Tag: website

On June 30, the world got its first look at the all-new OasisGrowerSolutions.com, a site designed as a resource for growers in CEA and beyond. Our project started more than a year ago with a singular idea: to create a knowledge hub to help growers achieve greater success. From bullet points and basics, it quickly grew into a grower-driven digital experience designed to inform, educate and inspire. We hope these insights into lessons we learned can help CEA growers and others bring their digital dreams to life.

 1. Know your purpose and stay true to it.

One of the best website investments you can make is taking time upfront to define and refine your goals. Check out other sites, in and out of CEA. Take screenshots or bookmark items you like and dislike. Let yourself dream big.

While our project’s main purpose was helping growers grow better, we needed four manifestations of that purpose: one for CEA and one for each of the other three primary markets we serve (Floriculture, Nursery and AgBiotech).

 For us, it was critical that CEA growers could immediately access content specific to controlled-environment agriculture — from CEA crops and cultivation methods to market-specific grower support and product solutions. A one-size-fits-all approach would have been easier and faster. But we would’ve fallen short of our goal to deliver the market-specific resources CEA growers told us they want and need.

2. Start collecting content and resources in advance.

Images are the soul of a website and an integral element in creating a compelling and engaging online experience. We spent almost a year working to build the right digital assets starting with product and lifestyle imagery, working with photographers, videographers and illustrators to create content for the site long before it was built.

Using multimedia is critical to deliver complicated concepts effectively and concisely. This is extremely important for growers to be successful, so we created animated how-to videos to convey processes more quickly and easily. Whatever resources you have in mind, from images to videos, start building your library early so you have resources ready when the site building begins.

3.Vet your web designer and/or developer thoroughly.

Once your vision and purpose are solidly ingrained, start vetting web development firms for your project. Some developers are exceptional at the technical aspects of site development. Some are talented designers. But not all are both.

When vetting potential partners, review their websites and portfolios carefully. Do they stack up to what you have in your mind? Request references from companies whose websites they built. Get a client’s perspective on the firm’s work ethic, creative process, and the quality of their design and development. Mobile responsiveness of your site is crucial, but responsiveness to you is equally important. Pick a partner who’s capable of creating what you want and delivering it when you want it.

4. Appoint a project manager from your team.

Regardless of your site’s size or purpose, decisions will be made every day during its development. Choose one person to serve as a funnel for every question and answer flying back and forth. That person doesn’t have to be the ultimate decision maker. But they do need direct access to someone who is — and they should be able to respond quickly, with your answers intact.

Knowledge about the CEA industry, your business and your customer base is more important than technical website expertise in this role. You want everything seen through the eyes of your customer, not a web developer who knows code but not crops. Your project manager provides those eyes.

An image of beautifully rooted greens in climate-optimized precision hydroponic substrates instantly loses appeal when a designer adds filters for dramatic effect — and strong, healthy roots suddenly look weak and gray. Your project manager help prevent similar mistakes.

5. Keep customers’ needs at the forefront.

As our plans for OasisGrowerSolutions.com grew, intuitive navigation became more critical. We didn’t want anyone in CEA, or any market, to have to think twice about how to get where they wanted to go. 

We settled on multiple menus at different levels throughout the site, to ensure easy navigation from all directions. The point isn’t menus — it’s putting yourself in your customers’ shoes, whether they’re browsing your site or in a hurry to get specific information they need.

Our Resources section illustrates this approach. Our customers know we devote considerable effort to downloadable PDF grower support materials, including product overviews, usage and application sheets, as well as technical sheets and research updates. CEA growers will find CEA-related resources where they relate to CEA content on the page. But our resources are also all conveniently available in a one-click section of their own.

6. Be practical.

Throughout our website project, we were focused on knowledge and grower support more than sales. In our initial zeal to make our new site as non-commercial as possible, we considered not having any direct connection between our new “knowledge hub” and our online store.

Eventually, we realized that was a mistake. Not because we want more online orders, though those are great! But because our customers want a seamless shopping experience that can take them from grower support materials to purchasing a product, if that’s where they choose to go.

Once that became clear, we adjusted our thinking and added “shop” buttons at strategic locations throughout the site. Our customers embraced those buttons from day one of the new site launch. We’ll continue refining our shopping experience over the next several weeks — and we won’t let lofty ambitions get in the way of practical features our customers want and need.

7. Know when to stop and keep going.

One of the hardest lessons our team learned was when to stop. The longer we worked on the new site, the more ideas we had for additional features and resources to help breeders, growers and researchers meet the future and succeed.

We finally drew a line for what had to be done before launch. That’s what the world saw on June 30. But we didn’t stop thinking, dreaming and working on ways to improve what we have.

We expect our site to evolve alongside CEA and the other markets we serve, just as we’ve evolved from our pioneering substrate roots to the full suite of products and services we offer today. Sections for customer case studies, researchers, sustainability initiatives, and in-depth growing guides are planned for the site in the months ahead.

At the core of our website project is our vision for Oasis Grower Solutions as a whole: to serve every grower worldwide with real-world, sustainable solutions backed by unparalleled products, innovation, education and support. You can find that vision, and much more, on the homepage of our new site at OasisGrowerSolutions.com. We hope to see you there!

Oasis Grower Solutions, a division of Smithers-Oasis, has been helping growers solve problems for more than 55 years. We believe the success of CEA farmers is vital to the future of food. With an international reach across CEA and other markets, our innovations include precision substrates, hydroponic productions aids, and other ancillary products to help you grow.