First in a series. What do you think?
Market Website Sample
We realized that we have been adding a lot of tools for markets and their websites, and we thought that you might want to see how to incorporate everything into your website.
So, we created a sample market website. Check it out!
What makes your market special?
There’s been quite a bit of opinions on the FMC mailing list (not on it? sign up here — it’s a great resource) regarding the “America’s Favorite Farmers Market” contest on American Farmland Trust (learn more, and vote here). Essentially they give three farmers markets in different size categories the chance to earn “best” farmers market title. Someone asked the list to vote for her market. This created a flurry!
The best response was, “don’t try to be America’s favorite farmers market” and to try to emphasize to your community what exactly makes your market special.
What is that for you? What do you provide your community?
How many is too many?
Has your area suffered from too many markets?
When will you reach the saturation point?
This article talks about the situation in Seattle.
What is it like in your area?
The Importance of Assigning Stalls
After you’ve approved vendors, there is so much more that managemymarket can do for you. Assigning your approved vendors to stalls in the “Stall Assignments” section not only saves you time, but the data populates in a number of places. If you haven’t already assigned vendors, click here to view the step-by-step tutorial available in our training resources.
When your vendors are assigned to a stall in the “Stall Assignments” section, each vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates appear in some combination in the following places:
Manager Side/Website:
- Complete Vendor List (Vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates)
- Product Search (Vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates)
- Interactive Market Map (Vendor’s company description, products, scheduled dates)
- Most of the Accounting Section (Calculates stall fees based on market setup and Vendor’s scheduled dates)
Vendor’s side:
- Market dates — appear in the “My Markets” tab and “Calendar” tab — the vendor sees a calendar that shows all of their approved market dates for all the markets they attend. This is particularly helpful for vendors who are approved in more than one market, so that they can see at-a-glance which stall they’ve been assigned on each market day, and with one click, they can view their location on the Interactive Market Map.
You can also keep track of vendor attendance to see (at the end of the season) which vendors were good and not-so-good at letting you know when their schedules change.
This is a really good way to get out of the post-it problem — you can tell immediately where your market will have “holes” and you won’t be surprised on market day.
If you have sent us a map already, then populating your stall assignments is very simple! Click here to view that tutorial, or click here to email Andria.
Email!
letter via wikipedia
Some of you might have already noticed that the emails have changed.
For those of you who haven’t noticed, check it out! Go to your email section. See, look? Very different.
The tutorial is posted in our online resources, and linked here.
a nice testimonial from one of our customers
a testimonial from a new customer |
 “I own and operate two markets in Idaho Falls, this is my first season using managemymarket and I can’t say enough good things about the system. I have spent the last two years building spreadsheets and maps in Excel to track everything from our market gross sales to mapping out each market day. I happily abandon all my own creations to using managemymarket on our markets. It feels like Christmas when I sit down at my computer, login and find not only money in my PayPal account but 5 or more new vendors awaiting my approval and admission in our markets. Great jobmanagemymarket team, I highly recommend every market use their tool!” |
A managemymarket success story
Last week, Jennie, who runs Thursday Market at the Ville, signed her market up for managemymarket. Her market opens soon, so she quickly set up a new market (by going through the tutorials available online), and then she called us with a question.
In the time it took for her to pick up the phone and call us, a vendor had already applied to her market. Initially this was a bit disconcerting, since she wasn’t sure she’d put her “final answers” on the market set up, but once she realized her market was all set, this was very exciting for her.
A brand new market manager, setting up a brand new system, already got a potential coffee vendor!
It’s great to help markets.
Some of Our Customers in the News
Burnet Road Farmers Market opens with new management
Interstate Farmers Market adds another day
Portland Farmers Market moves a few blocks away
Woodstock Farmers Market is looking for volunteers
Hillsdale Farmers Market launches 10th year
Still haven’t sent us a map?
Perhaps you should try your hand at creating one in PowerPoint!
A few markets have already done this, and their maps are really cute. So if you have PowerPoint, you should check it out!
Create a blank presentation. Get rid of any of the boxes — you won’t have a title or a subtitle.
Insert shapes. I recommended the cloud one, in green, for trees/shrubs and the rectangle makes a pretty great stall!
Here’s one example:
Note about Accounting and Stalls
When you are setting up a market, at some point, you will enter your stall sizes. Most markets have at least one stall size, and some have several. Usually it’s 10×10, 5×8, umbrella, something along those lines.
Be careful with this, and try not to have 10×20, 10×30, 10×40 because the vendor gets to select the number of stalls they want. It can be tricky if someone is requesting four 10x40s because unless they want to take up half of your market, they likely only want four stalls.
Once you set this up, you’ll send us a map. Haven’t sent a map yet? Email info@managemymarket.com and we’ll set you up.
When our mapmaker makes your layout interactive, they assume that all your stalls will be the default size. This is because we know that all maps are not to scale, and you will have to go back into your stall assignment section and edit the stalls.
For more on how to do that, go to managemymarket.com/training.
Attention Market Managers
Did you fill out the USDA survey?
Is your information correct?
Click here to check and update before the directory goes to print, so to speak.
The Accounting Package
A step-by-step guide. Up now, available for your enjoyment. Click over to managemymarket, and take a look at all the trainings!
New Feature: Opt Out of Product Updates
Recently, we added a feature where when an approved vendor updates their product list, each user with the “administrative privileges” star in each organization where the vendor was approved would get an email.
Some users emphatically disliked getting six thousand emails when a vendor changed their product list. This is entirely understandable.
There are several ways to adjust this:
- Filter emails so that all emails that say “Alert from managemymarket.com” go into a folder instead of annoying you with a pop-up all the time
- Take away your administrative privileges. This will keep you from getting the pesky emails from managemymarket, and will keep your email address from being available in the “email” section.
- Don’t want anyone in your organization to get these updates? There is a place in the Organization tab where you can opt everyone out of the alerts.
In the Organization tab, click the pencil icon (if you leave your mouse there for a bit, you’ll see the words “edit organization”. Scroll down to the part where it says “Send Product Alerts” (right after Application fee) and click the check box to opt everyone out of product alert emails.
Add-ins for your website
These tips are spread all over the blog, but here’s a one-page reminder of how you can incorporate the following additions to your website:
- Embed the Interactive Market map on your site– wrapping the code in an iframe makes visitors to your map think that they are not leaving your site (note: this trick can also be used for the Product Search feature)
- Product Search feature — use these instructions to add the Product Search link to your site so that customers can type the product they’d like — kale, for example, and they’ll see all the vendors who sell kale, and when they can find that vendor. Clicking the date brings up the Interactive Market map.
- Complete Vendor list — this one lists all your vendors in alphabetical order, where customers can come and look to see who all has been approved to sell, and what they’re selling, and when they’ll be at the market next.
The only thing you need for this is your orgID, which are the last three digits in your online application. To find this, go to your Organization tab, and scroll all the way down.
Farmers Market at the Airport?
Maybe only in California does something like this happen.
LAX just got a little bit brighter.
New Features!
We’ve been busy here at managemymarket, and we bet you know how that feels!
Our new features are the bee’s knees:
- Multiple Product Photo Upload for Vendors
- Auto Email Functionality. Now, when a vendor updates their product list, each market employee (with administrative privileges — turn those off in the Organization tab if you don’t want them!) where the vendor has been approved will get a notification that the vendor has added, removed, or updated their product list. New products come in unapproved, so each market can decide if the new product is acceptable.
New Setup Tutorial
Setting up a Market — also found in our training resources @ managemymarket.com/training
This generation didn’t have 4-H…
…or FFA, even, but people in their 20s and 30s are starting to get serious about farming!
Good news for small farms
Image via Wikipedia
The USDA is expanding their Value-Added Program to assist more small farms. Read more about it, and pass this along to the small and medium-sized farms you know.
