The Winery Web Site Report

Dan Berger looks back at 2005

On the last business day of 2005, this column from Dan Berger provides a good summary of what happened in the wine industry this year (along with the launch of The Winery Web Site Report, of course).

Best wishes for a successful 2006, online and off!

Winery Doubles Sales With Blogging

Blogging doubled Stormhoek sales in less than 12 months.

According to Hugh McCleod, the increase represents "tens of thousands of cases."  This is undoubtedly an exceptional case (being one of the first), but it's worthwhile reading.  And to be completely accurate, it also involved giving away a hundred or so bottles of wine, not just one person blogging.

Lots of attention is focused on wine critics (Uncorked and Fermentation both posted recently on this topic), but generating word of mouth isn't solely the province of the critics.  By giving away wine to bloggers, Stormhoek generated word of mouth interest in their wine in the UK (which is now coming to the US).

It doesn't have to be blogs. 

Suppose you sent a bottle of wine to your biggest fans (notice I didn't say "best customers") and just asked them to pass it along to a friend who is unfamiliar with your wines.  Some would, some wouldn't, but your fans would appreciate the recognition (making them more likely to talk about your wine), and some people who hadn't previously experienced your wine would get to form an impression about it.  I'm sure that a marketer more clever than I could figure out ways to make sure it got talked about with clever copy and presentation.

One advantage that smaller wineries (the 95% of wineries competing for 5% of the market) have over larger wines that sell primarily through distribution is that they probably *know* who their biggest fans are.  To see who your "most effective fans" are, send that free bottle along with a coupon that identifies the "fan" and offers their friend who gets the bottle 10% off any wine purchase.

Who are people who might be willing (even eager) to talk about your wine?  Maybe you should send some of those free bottles to restaurants or retailers or distributors (or bloggers, like Stormhoek did).  Never forget it is ultimately the experience of your wine that sells it - reviews, 100-point ratings, and even blogs are just surrogates for the actual experience of what comes out of the bottle.

Newsletter: 2005 Year-End Edition

We just sent out the 2005 Year-End Edition of our e-mail newsletter, Effective Winery Web Sites, with brief articles on the importance of updating your home page regularly, the distribution of scores in our winery Web site database (which explains why 55 out of 100 is not as bad as it sounds, relatively speaking), and my upcoming speaking engagement (February 1st).

If you'd like to receive Effective Winery Web Sites via e-mail, fill out a subscription request on our home page.

Text Size

It's an accepted fact that most Web surfers never change the defaults in their browser.  In particular, that means the default "text size," which Internet Explorer (the most common browser) refers to as "medium." and Firefox refers to as "Normal."  Fortunately, both place it under the "View" menu.

Two questions:

1. What is the text size set to in your browser?
2. Have you looked at your Web site with the text size set to medium/Normal?

You should ask your Web designer or Webmaster to show you how your site looks (with default settings)  in Internet Explorer on a  Windows computer, Safari on a Macintosh, and Firefox under Windows.  That's what your visitors are seeing.  You might also ask what percentage of your visitors fall into each category.

By the way, Macintosh computers assume displays have 72 pixels per inch (which is nice for typography, since 1 pixel = 1 typesetter's point measure).  Windows computers assume 96 pixels per inch.  This means that a poorly executed site design can result in tiny text on Windows systems  (but looks fine on your designer's Macintosh).

Most visitors won't fight to read your site.  The Back button is just too close at hand.

Your 2006 Web Marketing Plan

Just in case you forgot about it, Flyte's latest newsletter will jump start your efforts for Web-based marketing in the coming year.  Here's what they recommend you do for the first six months of 2006 (follow the link for the rest):

1. Set up a Web marketing budget (both $$ and time to act on it)
2. Audit your Web site (beginner)
3. Audit your Web site (advanced)
4. Start reading blogs in your industry
5. Start your own blog
6. Sign up for your competitor's e-mail newsletter
7. ...

This is smart stuff.

I really like what I read over at Flyte - I get their newslettter and subscribe to their blog as well.

Decanter.com highlights The Winery Web Site Report

Decanter.com is running a front page story on The Winery Web Site Report.  I'd like to thank Emmet Cole, who interviewed me via e-mail (from Ireland!)  based on our press release, for telling our story clearly and accurately.

Given that he's from Ireland, I wasn't too worried about him spelling my name right.

Unescorted Visitor: Robert Scoble and Bonny Doon

Visitors to your Web site are unescorted.  Unless you're obsessively monitoring your site in real time, you probably don't even know they're there.  But they are out there talking about your wines and your winery, based on what they experience on your Web site.

For example, check out this post, Stormhoek marketing wine one blogger at a time, by Robert Scoble of Microsoft. Read the comments as well.  Bonny Doon and their wines come off very well, even though the ostensible reason for the post is Stormhoek, a South African winery not even distributed in the US (yet) which is courting of bloggers and gaining some visibility as a result.

Bonny Doon probably didn't know that they got visited by one of the most popular bloggers on the Internet (and probably some other people as a result).  Your site needs to be ready to serve visitors (and leave them with a positive impression) at any moment.  There's no chance to put your best foot forward unless it's already sticking out there.  It's like having an unescorted visitor walk into your winery.  What impression are they going to walk away with?

(By the way, Robert's post is presently the #2 result if you use blogsearch.google.com to search for Bonny Doon)

What is Visitor Effectiveness?

The Winery Web Site Report rates what we allege is "visitor effectiveness."  So what exactly is visitor effectiveness?

Think of it this way: everyone comes to a Web site with some purpose in mind (setting aside the small percentage of mindless zombie Web surfers, who must almost certainly exist). A site that is truly visitor effective results in visitors who both achieve their goal and leave with a positive impression of their experience (often, visitors achieve their goal, but the process leaves much to be desired).

The challenge is to prevent the visitor from becoming so frustrated in pursuit of their goal that they click the always-convenient Back  button in their browser.  The desired goal is to make their experience so satisfying that they will continue to interact (online and offline) with your company, e.g. purchasing your products and telling their friends.

Building a visitor-effective site requires starting with the aim of the visitor, not with your aim, which is what makes it difficult.  For wineries, we decided that there were four types of visitor:

• people who wanted to buy something right now (buyers)
• people who wanted more information about the winery and/or its wines (browsers)
• people who were interested in reselling the winery's wines (the trade - distributors, retailers, restaurants)
• people who wanted to tell a story about the winery and/or its wines (the media)

(plus the mindless zombie Web surfers, of course).

From there, we sat down and asked, "What would help each type of visitor achieve their goal?"  Some of those things are pretty basic - the site needs to be "findable" (Search Rank and Domain Name), the site needs to be available and have reasonable response time (Responsiveness & Availability), and the site needs to be viewable a browser likely to be used by a visitor (Compatibility).  Some are more specific (trade and media types want everything nicely packaged up).

Out of that process came 25 "rating elements."  Each one makes up part of the 100-point total score for a winery's Web site.  Some are worth more than others, based on their value to visitors.  For example, information about current releases is worth 6 points.  Having a blog is only worth 1  -- as much as we like blogs and blogging, having one doesn't make a visitor much more effective (unless their original goal was to find your blog), although a blog is a great way of maintaining a relationship with visitors once they've met their original goal.

If you're happy with the performance of your Web site, great.  If you're not, looking at how effective it is for visitors with a particular goal in mind when they arrive is a good place to start (that's why we created the Report).  If your site doesn't have any visitors to begin with, that's another problem altogether.

Oh, Canada!

We've had a great response to our Top Ten Winery Web Sites press release, and lots of wineries are asking for their top-line evaluation score.  That's great!

But I got a score request from Ingrid at Mission Hill Family Estate and it pointed out a problem with The Winery Web Site Report.  Right now, we don't have any evaluations for non-US wineries.  Sadly, Mission Hill is in British Columbia, Canada.

I apologize to our friends across the border - it's nothing personal.  In launching The Winery Web Site Report we had to draw the line somewhere (there are over 2,800 US-based wineries - we've got 2,834 in our database last time I looked), since all of our evaluations involve an actual human being visting and evaluating a Web site.

What should we do for Ingrid and Mission Hill?

The Top Ten Winery Web Sites of 2005

Today we're announcing the top ten winery Web sites of 2005, based on our 100-point visitor effectiveness rating (full press release):

#	Name	Score	URL
1.	Lynmar Winery	83	www.lynmarwinery.com
2.	Clos Du Val Wine Co.	82	www.closduval.com
3.	EOS Estate Winery	81	www.eosvintage.com
4.	King Estate Winery	80	www.kingestate.com
5.	Huntington Wine Cellars	79	www.huntingtonwine.com
6.	Nickel & Nickel	78	www.nickelandnickel.com
(tie) 7.	Goldeneye	77	www.goldeneyewinery.com
(tie) 7.	Lambert Bridge Winery	77	www.lambertbridge.com
(tie) 7.	Wildhurst Vineyards	77	www.wildhurst.com
10.	Quivira Vineyards	75	www.quivirawine.com

Congratulations to these wineries!  The median score for all wineries currently in our evaluation database (over 2,200) is 48, so these sites deserve recogition.

You can get your winery's overall score e-mailed to you (free of charge) to see where you stand.

Sneak Peak

We're sending out a press release tomorrow, and one of the things it mentions is that you can get your winery's overall Web site visitor effectiveness rating, free of charge.  So by reading our blog, you get first crack at it (and we get a gentle test to make sure everything's A-OK).

Via e-mail, you'll get the "X out of 100 points" score that we award to each winery Web site in The Winery Web Site Report database, based on 25 distinct measures of visitor effectiveness:  branding, compatibility, contact information, domain name, freshness, information on current releases, information on past releases, media kit, navigation (for browsers, buyers, the trade, and the media), navigational consistency, linking to home page, site map, newsletter, obstacle-free, personalization, RSS, responsiveness, search rank, shipping information, site search, marketing materials, and last but not least, visual appeal (whew!).

Everybody arrives at a Web site with a goal already in mind.  A site that is "visitor effective" makes sure they reach their goal and leave with a good impression.  If it's hard to figure out, or it's unpleasant, chances are they won't be back.

By letting you see how your winery Web site scored in an independent evaluation of visitor effectiveness, we hope to get you interested in what purchasing The Winery Web Site Report has to offer:

• A printed report, specific to your winery.  For each of the 25 rating elements, it includes
  
  • Why the element is important to visitor effectiveness
  • How we scored the element (some elements are worth more points than others)
  • How over 2,200  wineries scored on this element, broken down by winery size
  • A best practice checklist, based on our comprehensive site review
• A year of online access to our private Web site, including access to
  
  • A current evaluation summary of every winery Web site (we add new sites and update our evaluation of sites on a continuous basis).
  • Ccurrent statistics with additional breakdowns not in printed report (e.g. top 10 sites for each rating element)
  • Our experts to address your specific questions (via form or e-mail)
  • New features as they become available
• Free site re-evaluation, so you can see the effect of changes you make based on your purchase
• An unconditional money-back guarantee

So, what are you waiting for?  Go request your score!  And come back tomorrow for our year-end announcment.

New Winery Blog: Seufert Winery

Jim Seufert wrote to let us know that he's launched Seufert Winery, "a small commercial winery in Oregon's Willamette Valley" dedicated to producing single-vineyard Pinot Noirs.  I guess commercial means that he intends to make money from it. 

Like all right-thinking wineries (grin), he's decided to blog about it: Seufert Winery blog

Jim's been blogging since September, so there are several posts to catch up on.  His most recent post is a pictorial about making ice wine.

As always, we've added Seufert's blog to our comprehensive list of winery blogs, bringing our current total to 13.  Please let us know of any winery blogs we're missing (and consider starting one for your winery).

Wine Pricing: Let the Customer Decide?

Following yesterday's post about pricing (and the true value of a $18 wine being sold in a "buy one, get one free" offer), consider this (heretical) question: What if you let your customer decide how much a bottle of your wine is worth?

I know, I must be losing my mind.  I only ask the question because some recording artists are experimenting with the idea of letting customers decide the price of their music.  Imagine how much press a winery might get if they took this approach to pricing one of their wines.

"But, " I can hear you say, "what if people don't want to pay a price that permits us to stay in business?"

What does it mean if people think your wine is worth less than you are charging for it?  In my experience, it means that you only sell that first bottle: "That bottle of '02 Acme Cabernet was OK for $20, but the '02 Erstwhile Cab was the same price and I liked it better."

Don't take this post literally - I know that downloadable music is not the same as a bottle of Pinot Noir.  But pricing (as opposed to just price) is a way to distinguish yourself, particularly for a smaller winery where direct sales play a larger role and making people aware of your wine is job one.

Wine Pricing

An interesting rant on the pricing of wine (in this case, Fetzer's Valley Oaks California Cabernet) from Hugh Macleod in the United Kingdom.  What's most interesting is that Hugh went to Fetzer's Web site to get more information about the wine he'd just purchased, and came away a bit confused (terroir-based marketing vs. bulk-shipping on the label).

I wonder if anyone in the Fetzer marketing department has a Technorati search feed set up for "Fetzer"?  As I wrote elsewhere, reputation management is important, and there are excellent tools to help you keep track of what people are saying about you online.  For example, I'm glad I'm not Trader Joe's wine manager.

What would be *really* interesting is a winery that wrote about how wine gets priced and the pricing challenges they face (and it's certainly a complex and tortuous process from winery to store).  Hugh?  Tom?

(By the way, here in the States we have the "Pay full price for a bottle, get the second bottle for $0.05" promotion, which seems a bit more clever than BOGOF).