The Winery Web Site Report

J Winery in Baseline

Although it isn't strictly about effective winery web sites (the focus of this blog and The Winery Web Site Report), this article about J Winery using software to better understand how to sell its wines is a worthwhile read.

Web site or software, it really is all about selling (more/all) of your wine.  And it's always interesting to get an inside picture of how one winery is dealing with a problem (lack of good visibility into sales) that affects many wineries.  Baseline ("The bottom line in IT") does a good job of dissecting specific information technology projects.

It also obliquely mentions the big technology issue for small-to-medium wineries: systems integration (see my upcoming column in the Harvest Fair issue of NorthBay biz).

Visitor Intent, Visitor Effectiveness

Most wineries aren't $100 million to $1 billion in size, which is the target for Business Signatures, a new startup focused on

...help[ing] companies recognize the "intent'' of their online customers and act on it...

It's just another example of how understanding and supporting "what visitors are trying to do" (i.e. what The Winery Web Site Report evaluates as "visitor effectiveness") is key to a successful winery Web site.

To paraphrase something I wrote in the Report itself, "You don't want to make it more comprehensible for a vistor to press the Back button than to take the next step towards their goal." Yes, you're allowed to have your own site agenda, just so long as it doesn't impede your visitor in accomplishing their own goals.

Customer-Generated Wine Ads?

Here's a post on the Business 2.0 blog about ESPN asking viewers to create their own ads.  But it's not just for sports networks.  Wineries might have a go with this idea as well to generate media attention, web site traffic, and sales:

1. Have contest for drinkers of your wine to make a cool homemade commercial.  The prize is easy: some of your wine (a bottle a month for life if you want to make it more interesting to the media).
2. Get your wine PR guy to get some buzz for your business (just like ESPN and MasterCard are doing).
3. Post the commercials on your Web site.
4. Invite your customers (via e-mail, postcard, web site, blog, press release, etc...) to vote for their favorite on your Web site.
5. Give something to the people who make the effort to vote.  Ideally, it's tied to them making a wine purchase, so it actually gets your wine into people's mouths.

Yes, it would probably take some effort to set up (and you might want to farm it out), but it's a proven "customer engagement" tactic that already works in other venues.  As the Business 2.0 post points out, it involves people with the experience of your brand/product/wine.  You might even get some marketing ideas from what your customers produce.  This approach might not work for "serious" wines, but for someone aiming at younger media-savvy wine drinkers, or brands with a whimsical approach to their marketing (e.g. Jake's Fault), it might be just the ticket.

Here's an article about home-grown political ads, and one about a homebrew Apple iPod ad that show how other people are making use of  an increasingly-media savvy population.

Forget the contest.  Would you be daring enough to make your own "homegrown" wine ad/video and post it for people to see on your Web site?  I bet the folks over at Stu Pedasso Cellars would!

Do you engage your site visitors?

Flyte, a web design house, offers up How To Build A Home Page That Sells in the latest installment of their e-mail newsletter.  This quote caught my eye:

When people visit your Web site they want to be engaged. They're at your home page because they are in need. ...To succeed, your Web site needs to immediately engage your visitors and get them to take an action. ...Since most people are going to land on your home page first, make sure it grabs them right away.

The Winery Web Site Report begins with the premise that making your visitors effective at accomplishing whatever it is they came to do (buy wine for themselves, give a gift, get more information, ...) is the secret to success.  You engage people by making it clear what to do, and easy for them to do it.  Engagement == a clear (and attractive) next step.

As I said at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium, Amazon.com is successful because it makes it easy for people to make a decision about buying something (or not), which is what they came to do (in general).

My only complaint about the Flyte article is its title, because the word "sell" makes people think "e-commerce".  A winery web site is not only about e-commerce, and sometimes that fact gets forgotten.  Even so, our tag line is "It's all about selling more of your wine."  But that's at the end of the day.

First and foremost, successful web sites meet the needs of their visitors.

Where is The Winery Web Site Report?

I've been blogging for some time now, as the Report has come together, sharing bits and pieces of the process, and hopefully generating some interest.  You've probably been wondering when we're going to stop talking and start shipping.

At last, we're at the point of getting the paper and binding for the printed reports (each of which is specific to the winery that orders it) finalized with ChromaGraphics in Santa Rosa (working with them is a pleasure - tell Eric I sent you).  Plus we're putting the final touches on the private Web site that provides our customers with access to our online evaluation database.  As with all product ships I've ever been a part of, it's almost certain to be a mad rush to the end, pulling all the details together.

But we've set the official release date: July 27, 2005.  Just two weeks away!

BTW, people who order their copy of the Report before July 27th will get a delightful thank-you gift along with their printed report - just give us a ring at 1-888-WINERY-WEB (888-946-3799) to place your order over the phone.

WITS presentation

The text of my presentation at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium is now available.  It presents some details about our research for The Winery Web Site Report (average winery Web site score: 48 out of 100 points), and offers 3 concrete suggestions for improving the visitor effectiveness of a site.  The title of the talk is Effective Winery Web Sites.

Talking Wine

This Yahoo! News report about talking wine labels gave me an idea that you could implement today: why not include your own audio description of your wines on your Web site?  Who better to describe the subtle (and not so subtle) aspects of your wines than you?  It's certainly not hard to do (although it does take a little effort to perfect), as witnessed by all the interest in podcasting.  Imagine: someone purchases a bottle of your wine, goes home, cracks open the bottle as they fire up their browser, and listens to your guided tour of their experience on their computer.

In fact, you could burn the same file to CD, and ship it along with a case of your wine.

I don't know if people want talking wine labels in quiet restaurants, but I'll bet they'd be willing to listen to an MP3 recording at home.  Just think of the possible PR buzz if you're among the first to do this!  Tom, are you listening?

Update: thinking a little more, it occurs to me that Grape Radio and Winecast are already doing wine-related podcasts.  What I describe above is somewhat different:  explaining a single wine needs to be tightly scripted to be successful.  No one wants to listen to dead air while they're engaged with the experience of a wine.  You might start with a brief introduction and a discussion of the wine just out of the bottle, then tell the listener to pause the recording, and then restart after the wine has gotten some air.  Lots of possibilities to create a memorable experience.

Update 07/07 - if you're interested, Walt Mossberg writes more about creating podcasts in The Wall St. Journal.

Your Site and The Media

The Winery Web Site Report identifies four categories of site visitor: buyers, browsers, the trade, and the media.  Our evaluation shows that most sites do a poor job of serving the needs of the media, people who want to tell stories about your wine.

If you're interested in seeing how journalists are using Web sites to research stories, this white paper from Vocus, entitled Bridging the Great Divide Online, provides "insight into how reporters use, and yes, even rely on your Web site."  It summarizes their 2004 survey of approximately 1,000 journalists.

The number-one pet peeve?  "No phone number or contact information listed for PR."  And they want a specific person, not just a generic contact.  This is also something we evaluated  in The Winery Web Site Report, so it's nice to see validation of our rating system.

There's a lot more great information in this 18-page white paper.  You'll have to provide some contact information to Vocus in return for a link to the report via e-mail, but I think it's worth your while if you believe, as we do, that the media are important visitors to your winery Web site.

(Vocus sells web-based software that supports the PR function within companies.)