Our GoTurf farm, spanning over 150 hectares of turf, is tucked away behind dirt roads off the Bruce Highway. Surrounded by the Glass House Mountains and the Pumicestone Passage, it’s a strikingly beautiful location, but one that’s hidden from view.
For decades, we’ve mainly been wholesale, supplying resellers and fellow farms. We used to believe it wasn’t possible to sell turf online. After all, it’s a high-value purchase with customers typically spending thousands of dollars at a time. We thought they’d likely need to see us at the farm or a store first, and our numbers at the time supported that notion. Website conversion sat at 0.2%, meaning 99.8% of visitors were visiting our website but weren’t placing orders. The phone was almost our sole connection to retail, with 90% of retail orders being placed there.
If we wanted to grow direct-to-customer revenue, we didn’t have the advantage of high-traffic exposure that comes with main road frontage. As a family-owned operation with a lean team to grow, harvest, and deliver orders, we had to shift to digital channels for visibility and technology for operations.
Fast forward to 2025: We’re accepting the award for “Best Website Experience” at the 2025 Lawn Solutions Australia Conference and have seen a 350% increase in online orders. Here are the steps we took to get these results.
Building The Right Team
Our team are turf experts. Rather than try to master unfamiliar territory, we made a call to bring in digital specialists for website management, building our tech stack, conversion optimisation, and content creation. We reached out and brought contractors on board to assemble the team with the right expertise.
In doing so, we had answers immediately. Our 0.2% conversion rate wasn’t a product problem – it was a user experience problem. Ordering online was complex, from calculating quantities to understanding installation options. By combining our knowledge with digital expertise, the team set out to deliver online what we’d always provided over the phone.
Implementing The Right Technology
There are a lot of moving parts to turf farming, and the focus was on seamless integration. Our digital team moved us over to Shopify to handle our e-commerce front-end, and Turfware to manage our entire operation, including customer management, order processing, harvesting schedules, delivery routing, payment processing and more.
When you place orders online at goturf. com.au, everything flows automatically from Shopify to Turfware. Our team on the farm get their harvesting schedules, our drivers get optimised routes, delivery photos are captured and stored, and TurfWare (Turf Management Software) communicates all those updates to Klaviyo (email marketing provider), which then sends automated updates to customers via text and email.
With our tech stack, we were able to manage inventory across multiple locations while handling shipping calculations, delivery availability, and pickup scheduling. It eliminates manual data entry, reduces errors that cost time and customer confidence, and means our team can focus on what we do best: provide premium turf.
Meeting Customers Where They Are
One of the biggest challenges we faced was: how do you make complex turf orders as simple as phone conversations? The team implemented dynamic pricing that automatically adjusts for site preparation and installation services and created guided questionnaires recommending varieties based on soil conditions, sun exposure, and intended use.
We also added order weight displays for pickup planning, prominent “Call Us” buttons for queries, and volume discounts that automatically apply.
One thing that surprised us in this digital transformation: a significant portion of online orders came outside traditional business hours. Turns out people are looking into their turf projects well before and after work. This means we’re now capturing sales we’d never captured before with phone-only operations. Our online channels are working for us 24/7.
Now, our website isn’t set-and-forget. It’s continuously optimised based on customer behaviour, whether implementing installation quote forms or answering new frequently asked questions. We’ve also introduced review routing to give us a chance to reach a resolution if anyone happens to have less than 10/10 experience and get to see the feedback of satisfied customers across Google and Facebook reviews.
A Simple Social Strategy
Our content approach is straightforward: if customers ask us questions, no doubt others are searching for those answers online too. We address common industry queries across all channels – from soil preparation techniques and new lawn care to suitable pickup vehicles and turf maintenance needs.
Our social media isn’t about selling but about creating genuine community and providing helpful advice. We show the complete turf journey: sunrise harvests, the process from farm to installation, behind- the-scenes moments, maintenance advice, and customer transformations.
It’s Not All Digital
Our transformation wasn’t about choosing between digital and traditional channels. It was about creating an integrated system serving customers; however they engage.
We know some customers will always prefer face-to-face interaction, and while our Beerburrum location wasn’t a convenient location for most of our service areas, our Brendale Showroom opened in 2023, providing convenient access to products, equipment, and in-person advice. Some of the social media conversations we have led to talking to our team at Brendale, others to online orders, meaning a strong online presence drives offline engagement too.
This model works for our lean team while maintaining consistent service quality across phone, online, and in-person interactions.
What We’ve Learned
People do buy high-value turf online, provided the experience matches professional expectations and you can successfully transition to digital-first operations without losing the personal service that built your business. Our 350% increase in online orders proves digital transformation isn’t about abandoning what works, but extending your customer service excellence into digital channels.
Start with your customers’ needs, build the right team around the challenge, and let technology strengthen what you already do well.
The transformation is worth it, and it means you’ll serve your customers better along the way.
