Setting up a website is important for any business and your snail farm business is no different. This is where your potential buyers will find you, learn about your business, discover products and hopefully, purchase.
Setting up the website requires first and foremost, planning it right from the beginning and then following up the plans with execution. In this article we will describe the planning steps as well as recommended execution options.
Planning Your Website Objectives
The objectives you set for your website will dictate the design of your website and the products and tools you will use to build it. The first decision you would want to make is whether you sell directly to individual customers, also know as DTC, or only to other businesses, also known as B2B.
Selling directly to individual customers means you will have more customers but their orders will be mostly small. On the other hand, selling to businesses, like restaurants, chefs, etc. usually means larger orders but less of them.
You need to decide which of the two business models better suits your brand. If you choose to do so, you can also choose to do both.
Creating an E-Commerce Website
If you choose to go with the direct to customer model, you better design an e-commerce website. This means that visitors to your website can purchase directly from your website and you will take care of the packing and shipping to those customers.
E-commerce websites became more and more popular in the recent years. Their popularity was multiplied with the COVID-19 restrictions when everyone were forced to stay at home and order online.
In an e-commerce website the visitors expects to see a list or an array of products. Each product should have its own page with high quality images, detailed description and “add to cart” button.
One of the most popular solutions for e-commerce websites is using Shopify. Shopify has a lot of tools to help you set up your website quickly and easily.
Another options is using Wix. Wix is a drag and drop platform that can help you build your own website even if you have very limited technical knowledge.
Peconic Escargot is a great example of well-designed escargot selling e-commerce website that utilize Wix as a platform.
Building a Website with CMS
If you choose to build a website mostly for brand awareness, you can avoid some of the fees that are associated with an e-commerce website. Instead, you will need to get a domain name, hosting and a CMS. Let’s elaborate a little on each of those.
Domain name and hosting
Without getting too technical, domain name is the what you type to get to your website (like ours is escargot-world.com). Hosting is where all the files and images that your website is made of are located. The domain name sends your visitors to your hosting and voilà, you have a website.
There are tons of options to choose from for domain and hosting. You can choose one vendor for domain and another for the hosting. However, we found it is much more comfortable to have them both with the same vendor. It will be wise for you to do your own research. We can offer two vendors for domain and hosting that offer really good value for money and is very easy to use.
We recommend using Bluehost because they are one of the largest hosting companies in the world, and they are an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
Another great provider is Namecheap. We use this provider for our website because they constantly have great offers available and you can get a domain and hosting for 1 year for under $10.
Content management for your snail farming website
Content management is how you create your website pages, add images, links, etc. The most popular and known is WordPress. It is so popular that close to 50% of the internet websites (including this very one) are using wordpress. You can read step by step guides on how to install WordPress on your web host tutorials page and also if you simply search for tutorials online.
Create valuable content about snails and your other products
Start creating content! The main focus should be your story, your snail farm, snail produce & how to get in touch with you to make an order.
Add photos of your snail farm and snail produce, and write personal stories to engage with visitors. The more authentic you are the more your audience will like reading (and buying!) about your products.
Develop the content further by posting some delicious escargot recipes, interesting new techniques and tips for snail breeding, and the local fairs where you will be selling your snails. Let your readers know where they can purchase or taste your snails, which restaurants are sourcing snails from your farm and just be very approachable for any questions.
Keep your website modern, logical and easy to navigate. Users like to see a nice website with just the right amount of colour, text, photographs and useful information.
Promote your snail farm on Social Media channels
Connect with people on social media. You will need to open a Facebook page or Facebook group, Instagram account, or any of the others if you feel they will bring new audiences to your website. If you commit to create share content on social media often, this will improve the popularity and authority of your website as more links will lead to it and you can reach a larger audience by sharing your page among your Facebook friends.
Once your snail business has a visual identity make sure this is reflected on your website. Upload your official logo, use your brand colors, make it stand out. Share your vision with others and show them that you are a professional snail breeder.
Don’t forget to keep it simple, interesting and current!
Happy writing, happy selling 🙂
This post is my personal opinion based on my experience, however it also contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission if you decide to purchase the product.
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