Set up your farm store in under 30 minutes

Go to hecta.com.au/register. Enter your name, email, password, and your farm name. That’s the whole form — four fields.

Your farm name becomes your store URL: if you type “Rivera Farming,” your store lives at riverafarming.hecta.com.au. You can add your own domain later (free on all plans), but for now the Hecta subdomain works perfectly.

Once you submit, you land on your dashboard with a checklist showing what to do next. The first two steps — your farm profile and connecting Stripe for payments — take about a minute each.

Click “Add product” in your dashboard. For each product, you fill in: a name, a category (Meat, Vegetables, Dairy — whatever fits), a photo from your phone, a short description, and a price.

Selling by weight?Toggle “Variable weight” on. Set the price per kilo and add sizes — Small (0.8–1.0kg), Medium (1.2–1.5kg), Large (1.6–2.0kg). Your customer picks a size, sees an estimated price, and their card is only charged the actual weight after you pack. No manual invoicing, no refunds.

Fixed-price products? Just enter the price. Eggs at $9 a dozen, salad box at $12. Done.

Three products is enough to launch. You can add more anytime. Don’t let “I need to photograph all 30 products” stop you from going live today. Three good products with clear photos is better than 30 products with no photos.

Click “Add location” in Settings. Type a name — “Farm gate” or “Rusty’s Markets” or “Malanda pickup.” Enter the address. Set the day and time — Saturday 8am to 12pm. Optionally set a maximum number of orders per pickup. Save.

That’s it. Your customers now see this location as an option at checkout. If you sell at two markets, add both — the customer picks which one suits them.

Delivery zones are optional and you can add them later. For your first week, pickup only is perfectly fine. Most farms start with pickup and add delivery after they’ve processed their first 10 orders.

Go to the Storefront editor in your dashboard. Three things to do here:

Upload a cover image.A photo of your farm, your paddock, your produce on a market table — whatever represents your farm best. This is the first thing customers see. A landscape photo works best.

Write a tagline.One sentence that says what you do: “Pasture-raised lamb and seasonal vegetables from the Atherton Tablelands.” Customers read this in 3 seconds — keep it short, keep it real.

Choose a template. Pick from Farm Gate (simple: home, about, contact), Market (adds an Our Story and Visit Us page), or Producer (adds Our Farm, How We Farm, and Stockists pages). You can change this anytime.

The storefront is already functional without any customisation. But 10 minutes adding a cover photo, a tagline, and a short About section makes the difference between “a shop” and “your shop.”

Go to Cycles and click “Create cycle.” Give it a name — “Week 1.” Set when orders open (Monday 8am), when they close (Wednesday 6pm), and when pickup is (Saturday). Select which products are available. Hit Publish.

Your store is now live. Customers can visit yourfarm.hecta.com.au, browse your products, and place orders. When the cycle closes on Wednesday, orders stop automatically. Your packing list generates. Saturday morning, you pack and hand out. Monday, create a new cycle and do it again.

Don’t want order cycles?If you’d rather take orders anytime (like a regular online shop), enable “Always open” mode instead. Orders come in continuously, you pack and fulfil on your own schedule. Some farms prefer this — especially those shipping nationally rather than doing weekly pickup.