How an Optimized Website Helped This Food Hub Streamline CSA Enrollment and Increase Sales
“I used to spend half of my time just helping people sign up for shares, but this year I was only helping a couple of people a week.”
Case Study: Website Audit — Squarespace Website Development — SEO — Interactive Retail Map
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
In 2023, Western Montana Growers Cooperative (WMGC) began working with Local Food Marketplace to improve its online store so it could better meet the increased demand in local food purchasing driven by the 2020 pandemic. With improved ecommerce capabilities through LFM, the team also wanted a companion website that was optimized to:
Drive sales,
Increase visibility within the community,
Increase wholesale opportunities for its producers,
Increase producer satisfaction with co-op participation,
Clarify brand identity, and
Clarify wholesale vs. CSA offerings.
While WMGC’s existing website already had some best practices in place, traffic was low, CSA sign-up was difficult for customers to do on their own, and the website experience for wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales were confusing, which can have a significant negative impact on sales.
The co-op’s producers wanted a website that was more actively working to drive sales and increase visibility within the community, and they wanted it to have a high-quality, professional image that made them feel proud to be part of WMGC.
“I would definitely recommend doing the website audit. The audit confirmed what we were thinking needed to change and also gave us solutions.”
Grapevine conducted a website audit and developed a plan to help the cooperative meet its goals, which included:
Updated design,
Streamlined navigation that helps guide users towards wholesale or CSA information,
Home page that immediately engages and informs site visitors,
Improved page layouts that make information easy to find, and
Interactive producer directory that makes it easy for users to learn how they can support the cooperative through local retailers.
Results
Autumn Lee, Western Montana Grower Cooperative's CSA Program Manager, says the optimized website has improved the shopper’s purchase experience so much that it has led to improved workplace efficiency throughout the entire food hub. She has also noticed an improved customer understanding of WMGC’s offerings and increased sales that happen with less input from staff members, who have been freed up to focus on other parts of their jobs.
A More Efficient Workplace
“My job itself has changed almost completely. It felt like [the website] was working in the background and I was able to do all this other work.”
The co-op’s old website was difficult to navigate, and the differentiation between wholesale and direct-to-consumer offerings wasn’t easy to discern. This meant Autumn was spending about 50% of her day just guiding customers through the process of signing up for a share, and the wholesale team was taking orders by phone. Now that the website is easier to navigate and more sales are happening online, Autumn says she only needs to help a few customers a week, allowing her to focus on other tasks.
Improved User Experience = Sold Out CSA Shares
“We sold out really quickly this year and I do think it’s because of the website, because it was so easy to sign up…It’s such a relief; to be able to sell out early is huge. ”
During the first season after the new site launched, CSA shares, which had never sold out before, sold out a month before the season started — plus these sales happened with much less work on Autumn’s part. This has allowed Autumn to be more focused in her work: before, when share sign-ups trickled in throughout the season, Autumn was pulled in multiple directions, having to split her time between customer support and the other vital piece of her position, which is overseeing packhouse operations and supporting producers so they are well prepared for the season. “If I’m still focused on selling shares when the season starts, I’m pulled in two directions,” she says, “and it’s just too much for one person.”
The earlier shares sell out, the earlier she is able to fully focus her energy on ensuring that packhouse operations run smoothly and that the producers have the support they need to ensure a successful season.
Improved Wholesale Operations
“[The wholesale team] is prioritizing online sales because it’s more efficient for them.”
Prior to the website launch, a majority of wholesale purchases were made via phone, so most of the time, making a sale meant that a staff member was pulled away from other work. Now, with a clear purchase journey for wholesale customers and the ability to take orders online easily via Local Food Marketplace, the wholesale team is able to focus on other tasks while the sales roll in through the website, and customers can submit orders when it’s convenient for them, not just when a staff member is available.
Grapevine also created an interactive map so consumers could easily find wholesale partners in the community. This has improved the food hub’s wholesale operation in two ways:
By attracting more wholesale customers because they can see that the co-op is actively promoting these partners, and
By making it easy for community members to find and shop with those wholesale partners.
By adding useful content to the website, this feature also supports visibility in Google, helping new customers discover WMGC.
135% Increase in Engagement
“The website sales went up because we saw the barrier to entry go down: there were fewer clicks needed to buy something.”
Thanks to an improved site layout and new website content and features, the average time users are spending on the site has increased by 135% since the new site launched.
Experience
From the first meeting through the post-launch process, Autumn says that she felt confident that not only would the website look good, but that it would work to achieve the co-op’s goals of driving sales and streamlining both the CSA and the wholesale shopping experiences. Grapevine’s expertise, obvious investment in the success of the project, and well-organized project management made the development of the website “just a great experience, it was very easy.”
Confidence in the results
“Having Gabi and Grapevine with their expertise, I didn’t have to worry — we knew it was going to look good. Even though I was going to build out [the CSA pages myself], Grapevine held my hand throughout the entire process.”
While Autumn has some website experience and felt that she could have improved some aspects of the website herself, she wanted an experienced team to ensure that everything was going to work correctly, look good, and follow best practices to ensure a good user experience.
To help the co-op stay within its budget, Autumn created some sections of the website herself, but says that she “never felt abandoned and had all the help I needed” in the process. Grapevine was available to help answer questions and guide her through any struggles that arose.
A clear process and expert guidance led to “Aha moments.”
“I can’t believe this wasn’t our priority before.”
Autumn says that having professional guidance, clear guidelines, and a process to follow resulted in a better website than she could have created herself. For instance, Grapevine encouraged Autumn to drastically increase the number of photos used on the site and gave her a template to help guide her content collection. While she knew that the website needed more photos, being prompted to collect them for a specific reason made doing so easier because she knew what she should be looking for and why — it also led her to discover a trove of professional photos that she didn’t know existed.
Collaborative environment
“I could tell that Grapevine cared about us. It felt like we were working together towards the same goal.”
Autumn not only advocated for this project within her workplace but also led the project on WMGC’s end. Having taken responsibility for a large project that she had limited experience with was daunting, but she says that she never felt alone throughout the process. Even after the website launched, she had questions and knowing that Grapevine was available to support helped her feel confident in managing the project moving forward. Autumn says that she felt this support from the very first meeting, when she “could see that [founder Sarah Highlen] cared about us and the product. I was really excited to work with her after that. It was just a great experience. It was very easy.”
Shout out to Western Montana Growers Cooperative!
We are so grateful to get to work with WMGC and support them with streamlined technology so they can continue to grow their impactful work. We are so proud to be a part of their incredible work to create a sustainable local food system that supports their local farms, feeds community members with healthy local food, and creates economic vitality. The Grapevine team is passionate about using our marketing expertise to support farms and food systems organizations that have a positive impact on local food systems, environmental sustainability, and food justice, and we were lucky to support WMGC on this project!
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