Some time back, Finger Lakes Weekend Wino (FLWW) asked if we would extract the top-ranked Finger Lakes winery Web sites from our data. Although it took a little bit of time (most because I'm a stickler for checking the accuracy of our published data), it finally got done, and FLWW has now blogged our Finger Lakes Winery Website Rankings. The post makes this excellent point:
It may be true that not as many people will actually buy product from a website, but it is also a fact that people do a large amount of their pre-buying research from browsing websites. So please, for the sake of your customers and potential customers, get those websites updated and make them a real reflection of your passion for making great wine and your pride in your products.
It's nice to hear that people who enjoy wine actually care about the visitor effectiveness of winery Web sites. It's not just something I made up to sell custom reports to wineries. It's all about creating and sustaining relationships with people who are interested in (the story of) your wine (buyers, browsers, the trade, media).
PS - if you're a winery in the Finger Lakes region, you should definitely subscribe to Finger Lakes Weekend Wino (as well as Lenndevours, which frequently talks about Finger Lakes wines). As always, I recommend the browser-based Bloglines as a painless introduction to blog subscriptions.
I'd like to chime in here as a consumer and a member of the local wine media. PLEASE UPDATE YOUR WEBSITES.
For one, the TnT group (twenties and thirties) rely heavily on the Internet for planning their weekends, researching things that interest them, etc. These are your future customers...they are going to be buying wine for another 50-60+ years. Cater to them.
And, as a member of the local wine press, I can tell you how frustrating it is to go to a winery website for more information, background info, etc...only to come up with NOTHING.
Of course the worst thing is that there are at least two wineries who have "contact us" forms that I've filled out at least a half dozen time...with no response.
Mike...do you measure response rate on those sorts of things? Could be an interesting item to include in your reports...either how quickly you hear back from a form or from an email link.
Posted by: Lenn | February 13, 2006 at 08:52 AM