one of the features I have added to Small Farm Central [4] over the past few months.

The most popular place to utilize comments is on blog posts, so that readers can immediately reply to the content they see in the blog. Many of the larger blogs expect 100s of comments on each article they post. I don't expect that on smaller blogs like this one [5] or your farm website, but it shows an openness and willingness to engage with each visitor that is very important on any website. We are no longer in the TV age where we are expected to hollowly except the content coming into our living rooms -- we are in the Internet age, where TV shows allow the public to vote off the cast members [6]. A good idea for a blog post [7] on a busy or tired week is the "question blog" where you simply pose a question with some cursory discussion yourself and let your visitors do the content generation in comments. Maybe something like "What is your favorite way to cook winter squash?" or "How often do you buy non-local produce is the wintertime?"

Your farm website can accept comments on blog posts, staff profiles, photos, and recipes. What about letting your customers add their own recipes to your farm website? Would that encourage participation and make customers feel part of the farm instead of mere consumers? Extend user-generated content to your heart's desire; maybe you want customers to upload a publicly accessible customer profile with a photo or allow users to add their own photos of your farm or the food they cook to your website.

It is a balancing act, of course. With openness comes some unwanted comments; all well-designed platforms that accept comments will have an easy way for you to destroy negative or off-topic comments. In the end, it is your website and people can't post anything they want. There is also the problem of spam infecting your website. An unprotected comment form will, over time, invite spammers to join the party. I use the Recaptcha [8] service which differentiates humans from computers, so automated programs cannot infect Small Farm Central sites with spam comments.

Openness is good. As small farmers we should be open to customers visiting the farm and knowing how we grow the food that goes into their homes. That is one of the competitive advantages we have as small farmers and we must make use of it. Find a way to extend your openness to the web and let your customers in the door with comments and other user-generated content techniques.

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Small Farm Central [9] bridges the gap between technology and agriculture by providing web services to direct marketing small farms across the country [10]. We help farms reach their marketing potential with inexpensive, professional websites [11] that any farmer can use. Come get a free demo today. [12]