How to Set Up Your Free Farmstanding Shop

Before setting up a free shop on Farmstanding, you need to join and list your business or farmers’ market on Farmstanding so people can find it in searches. If you don’t have an account yet, start here.

Once you have listed your business, these are the setup steps to get your shop up and running.

1. Create your shop
2. Storefront: Adjust your storefront design and basic information
3. Payments: Set up payment your payment information
4. Distribution: Select and save your available pickup locations for customers to choose at checkout
5. Availability: Set your season information, open status, and a weekly ordering window if you need to restrict orders
6. Products: Add your products
7. Check your setup: Make sure everything is completed and looking good

Make sure you complete all steps. If you skip any of them, customers may not be able to order from your shop.

Step 1: Create Your Shop

Once you have created your first listing, you’ll be able to enable a shop. Just click the button in the dashboard:

Once your shop is created, your listings will all show a “Shop Now” button which goes straight to your shop:

Step 2: Set Up Your Storefront

In the Store Settings > Storefront area, you can set your shop’s picture, logo, name and description. You can also add address, contact, and social media information which will show on your shop page.

All Farmstanding shops will have a link that starts with https://farmstanding.com/shop/ but you can change your personal shop link on Farmstanding by editing the “Store Slug”.

If you enter “my-farm-shop” as your slug, your full shop link will be https://farmstanding.com/shop/my-farm-shop

When you’re done making changes to your storefront, make sure to click Save Settings.

Step 3. Set Up Payments

To set up payments, go to Store Settings > Payments and select your payment method. This step must be completed or customers won’t know how to pay you.

Note: Only offline payments are available right now, but online payment processing is coming by June 2020.

Set Up Offline Payments

1. Choose “I’ll manage my own payments offline (free)”
2. Set when your payment is due. The default is “At Pickup”.
3. Add clear and detailed payment instructions for your customers.
4. Click the “Save Settings” button

The payment instructions you add will be shown in the following places:

• On the checkout page
• In the customer’s order receipt after they checkout
• In the order confirmation email sent to the customer

Please note that Farmstanding can’t enforce or manage payments for you when you use the offline payment method. Farmstanding will only inform the customer of your payment methods. It will be up to you to complete the final transaction.

When you’re done adding your payment instructions, make sure to click Save Settings.

Step 4. Distribution

In Store Settings > Distribution set your available pickup locations from your listings on Farmstanding or farmers’ markets in your area. This step must be completed or customers will not be able to select a pickup location/time and checkout.

The locations you have listed on Farmstanding will be shown on the left side of the distribution selection form. The locations which will be shown to customers when they check out from your shop are on the right side.

• To add a pickup location for your shop, click on one of the locations on the left side, and then Save Settings.
• To remove a pickup location from your shop, hover over the location on the right side and click the minus symbol, then Save Settings.

When you’re done selecting your pickup locations, make sure to click Save Settings.

Step 5. Availability

You can manage your shop’s availability from Store Settings > Availability.

How the Season Open Date / Season Close Date work:

When you set a season open date and a season close date, your shop will automatically open and close on those dates.

This means you can setup your shop before you’re ready to open. It also means you don’t have to worry about orders coming in after your season is over.

For example, if you want to set up your shop now but you won’t be ready to accept orders for 2 weeks, just set a season open date in 2 weeks and put the Open Now setting on “No”

The Open Now Setting

The Open Now setting will always override your season settings. If you set seasons and then decide you want to open earlier or you want to reopen after your shop has automatically closed for the season, just toggle Open Now to Yes.

Setting an Ordering Window:

Some people need to restrict ordering times so that they have time to prepare orders before the weekly pickup time. If you don’t need to restrict your ordering times, just leave “Set Ordering Window” turned off.

If you need to set an ordering window, here’s how it works:

1. Toggle “Set Ordering Window” to “Yes”
2. Set the Ordering Open Date to the next date and time you want your shop to start accepting orders
3. Set the Ordering Close Date to the next date and time you want your shop to stop accepting orders

Reopen Ordering Weekly:

With the “Reopen Ordering Weekly” setting turned on, Farmstanding will automatically update your ordering window every week, based on the first date and time that you set.

If you turn off the “Reopen Ordering Weekly” setting, your shop will stop accepting orders after the Ordering Close Date you set, and it will stay closed until you change your settings again.

When you’re done with all of your availability settings, make sure to click Save Settings.

Step 6: Adding & Managing Products

In your Farmstanding shop, you can add new products, view a list of existing products with inventory and prices, or edit the image, name, description, inventory, or price.

If you want to stop selling  a product for a week, you can set the inventory to 0. Products with no stock available won’t be shown on your shop. When you’re ready to sell it again, just update the inventory.

7. Final Step: Check Your Setup

Make sure that everything looks just the way you want it and that customers will be able to order from you and pay you easily. Check your setup in these 2 places:

• Review your storefront experience
• Review your checkout experience

Review Your Storefront Experience:

1. Make sure your shopfront has all the information and images you want. If you want changes, go back to your Store Settings.
2. Make sure your available pickups are showing in the sidebar. If they’re not there, check your Distribution Settings again.
3. Check your products below your shop information. If your shop or ordering window is closed, no products will show. If it’s open, you’ll see your products here. If it doesn’t look the way you want, check your Availability Settings again or edit your products

Review Your Checkout Experience:

1. From your storefront, add one of your products to your cart
2. Click “View Cart”
3. Make sure your available pickups are showing in the sidebar on the cart page. If you don’t see them, check your Distribution Settings again
4. Click “Proceed to Checkout”
5. Review your available Pickup Location options. When you choose one, you’ll be able to see the Pickup Time options for that location.
   1. If you need to change the address or times for your locations, go back to your dashboard and edit the information in each listing (NOT in the distribution settings).
   2. If you need to add or remove pickup locations, go back to your Distribution Settings.
6. Check the payment information in the sidebar. You should see your payment instructions showing. If you don’t see them, customers won’t know how to pay you. Go back to your Payment Settings to make changes.