by
Molly Clubb
| Sep 27, 2012
I recently had a great phone conversation with Mr. Ben Liska of Tio Benito Longhorns. Ben is a long time Hired Hand customer for both his Longhorn and Surf Shop websites. He's always been very supportive of Hired Hand and our web efforts and I sincerely thank him for that. This particular conversation with Ben ended with him paying his Hired Hand website a great compliment. He told me that "due 100% to his Hired Hand website he was able to sell 30 Longhorns private treaty so far this year. All 30 animals sales were initiated via the website and some of the new breeders and buyers came from as far away as Georgia to pick up their purchases (Ben's ranch is in Corpus Christi, TX)."
In visiting more with Ben about his success for private treaty sales via the websie I learned a few items that he does well that Jaymie and I are always telling customers will help with coming up on searches (SEO) and with the marketability and ease of use for visitors to their site.
I thought I'd show a few of the things that Ben is doing well that attrbute to his success for attracting new breeders and making sales off the website and also a few areas that he can improve upon. I hope you find these easy to do tips helpful and will put them to work on your own websites if you're not doing so already. It's also interesting to note that Ben does not promote his Longhorns via Facebook so his site traffic and sales come primarily from SEO and return visitors. As always, if you ever need assistance with your Hired Hand website or have questions about how it can be better please don't hesitate to look for the blue question mark on every admin page for help or contact Jaymie or I for assistance and ideas.
We also encourage you to share what's working well on your Hired Hand powered site with us. Give us a call, shoot us an email or text or comment on our Blog and we'll use your success stories in upcoming posts and markeitng efforts.
What is Tio Benito Doing to Encourage More Private Treaty Sales via Their Website?
Tio Benito has a search module on main animal pages. This allows prospective customers to search Ben's entire herd for animals within their price range or also by TTT, blodlines, DOB, etc. It's a user-friendly tool that can save your customers time. Search modules are part of the Wrangler package and can be easily added to as many pages as you'd like.
All of Tio Benito's sale pen animals are priced and the price is easily viewable from the main animal screen. I know that there are pros and cons for listing pricing and some breeders don't like to do it but in the case of a sale pen or sale page it makes it easy for potential customers to decide if an animal is within their price range and helps elimate wasted time on your portion with inquiries outside of ones price range.
Ben has some great information on his site. Any history or knowledge that you can share with site visitors will help them gain trust in your breeding program and know that they'll be working with a knowledgable breeder.
* Make sure to link up as many important words or phrases in your content as possible.
In the admin portion of Ben's site he has each main pages Title, Keywords and Description completed. This excerpt is from his "Sale Pen" page and as you can see he has many search terms covered as well as an effective description. He also updates this page at least monthly including the keywords. He has also assigned this page a friendly URL.
What Could Tio Benito Do to Improve Their Web Presence and Better Utilize Hired Hand Software?
Ben does a great job of listing newly acquired or sold animals on his site to keep his home page updated and conent fresh. One way that this page or the information could be improved is to make the animals and content links rather than plain text. Hired Hand users can do this in their hyperlinks manager within the page manager.
Ben has a very visually interesting contact page but there is no call to action or form for visitors to easily fill out to contact him. We recommend that Hired Hand users place our easy to use "Contact Form" on multiple pages on their site so visitors can easily contact them. We also recommend listing your email or phone on multiple pages too.
Last but not least, if there are some specific animals you're really trying to push to sell on your website you should complete the SEO portion on that particular animal. Filling out the keywords (such as their bloodlines, TTT, breeder if well known, etc.) and description will help for that animal to appear higher in related searches. In the example above these fields have been lft blank.