Farming is one of the oldest and noblest professions on Earth, but in the 21st century, many farming operations are turning to the Internet to attract new businesses and connect with customers. Take Hopkins AG, for instance. Hopkins AG evolved from a family farm that began in the early 1900s, and since 1978, the company has specialized in supreme, nonpareil, organic almonds, all grown in California.
Today, the family owns and farms more than 3,000 acres of fresh almonds in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Each week, they sell their almonds at San Diego area farmers markets, and customers flock to sample all of their delectable flavors, like Lime & Sea Salt, Chipotle, Peppered Tomato and Honey Vanilla. And while farmer’s markets are great, our friends at Hopkins AG wanted to branch out to a wider audience, and that’s why they contacted Coalition Technologies.
When we first spoke with Hopkins AG, they had only a basic website with almond information and no checkout system. We recommended the BigCommerce platform as a simple and effective way of implementing shopping cart features and accepting orders from customers online. We handled the design and development using BigCommerce, and now Hopkins AG is able to sell their premium almonds nationally.
But our work wasn’t simply limited to making the site attractive and user-friendly. We also did some basic SEO work, in order to ensure that the company would have a strong search engine presence. We optimized each of their pages for target keywords, and created custom title tags and meta descriptions. Although the company had no experience with eCommerce and were unfamiliar with many of the technical concepts involved, we were able to work with them, communicating the basics of the technology, and ultimately we agreed on a solution that suited their needs.
The company is making a quite a splash in cyberspace. In addition to taking orders online, they now manage a Facebook account, Twitter account and newsletter. If you’d like to try some fresh, organic California almonds for yourself, or if you’d like to check out the scope of our work, visit the Hopkins AG website at http://www.hopkinsag.com/. You can purchase a wide variety of almonds, and you can even print out gift certificates.
