How to Get People to BUY From Your Online Store

Transforming Website Browsers into Buyers

When venturing into online sales, especially in the niche market of direct-to-consumer meat sales, conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a term every seller should familiarize themselves with. For those who've dipped their toes into the e-commerce waters, the journey can often start with excitement but sometimes lead to disappointment if sales projections fall flat. In this blogpost, we'll share insights on mastering CRO strategies to effectively turn browsers into buyers and revitalize your online store.

New! Listen to the audio from this webinar!

Watch the recording below or scroll down for a summary and full transcript.

Understanding Conversion Rate Optimization

To get started, one must understand what conversion rate optimization means. Conversion rate denotes the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase. In e-commerce, average conversion rates fall between 1 to 3%. This is similar to farmers market experiences where out of potentially 10,000 market visitors, only maybe 100 may end up purchasing from you.

A pivotal moment in our ChopLocal journey was when we truly started to understand the importance of CRO. After unveiling our online marketplace, traffic metrics looked promising, yet purchases lagged behind. The key challenge was understanding these visitor dynamics and pivoting strategies to optimize conversions. Learning from this experience revealed how focused CRO can lead to substantial revenue growth with minimal traffic increase.

Decoding the Needs and Values of Your Target Audience

Any strategy to boost conversions starts with a concise understanding of your target customers and what drives them. Whether it's health-conscious individuals, busy families, or those environmentally inclined, aligning your products with customer values is crucial. Clearly communicate these values through your homepage, attracting attention right at the onset. This familiarity builds trust and positions your offerings as the solution they need.

Showcase Essential Details for a Seamless Purchase Experience

Smooth purchase experiences are achieved by removing roadblocks to information. Visitors should effortlessly find shipping details, product specifications, and ordering instructions. Clarity in these logistical elements builds confidence among buyers. On fields like product pages, integrating mouth-watering images and detailed descriptions informs and entices potential buyers, creating emotional connections essential for transaction closures.

Promoting Products Effectively with High-Quality Visuals and Reviews

Share photos and content that make customers want to purchase from you. Quality images—both stock and original—should vividly showcase your products and foster an emotional response. Similarly, leverage customer reviews to foster credibility and reliability. Thoughtfully integrating customer testimonials across pages subtly nudges undecided visitors toward their first purchase.

Harness the Power of Discounts and Promotions

Strategically planned promotions are not just about boosting immediate sales. They also play a critical role in customer transition from in-person interactions at markets to the online realm. If your online store is perceived as an extension of the in-person market options, running exclusive online offers can create a seamless transition between both platforms. Promotions can also re-engage repeat customers, prompting them to explore seasonal offerings or new products.

Maintaining Inventory Consistency and Encouraging Loyalty

One often overlooked aspect of optimizing conversion rates is ensuring that your inventory matches customer expectations. Consistency in stock availability reassures customers returning to your store. Meanwhile, actively manage inventory cycles, offering customized suggestions and enticing out-of-stock sign-up notifications, positioning your brand as a reliable and proactive seller.

Conclusion: The Link Between CRO and Sales Enhancement

Conversion rate optimization, while possibly intimidating at first glance, can significantly propel your goals. By ensuring your store is configured for optimal purchase experiences—from honing in on customer needs to enticing with visually compelling content—CRO becomes a sustainable growth tool. Leverage these insights and watch your investments convert into sustainable growth, conquering your initial online sales challenges.

Full Transcript

Katie - ChopLocal [00:00:00]:
We'll go ahead and get started. So I am Katie Olthoff. I am the co founder of Chop Local here with our Chop Local team. Sydney Hadacek is our producer support specialist and Sierra Walter is our marketing specialist. Usually we have Sydney do this part of the presentation, but she's feeling a little bit under the weather today, so she's going to sit in the background and kind of watch comments and things like that. And I will have to do the introduction for the first time in a long time, so. So if you are not familiar with Chop Local, Chop Local was founded by my business partner, Jared and I in 2020 and it started as an online farmer's market for meat. So choplocal.com and we have about 70 farms and butcher shops across the country that are all selling their meat at Chop Local.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:00:52]:
Sydney is the one that helps them out with their online stores. And now Sierra is doing the marketing for Chop Local and she's fairly new, just started this year. Along with the marketplace. We launched Chop Local University a couple of years ago, I think 2022 or 20. Now my years are getting mixed up. 2023, 2022. One of those two years was the official launch of Chop Local University. But since that time, we've done, I think, almost two dozen webinars that are available on our YouTube channel.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:01:27]:
We have blog posts in. We cover a lot of different things all related to meat marketing. So tonight, what we are going to talk about is strategies to convert your local customers or your real life, in real life customers into online shoppers. We're going to talk about how to increase your conversion rate and we're going to cover techniques to simplify the shopping experience for. For your customers. So I want to start out with a flashback to kind of a few months after Jared and I launched chop Local In 2020, he came up with the idea. He invested his own money into getting it started and then I came on board to really handle the marketing. By summer of 2021, we had brought in some investment from some agriculture groups in the state and we had a handful of vendors who had committed to selling their meat on ch.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:02:29]:
And I remember meeting with Jared that summer to talk about what we were doing and really the future because our sales were dismal. They were literally nowhere near what we had projected or planned for. And I was in charge of marketing, but it seemed like no matter what I did, I couldn't fix it. Now, I'm not somebody who likes to fail, which really, I don't think any of us really are. But that's. That's what that felt like to me. I remember driving home from that meeting with him that day and feeling this, like, weight on my shoulders. Like I knew that I was failing at doing what we had set out to do.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:03:08]:
And there were a bunch of people I was letting down, including Jared and those investors and our vendors that we were working with. And unfortunately, I feel like this phase of direct to consumer meat sales online is more common than any of us would really like to admit. So maybe you've been through the same thing where you've gotten. Gotten really excited about launching your new online store. You put a lot of work into it, and then you, you know, it just didn't turn out the way that you hoped and gave you those feelings of failure. It gave you that financial pressure and emotional pressure. And maybe you also felt like you were letting people down. Maybe it's your spouse who you convinced that this was a good idea, or maybe you have business partners or family members involved.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:03:54]:
Maybe you feel like you're letting your family down by not providing them the financial security that they. That you thought was possible through an online store. If this doesn't describe you and you're like, nope, not me, I'm glad. But that's where I was and that's where Chop Local was at that time. And so I knew that we had to turn this around. I came home from that meeting and I dove into our numbers, and what I found was that we had quite a bit of traffic coming to the website, which I'll. I'll talk more about, if you're not familiar with that term. But those people were not making purchases.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:04:32]:
They were not buying. And so the solution to the problem, as I discovered, is called conversion rate optimization. And I immersed myself in conversion rate optimization. I met with specialists, some consultants who helped us out with our website, who helped guide us through what we needed to do on Chop Local to improve conversion rates. And then I did my own research and learning and started making changes on our site, working with our software developers. Now, I'm not going to tell you this is like a magic bullet. And we miraculously met our goals overnight. But we started to see incremental improvement.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:05:09]:
And every quarter Jared and I met, or we still do meet, to go over the data. And by the time that a year had passed, we could see that our conversion rates on Chop Local were at or above the industry average and our sales were growing exponentially. And it was finally something that we felt like was working and that we could be really proud of. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that conversion rate optimization truly transformed our business. And we wouldn't be here today if we hadn't taken the time to learn these things and invested in changing them on our site. And so that's what we want to share with you tonight. Okay, we're going to go over the conversion rate basics and how it affects your business. We're going to cover those simple strategies for increasing conversions, and then we're going to talk about some of the next steps in improving your online store.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:06:01]:
So first, when we think about increasing sales, a lot of people think that you just need to get more people to visit your website. You need to do more on social media or you need to run more ads or you need to partner with influencers or whatever it may be. People tend to really focus on the traffic. And if traffic is an issue for you, which it could be, then our next webinar, towards the end of March, Sierra is going to lead it and it's going to be all about social media. And social media is a great way to drive more traffic to your website. But there is another side to this sales equation, and it's conversions. So simply put, your conversion rate is the percentage of people who take an action that you want them to. You can measure conversion rates in a lot of different ways and you can look at it through different parts of your marketing.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:06:52]:
So maybe you're, you want to measure the number of farmers market customers who sign up for an email or the percentage of farmers market customers who sign up for the email list. That's a conversion rate in this case. Tonight, we're going to focus on the conversions at the bottom of the marketing funnel. That's the one that really makes you the money in the end, it's the buyers. So, but before we get into that, I want you to look at it. Think about this farmer's market kind of example. I'm going to keep bringing this up throughout the night because I know that a lot of our vendors do sell at farmers markets. And a lot of you listening tonight sell at farmers markets.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:07:32]:
When you go to the farmer's market, there might be a lot of traffic. Right. I talked to, I looked up one of our local Iowa farmers markets recently, and there are 28,000 people who visit the farmers market every Saturday. But for the sake of round numbers, I'm going to use 10,000. Let's say there's 10,000 people who visit the farmers market on Saturday. But how many of those people actually walk up to your Booth and purchase from you. That would be your conversion rate at the farmer's market. So if you have 100 purchases out of those 10,000 people, then that is a 1% conversion rate.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:08:12]:
Now, I tell you that because I want to prepare you for what's on the next slide. Okay. E Commerce conversion rates average 1 to 3%. So 1 to 3% of the people who visit your website will actually purchase from you during that session. We call it a website session is their overall visit where they browse your website and then they either make a purchase or they leave without making a purchase. Don't panic. I know that 1 to 3% sounds really low, but if you think about that farmer's market example, it makes sense. Or if you have a brick and mortar store, think about how many people drive by that store every day without stopping in.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:08:59]:
Remember that just because someone knows that you exist doesn't mean that they're going to buy from you. And in the case of E Commerce, maybe they just filled their freezer, maybe they got distracted partway through shopping, or maybe they're just really busy and it's easier for them to go to the grocery store. But 1 to 3% is the average. Shopify publishes data that says that the Shopify average is 1.4%. We looked at the average across choplocal.com and it's 1.8%. Now here's where it gets really interesting though. I pulled nine of, I pulled data for nine of our chop Local stores and I looked at some of our highest selling chop Local vendors and some of our lower selling chop Local vendors. And what we found is that when a customer goes straight to a chop Local micro store from that vendor social media, or from that vendor's website.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:09:57]:
And I apologize if you're brand new to chop Local, this might not make a lot of sense to you. But if a customer is already familiar with the farm and knows which farm they want to buy from, the conversion rates are typically a lot higher. Out of the nine that I pulled, store C had the lowest at 1.54%. And store G, which is a farmer's market vendor who uses email marketing. And when, when they send an email, they get orders immediately. And you can see why is because their conversion rate is actually over 11%, which is absolutely phenomenal. So to figure out your conversion rate, you are going to take the number of purchases in a certain time period divided by the total visitors. Or if you use Google Analytics, the.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:10:48]:
The thing that you're looking for here is sessions. Okay, so the Total number of sessions, number of purchases divided by total visitors times 100. And hopefully that number is at least over that 1%. And if it's higher than 3%, congratulations, you are doing something very, very right. Okay, now I know we have some of our chop local vendors on here, and we can help you get this data this week so that you can calculate these numbers if you want to, or we can look them up for you too. Okay. I will point out that if your total number of visitors is very low, and I would say in a certain time period, if it's below 500, your numbers can get skewed a little bit. They may not be 100% accurate just because you need a pretty solid sample size to get the averages to work out right.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:11:43]:
Okay. It's like saying the conversion rate for people who land on this page about my rump roast is a hundred percent. And I say, well, how many people landed on that page? 1. And, and they bought. You can see how that number is not exactly reflective of, like, you know, what your actual conversion rate is on the entire store. So we want to see visitors of 500 to a thousand in that time period, probably to get a decent calculation here. Now let's talk about what happens if you increase your conversion rate. Because to me, increasing conversion rate is kind of a one and done type of thing.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:12:25]:
And you'll see that as we go through this webinar tonight versus social media. You guys have heard me say it before, if you listen to the podcast and things, but social media is just not really my jam. That's why we have Sierra. But if you start with a 1% conversion rate, you have a thousand visitors, 10 of them purchase. And we're going to say again, easy math. It's $100 purchase. That means that you have made $1,000 in revenue. If you increase that conversion rate to 2%, but you still only have 1,000 visitors, now you have 20 purchases and your revenue is now $2,000.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:13:02]:
Okay, you didn't have to drive twice as much traffic to your website, but you got twice as many sales. If your website is, you know, more, let's say established, or your audience is more established, your customer base, let's say we're starting with 10,000 visitors, 100 purchases and $10,000, you increase that to 2% and now you've made $20,000. So I think it would be really interesting for you to look at your numbers when you get a chance and think about what would a 1% conversion rate mean for your online store and Then when we start to combine an increase in conversion rate with an increase in traffic to your website, the revenue growth just becomes exponential. I really think it's smart to invest in increasing your conversion rate though, before you increase your visitor numbers too much. Because a lot of the ways that you can increase visitors very quickly include paid ads. And it just seems really silly to me to pump a lot of money into paid ads if you don't have a healthy conversion rate. That would be like, you know, setting up a new brick and mortar store and then hosting a big grand opening or something like that before your store was even set up. Like that just doesn't make sense, right? Another way to look at this is through the marketing funnel.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:14:34]:
You may have seen me explain this graphic before, but if not, here's a quick overview. At the top of the marketing funnel is awareness. These are the people that know what you offer. And you want to have a lot of people aware of what you offer, because the more people that are aware of it, the more people are going to end up buying in the end. But after they're aware of what you offer, you really need to nurture and build a relationship with them and make purchasing incredibly convenient. Because like I already talked about, there's a lot of different reasons that they may not want to purchase your meat right then and there. But if you stay in contact with them, if you give them really good reasons to purchase your meat and you make it convenient, you can hopefully turn them into a buyer. After they're a buyer, you provide them with that great product, the outstanding customer service, and they will come back over and over.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:15:26]:
And that will also help increase your conversion rate without you doing anything, just by having those repeat customers. But what we see a lot of DIY meet marketers do is they kind of skip this stage. They skip this stage of consideration. We want you to really think about how can you help your customer make the decision to purchase right now. And these are kind of the three biggest things. Demonstrate how you align with their values, show how your products can help them, and create a sense of urgency. Now think back to the farmer's market example. Chances are if, if we were to calculate that that conversion rate a little bit differently, or if you have a brick and mortar store, if people see your face and talk to you and ask you questions.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:16:21]:
So like, if they walk up to your booth or if they come into your store, I'm going to guess that the percentage of people who make a purchase in that situation is a lot higher than 1%, right? If you have a hundred people walk into your store, one of them makes a purchase, that that's a huge red flag, right? But one of the reasons that we have more people purchasing when they walk into the store or walk up to the farmers market booth is because they can ask you questions. They can just the fact that they can see your face and that you probably look like a trustworthy person, maybe you smile at them and like subconsciously, at a psychological level, you're developing that relationship with them that is a lot harder to do in E commerce. And that's why we have to be really, really targeted and intentional about doing these things on our website and in our online stores to help build that relationship and make sure that that customer is ready to purchase. So let's get into it. First thing, we want you to think about understanding your target customer and their values. And if you are starting out and you are new, you can kind of think about your meat and how it's raised and target a specific customer based on that. So for example, if you have a very lean product, you might be able to target customers who are really healthy, health and fitness focused. Like in this third picture here, we have somebody that's kind of representing the health and fitness world, right? You might also though you might already have a customer base and know that it happens to be busy moms who are looking for easy, kid friendly recipes.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:18:15]:
And so you might want to focus on them or maybe it's somebody who's focused on the environment or animal welfare or something like that. But you want to make sure that that customer can find the information about how you raise your meat or the qualities of the meat that are going to align with their values and what they are looking for. Here is a hack for doing that. Fill in the blanks on your homepage. You can put. If you are looking for X, Y and Z, then you're in the right place. So if you're looking for family friendly meets or high quality meat to feed your family, then you're in the right place. If you're looking for meat that was raised with the environment and animal welfare in mind, you're in the right place.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:19:02]:
If you're looking for lean proteins that are going to help you meet your fitness goals, then you are in the right place. We want you to put that right there at the front of the website where people are coming in for the first time to get to know you. Okay? We see this a lot where somebody jumps. They have an online store, but it just jumps straight into the meat products and doesn't really tell us, like, what it's special about it or who might really enjoy these particular meat products. And I will say this is especially an issue on Shopify stores because Shopify is a little bit tricky to configure the homepage. It's a little bit harder to use as a website builder, but there are definitely ways to do that. And you need to take the time, invest the time to do that so that your customers know what makes you unique and how you align with their values. Okay.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:19:56]:
After we've kind of looked at, are we, are we talking to a customer? Are we showing them what's unique, what the benefits are of your meat, then we need to think about the logistical details that they really need to know. And you need to make sure that it's incredibly easy for them to find these details. These are things like, where are you located? How can I purchase? Okay. And we recommend putting this information in more than one place on the website. You. Your prime real estate on your website is going to be your home page, it's going to be your header and footer, and then it's going to be your product pages. I can't tell you how many websites I visit where it. Somewhere on the website it says where this farm is located, but it took me three or four clicks to find it.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:20:44]:
I should be able to find it at a glance without clicking anything from any page that I'm on. Okay, that's what we want to see on your website. One of the pieces of information that's super incredibly important that I cannot reiterate enough is the shipping and order fulfillment information. So how do I. How can I get my order from you? Are you going to ship it to my door or not? Now on Shop Local, we have a couple different places. This first screenshot is what we call the micro store, and it includes shipping and location information. And then we also. This is a tab, the big US map that you see there is a tab that is underneath our product pages that shows the shipping information too.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:21:28]:
So again, you want to have that information in more than one location on your website. We have a client that we're working with right now that has a Shopify site that offers free shipping on all orders. There's not even an order minimum for free shipping. They have that information in one place, in one place only. And then when you got to the checkout, it still looked like it was going to give you a shipping charge until you got to the very end of checkout. And so one of the first things that we did is we added a whole separate page about free shipping and we linked to it in the header and the footer. We also added free shipping information. We just added a block underneath each product.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:22:07]:
It's not like I had to go in for every single product and type that in there or anything. We just added that block. So it shows up on all of the product pages. And then even at the checkout, I was able to put a little badge that says free shipping on all orders so that people can see that at the checkout too. So really think about this pickup, this, this order fulfillment information. And especially if you're offering them something great like free shipping or free shipping over a certain amount, make that really, really clear. Okay? The next thing, your product page, like I said, is Prime Real Estate. Way too often we see product pages that just have a cut name and that's it.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:22:50]:
If you list a cut and I have no idea how big it is, or whether it's bone in or boneless or how thick it's cut, you can be pretty darn sure that I am not going to order from your online store. And if it's a cut that I'm not familiar with and all it has is the cut name, what am I going to do? I'm going to Google that cut and maybe see how to. Maybe it fits into my budget and I'm interested in it. But do you really want me going to Google to look up a cut of meat? Because I could end up on another store's website. Maybe that store has some ideas for me about how to cook that cut. And so you want to really optimize your product descriptions to give all the information that you need. And ideally you include some cooking tips or ideas, something to really make their mouth water. Speaking of mouth watering, product photos are so important and the photos should look really good.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:23:54]:
If you can't take really great photos yourself, which I, I can count on one hand the number of farmers that I've seen that have taken really great food photos. Okay? So no offense to you if you can't, but you probably can't take great food photos. So use stock photos of cooked meat because that is really mouth watering. It will give people an idea of how to cook it and it will make them think, oh my gosh, I wish I had that for lunch or for dinner or whatever it may be. Okay. We do like raw products photos as well. And especially if you have meat that you really want to show off, like maybe it's heritage pork and you really want to show off the quality. Raw product photos can be great too.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:24:41]:
If you can hire a photographer to do it, that would be great. But if not, you can take pictures of them. Outside of the package is better. But if it's in the vacuum sealed pack, it can still be helpful for people to see what it looks like, but it's not going to be super mouthwatering. So we actually usually like to put that as like the second photo on a lot of cuts or on a lot of product pages. And then a third photo we really like to include is something that again, aligns with those values. So on Chop Local, we usually use a family photo or a farm photo or the butcher shop. But if you were targeting health conscious consumers, maybe you put a graphic that has nutrition information or maybe you put a graphic that has a recipe on it for a cut that they might not know how to cook.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:25:36]:
Use those photos to your advantage. That's a great place for you to really help make that sale. Okay, and one other thing that you absolutely have to have on your website. We know that you have a great product, you provide great customer service and your customers love you. Right? But brand new customers may not know that. So we want to see reviews on your site and not just, again, not just in one location. Put those reviews anywhere that you can. Most sites have a way to have formal reviews, you know, where someone can can type it in and submit the review like we do on Shop Local.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:26:21]:
We put those reviews on what we call the micro store, which is the main store page. And then we also put them on all of the product pages. But if you have reviews that are on Facebook and you want to share them on your website, you can either take a screenshot or you can copy and paste it over to your website. You can put them in a lot of different places and that can really help build trust. It can help people that are maybe on the fence moving through that funnel, really help them to actually make make that purchase. And by having that text on there, it can actually boost your SEO and your traffic too. So reviews are so important, you've got to have them on your online store. All right, now, we've been talking all about ways to make your store customer friendly.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:27:15]:
And I was thinking about this shopping experience and I just kept thinking about Dollar General. Okay, I don't know if Dollar General is like this across the country, but here in the Midwest, Dollar General does not have storage space. Like, they don't have warehouse space behind their store. And so when they get a delivery, it literally looks like this where there are carts of boxes stacked up in the aisle and you can hardly get through. And it is always a disaster. Right? So what we've been showing you so far is how to clean up up your Dollar General aisles. Okay. You were showing you how to get your store in shape so that it doesn't get a reputation like Dollar General for being a little bit hard to use.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:28:00]:
Now, people still shop at Dollar General, right? But they do it for two reasons. They do it because it's the only place in their small town. That's what we're seeing in a lot of rural towns is that there's a dollar store and nothing else. But you are not the only place that they can buy meat. And if you are the only place that they can buy meat, the that's just like yours, then hopefully you've gone back and figured out a way to express that to them that our meat is different from anything else that you can purchase anywhere else. Right? But the second reason that people will put up with these messy aisles, they will forgive some of the messiness and some of the inconvenience is because sales and promotions or the right price point can distract customers from other issues. Okay? So some marketers are really against sales and promotions. But here's the deal.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:28:52]:
When we are talking about meat, people plan their meals around meat in the United States and it's one of the most expensive things on their shopping list. And they are used to seeing meat sales and promotions at the grocery store. So we don't find anything wrong with running sales and promotions for your meat. In fact, we think that it can actually be really, really powerful if you are one of those people who has a local real life audience from a farmer's market or your butcher shop or your meat market, but people aren't purchasing on your online store. An online only special or a coupon can be a great way to get them to make that first purchase. Okay. It can also be a great way to get new customers that have that know nothing about you to make that first purchase. We see this a lot of times with email pop ups or you know, like a special coupon for their.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:29:58]:
You can do that at the farmer's market, give them a coupon for their online purchase. And if you are having people that are just messaging you their order instead, really, really encourage them. You have to train them to use your online store sometimes. And by train them, I mean just push them a little bit and if they need an incentive, give them a coupon. Okay. Promotions also can increase customer retention and Loyalty, meaning that it will keep people coming back. So maybe they purchased from you for a while, but they kind of got out of the habit. A sale, especially a timely sale, can help them come back and purchase from you again.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:30:35]:
If you need cash flow or you have inventory that's been sitting in the freezer for too long, then a sale or promotion could be really great. I can also actually help improve your average order value. And then obviously, when you run a sale or promotion, it creates a sense of urgency and gives people a reason that they need to order right now or they're going to miss out. The fear of missing out is a real thing. And so you want to have a sale sometimes, occasionally, to help them really push them to make that online purchase. All right, there's one piece here that can really affect your conversion rate, and it really has less to do with your website and more to do with your business model. Okay. And that is your inventory and kind of the products that you offer as well.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:31:28]:
The example I think of here is that my family has a specific bread that we love, but not all of the grocery stores in our area carry it. And so I will go out of my way to shop at the store that carries it. And guess what? When I'm at that store, I don't just stop there just for the bread. I end up getting almost all of my groceries at that store because it has what we need. So if you have inconsistent inventory or out of date inventory, customers will often leave and not return. Okay. They want somewhere where they can get the cuts that they need when they need them. Also, if you have a limited selection, it can reduce that overall appeal.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:32:09]:
I. I wanted to order a new Brat flavor from one of our chop local vendors, but we have a minimum $75 order for free shipping. And I'm just like everybody else. I wanted free shipping, right? And so I looked at the Brat flavors, and they had a lot of those, but they didn't have a lot of other things in stock. And so when I tried to create my $75 order, I couldn't get to that number with things that I knew that my family would buy. And so what did I do? I just didn't end up ordering until their stuff came back in stock. But that hurt them that that meant that they lost a sale at that time. I could have tried it, then loved it, and then ordered it again later instead.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:32:56]:
On the flip side, this third bullet point here, scarcity can drive urgency. So if you know that you sell out of something pretty often, you can use that in your marketing, social media, or in your email marketing and say, I'm restocking my pork chops, but these go really fast. Get yours while you can. And when you put that urgency in there, that can be a really great thing. But just keep in mind that having that consistent availability builds trust and makes it so much easier for customers to come back all the time and have those repeat purchases. Okay? All right, so we've gone through quite a bit pretty quickly here. Key takeaways. Increasing your conversion rate is honestly key to increasing your revenue.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:33:47]:
And as I said earlier, what I love about it is that most of the things that I showed you tonight, you know, updating your product photos the way that we talked about, or updating your product descriptions, these are things that you can do once and you don't have to keep doing them day after day after day. You do it once it's done, but it's going to impact your sales immediately and way into the future. Okay, second kind of takeaway here is that we want you to really think about the consideration phase of the marketing funnel. Not just driving traffic, but think about how to get those people to make the purchase by making things as easy for them as possible. We want you to think about your customer and having all of the information that they need. One of the best ways to do this is to pretend that you are a customer and try to buy from your own website or go to somebody else's online store and pretend that you were going to buy the things that are, you know, that you're planning on cooking this week and see do they have all the information or am I left wondering, is this cut of chicken skin on or skinless or is this bone in or isn't it? Those things are important to people and they need that information before they purchase. And then last but not least, utilize those sales and promotions in a targeted, intentional manner in order to be really, really effective with them. Okay, now we have plenty of time for questions, but before we get into that, I want you to think about what the next steps are for you to take what you've learned tonight and put it in action.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:35:33]:
We kind of see three types of farms and butcher shops that we work with. Some of them are really like the do it yourself type. You're going to take what you've learned here, you're probably going to do some more research along with it and you are going to go implement it on your online store. Right? The other option, the next option is that you do it yourself, but you get more help and coaching from us. And we're really excited to be launching our first, what we call accelerator. It's going to be kind of a deeper dive with coaching and accountability from our chop Local team. And then the third option would be if you're like, yep, I believe that I need help with my conversion rate optimization, but this is too much for me to tackle on my own. Our team can help you with it.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:36:22]:
You can hire us to take care of it on your website yourself. The most important thing here is that I want you to walk away from this, actually taking action on these things. Okay. Because I, I say this in a little video that I, that I recorded the other day about this webinar and about the accelerator. But when we see farms and butcher shops who have put thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours into their online store and they're not achieving the they need, and we look at it and we're like, yeah, you don't have a product description or yeah, I come to your website and I have no idea where you're located or how to get my order from you. Like, that is honestly very disheartening for us. Our goal is to make it easier for you to sell meat and to, for you to boost your sales. And so we want to make sure that these webinars and these trainings that we give you are really, really effective.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:37:14]:
And we know that accountability, having a team to work with can be really helpful in that situation. So the browser to buyer, from turning browsers to buyers Accelerator is going to include. It's going to be four weeks of live lessons and coaching. It's going to include the workshops and training, the coaching and mentorship. And then we'll also have some networking and community, a message board basically, so you can talk to other people. This is only going to be 97. It is an incredible value. If you are a chop local vendor, you are invited to take part in this for no cost, at no cost to you.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:37:55]:
That's one of the benefits to our chop Local vendors. Okay? So I'm going to leave that information there so that you can take a look at it. We are going to Launch on Thursday, March 13. But there's a lot more information at that website, choplocaluniversity.com BTB browsers to buyers and you can also find that link on the homepage. But while you guys are contemplating that, let's go ahead with questions. Do we have some. I haven't been watching. Do we have some questions that have come in here? Okay, so one of them that I get from a lot of people is where to find photos for your online store.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:38:49]:
There are a few different places that you can get stock photos for your online store. One of them that we love, that we've probably talked about a lot is Canva Pro. It's I think $120 a year somewhere right around there. But they have an incredible stock photo library that you can access that has as cooked product photos that look really, really beautiful. And so you can kind of determine a theme that you're looking for. Some people like them on a white background, some people like them on a dark background, some people like them to have some vegetables next to them. Things like that. You can kind of determine a theme and you can probably find almost any of the product photos that you are looking for right there in Canva Pro.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:39:36]:
Some other options are Pexels, P E X E L S and Pixabay P I X A B A Y. So Pexels and Pixabay are great places. We firmly caution against copying and pasting photos off of Google. A lot of those have come from food bloggers and food bloggers get very upset about it for good reason. They spent a lot of time developing these recipes, taking these photos and they actually their are services that they use to find out if their photos are being used in other places on the Internet. And so we definitely don't want you to get in trouble for taking those photos. Same kind of goes for their recipes too. If you want to share their recipes, it's really best to link to their website.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:40:31]:
So we would prefer when you're putting recipes into your product descriptions and things like that, that you actually kind of modify it or use a family recipe or you can just give a very general like this, this ground turkey is great for egg roll in a bowl, you know, and then they can find a recipe that relates to it. So go ahead if you want to put your questions in the Q and A box there, give you a few seconds. Another question that we have is how do you get people to give you reviews? The simple answer is you have to ask for them. And I know that that seems like we're oversimplifying it a little bit, but sometimes you can ask on social media and get some. You can also use your email marketing platform to send an automated email after an order to ask for reviews. We've also seen people do a really great job of asking their loyal customers and then giving them an incentive. Maybe it's a coupon. You cannot pay for a positive review, but you can pay for an honest review.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:41:50]:
So a coupon or even a cut of meat. One of our Chop Local vendors, every Monday I would log in and I would see that he had new reviews every Monday over the weekend. And I messaged him and said, how are you getting all these reviews? Reviews? And he said, when I'm at the farmer's market, I tell people that if they leave me a review on my chop Local page, I will give them a free steak. And he said they do it while they're walking around the market. They come back, they show them the review and he gives them a steak. And he said a lot of times he would give them like a cut that they hadn't normally purchased in the past. So to get them to try it. So maybe it's like a Delmonico or a Chuck Eye steak, something new to get them to try, which I thought was really, really smart.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:42:38]:
Okay. Brenda asked, do you have to do your store through you, Brenda? Do you mean for the accelerator? I think that's what you mean. And the answer is no. So good question. The accelerator is going to be for any platform that anyone uses. Shopify, barn to door, graze, cart, Chop Local. Actually, there's a few things that we take care of on chop Local. So our chop Local vendors won't need to to even take do some of these things that we've got the reviews thing built in, we've got the shipping information piece built in, but there are some other things that they'll be able to take care of.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:43:17]:
So whatever platform you are using, you can do it. You can do the accelerator. Can you do it through you? Yes. If you have a Chop Local online store or if you are interested in a Chop Local online store. That is something that our team would be happy to talk to you about as well, I guess. Yeah. If you have questions specific to the accelerator too, I am happy to answer those. I will say the accelerator is really meant for people who already have that online store and it's just not doing what they want it to do.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:43:56]:
But if you are not there yet and you're just thinking about setting up your online store or your website, I think you're going to gain a lot of really valuable information from the accelerator as well. Okay. Another question that we get asked or something that I feel like comes up pretty often is with AI as an option chat GPT, you can use that to help you with these things. However, I will caution you that, that if you say chat GPT, write me a product description for Ribeye Chat GPT ends Up using a lot of very flowery, over the top adjectives and words. And it's a dead giveaway that it was written by AI. Okay. It doesn't feel natural and you can kind of tell. We often also see people make mistakes when they're copying and pasting it and they copy and paste chat GPTs like.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:45:00]:
Like, sure, here's a product description and they include that too. So just watch for that. That is one of the things we're going to go over in the accelerator is how to use those AI tools to make them sound like a real person. Okay. To really help you to, to help you optimize your time and use these tools that are available to you without sounding like a robot wrote it. Okay. A question just came in. Tricks to transition customers from farmers market to an online store where they see us as a year round option and not just market season.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:45:39]:
Okay. There's a lot of different things that go into this, but I would say one of the things obviously we've talked about is that if your online store isn't easy for them to use, they're not going to bother with it. Right? Okay. So that's one of the things. The other side of that is the traffic. You have to get them to your online store somehow. And email marketing is honestly the best way to do that. So what you want to do is during farmers market season.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:46:11]:
Actually, we're having a webinar coming up. That's our April webinar, right, Sydney? She's nodding yes. Okay. Our April webinar is about this exact topic, but I'll go into a little brief, brief answer. So you want to capture email addresses throughout the farmer's market season. You can encourage them to follow you on social too, but email a more predictable, dependable way to stay in touch with them in the off season. And then you can contact them, reach out to them and, and encourage them to order from your online store. Making sure that your online store is set up how we discussed in tonight, offering them that incentive maybe to make that first purchase.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:46:53]:
Maybe you even get them familiar with the online store by encouraging them to leave the review like we talk about, or encouraging them to order during farmers market season too, so that they've gotten that out of the way. That first time ordering can be a little bit intimidating for people, but they get it out of the way and then they can stay in touch with you throughout the year. We see, I mean, just leading up through farmers market season, if you can capture emails and stay in touch with them. Holiday gift box Sales are going to be a great option for you. That's a great time of year to target those farmers market customers and get them to stick with you year round. We've also seen strategies where people will do, even though the farmers market is closed, they'll still meet at that location every other Saturday morning for a pickup or something like that, which tends to work really well. So we can talk through a lot more of that. Nicole, I'm happy to talk through that with you another time.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:47:57]:
And like I said, we'll talk about a lot of these strategies in an upcoming webinar. So. Okay, we have a question. What advertising platform do you recommend? Facebook, Instagram, Google X, etc. Oh, this is such a good question. Okay, I have experimented with all of. I have not experimented with Twitter advertising, I should say, and I have not. We have not experimented with any tick tock.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:48:31]:
Wait, Sierra, I feel like I'm putting my foot in my mouth. Can you even do tick tock advertising? I don't know. Sierra is the tick. She's nodding her head yes. Okay, we have not. Okay, so Facebook, Instagram and Google are the top ones. Google advertising can be really great if you have something really specific because it, you can show up in the search ads. And that, that's, that's fantastic because if somebody is looking for something really specific, you can show up right there.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:49:03]:
What I love most about Facebook and Instagram and I'm going to loop them, I'm going to bundle them together into Meta Adverti, Meta Business Suite or Meta Ads Manager is that you can retarget your website visitors. So somebody goes to your website once they decide not to buy right then because like we talked about, there's a lot of reasons that they might not purchase right that second. But then you can take that information that's literally on your website and put it into an ad format and start to retarget them. So Facebook will automatically do you ever like you even you go into a store or you visit a website and then pretty soon you have like 47 ads on your timeline that are all from that website. Happens to me all the time. Right. That's retargeting. And so I love Facebook ads and Instagram again, bundling them together because you can do all of it through one platform.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:50:01]:
I love. You have to get advanced, you have to have the Facebook pixel. But the retargeting ads can be really, really powerful because you're not just taking anybody and spending money to get in front of them. You're taking people who've shown some interest and staying in front of them. I would love to do a webinar about ads at some point, but not we're not quite there yet. Most of our farmers and butcher shops we work with are just not there in their marketing. So. Okay, Jared asked, do Chop Local Store owners have their own website or is there a webpage inside of Chop Local? Okay, your question does make sense, Jared is it's both.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:50:47]:
So a lot of our on Shop Local, it's like a farmer's market. We call it like an online farmer's market. Each vendor, farmer, butcher shop, has their own micro store, which is like your farmers market booth. You can send your customers right there to your micro store to purchase from you. Okay. People can also come to choplocal.com, put in their zip code, search for certain products, find the farm that really fits what they are looking for. A lot of our vendors also have a website where they can go really into detail about their, their farms, their production practices, again, aligning with the values and those types of things. And it helps with their SEO as well.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:51:32]:
So they'll have a website that's like, I'll use my name olthofffarms.com that's a full website about my farm, how we raise our meat. And then when you click the shop button, it goes to choplocal.com olthofffarms I don't actually have a Chop local store, just using it as an example. So we have vendors who have both. We also have vendors who only have their Chop Local page and they are using their social media to do a lot of the things that we discussed on that that you can do on your website. They're using their micro store, they're using their product pages. Because we've built this system where the, the information is replicated in multiple areas. You can still get that, that information across without necessarily having a full website. So that was a good question and I apologize for if, like I said, some of you are new to Chop Local and to our webinars and so that information might be new to you as well.

Katie - ChopLocal [00:52:33]:
So thank you all for hanging out with us tonight and for joining us. As always, we are available for any help that you need with your meat marketing and we encourage you to check out all of our resources, including the new podcast which we launched February 1st and we are very, very excited about. So thank you everybody for hopping on tonight.