Wine Industry Technology Symposium

I'll be part of a panel entitled "Consumer Direct" on the afternoon of July 12th at the Silverado Hotel in Napa as part of the Wine Industry Technology Symposium. Each of the panel members will speak for 5 to 7 minutes on a topic related to how wineries can use technology to reach consumers directly. Here's the official blurb:

Consumer Direct
With the recent Supreme Court ruling on direct shipment, whether through wine club, internet site, or third-party sales, the challenge for brand owners is to break through the clutter and deliver the brand message to the consumer. What are some of the leaders in the field doing today to leverage technology to this end?

The panel will be moderated by Georgia Rasmussen, Director of Consumer Marketing for Beringer Blass Wine Estates, and includes Paul Mabray, CEO of Inertia Beverage, Steve Koetzer, Director of Online Communications for Trinchero Family Estates, and Eric Binau, President of Cultivate Systems.

Here's the abstract of my talk as presented to the organizers:

Best (and Worst) Practices in Winery Web Site Design

Nearly every winery has a Web site, some good, some less so. In fact, there are over 2,300 winery Web sites, based on our comprehensive list of ~2,800 US-based wineries.

But why have a Web site in the first place?

This presentation starts with the premise that the only reason for a winery to have a Web site is to profitably sell more wine. The sad truth is that most sites aren’t meeting this goal nearly as well as they could.

Why? Because sites don’t effectively meet the needs of the four basic types of site visitors: buyers (people who want to buy your wine right now), browsers (past and potential customers who are interested in your wine), the trade (people who resell your wine – distributors, retailers, and restaurants), and the media (people who want to tell a story about your wine – magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and others).

At the same time, a winery’s Web site is more important than ever:

The Web is increasingly the first place people turn for information.
Direct sales are tremendously important to wineries under 50,000 cases, representing 30+ percent of their sales volume (source: MKF).
Studies show that shoppers, and particularly affluent shoppers, do their homework on the Web, regardless of whether they buy online.
New technologies, such as RSS and Web logs, are powerful, cost-effective tools for customer involvement.
Direct shipment law in flux, and likely to increase competition.

Given that Web sites have been around for over 10 years, you would think that someone would have figured out the optimal design for a Web site by now. In fact, much is understood about how to create effective Web sites. Too often, though, sites reflect the idiosyncrasies of their owners and/or designers, rather than focusing on the needs of visitors. And the wine industry brings its own set of special considerations,

This presentation will illustrate some of the best practices among winery Web sites today, and point out the most common pitfalls. Attendees will leave the presentation with a new way of looking at their own presence on the Web, and a clear set of next steps to take.

The Winery Web Site Report (July, 2005), is the first independent evaluation of over 2,300 US-based winery Web sites, based on an objective 25-element scoring system created by Michael E. Duffy & Associates of Santa Rosa, CA. This presentation is based on that research.

Since I only have 5-7 minutes, I'm going to have to tighten it up a bit.

I hope to see you there -- please introduce yourself if you are. And I wouldn't be marketing The Winery Web Site Report properly if I didn't mention we're offering a $50 discount on the price of a report to attendees (you need the secret handshake to get it).

PS: This will be the first public presentation of data from the Report, so I'm especially excited!