The Winery Web Site Report

How Much?

How much are you willing to spend to sell one case of your wine at full price? 

One way of thinking about this is how much you might discount your wine to retailers and distributors, plus the cost of marketing your wines distributed across the number of cases you sell.

This isn't an idle question.  All will be revealed shortly.  So please, give your answer (as a percentage), along with your reasoning, in the comments.  Thanks in advance!

New Winery Blog: Lafond Winery

If you visit the Lafond Winery Web site, there's a link to the Winery & Vineyard  weblog, "California winery news by Lafond Winery and Santa Barbara Winery".  They've been writing since the start of harvest in September, with a total of 42 posts so far.

I've read every one of those posts (something I try to do with every new winery blog I write about), but the format of the Winery & Vineyard blog makes it difficult (the monthly archives only post the first bit of each post for that month, and individual posts don't have a previous/next link - for an example of how it should work, take a look at the monthly archives and individual posts of this blog).  It's always nice if a new visitor arrives on a particular post that they can move forward and backward easily - it makes your blog more inviting (along with interesting headlines).

Winery & Vineyard has lots of excellent picture (David Lafond appears to be an avid photographer).  In fact, I really like the header graphic of their stainless steel Triage destemmer/sorter in use - "action shots" are frequently more appealing/interesting that static images.  Of course, it would be great to have a post/story about that image as well.

Note: Lafond's sister winery, Santa Barbara Winery, also links to this blog, and it covers both wineries (Lafond appears to be reds, and Santa Barbara does the whites).

This is a solid initial effort, and I look forward to seeing how the Winery & Vineyard blog develops.  In the meantime, we've added them to our list of of winery blogs.

The Top Wine Marketers

Advertising Age has released its Marketing 50 Awards (PDF):

The marketers behind these products broke through the clutter and delivered real impact (and ROI) for their brands.

What's interesting (and kinda cool) is that two of the award winners are winery people:  Donny Sebastiani of Don Sebastiani & Sons and Hugh McLeod of Stormhoek.  Sebastiani is described as "uncorking the stodgy world of wine marketing" with innovative naming and packaging.  McLeod, of course, has used blogging and bloggers as a grassroots form of marketing (the writeup fails to mention the PR value of doing something unusual, which may have actually been the driving factor for Stormhoek).

Both wineries have non-standard Web sites as well.  DonAndSons.com is a high-gloss site that makes use of Flash and other (for the wine biz) cutting edge technologies like podcasting and video.  As you might expect, Stormhoek's Web site is a blog.

I'll stick my neck out and say that neither Web site is particularly visitor effective, at least as we define it at The Winery Web Site Report (for instance, the Stormhoek site displays oddly in Internet Explorer, and the Sebastiani site doesn't particularly help people who come to the site looking to buy wine).  Remember, winery Web site visitors come with a goal already in mind, and your site should make sure that it's obvious how to reach that goal.

New Winery Blog: Via Vecchia

Via Vecchia, "a Quality Micro-Winery that makes unadultered [sic] and unadjusted wines, by adulterated and adjusted people," appears to be the first winery I've encountered with a blog, but no Web site.

By their own description, they are some or all of the following:

• Garagistas
• Border radicals
• Cultural Creatives
• Fair Trade Activists

and they have been blogging up a storm.  They are also located in Ohio, so I'm wondering if they know fellow Ohio winery blogger Nancy Bentley over at Kinkead Ridge (Nancy's in Ripley, Via Vecchia is in Powell, and here's a map -- looks like a bit of a drive).

On the plus side: lots of writing and energy, and they've been at it since May, showing perseverence.  On the downside, the videos need work and *I* desperately need an "About Us" post - I have no idea who all the people in the pictures are.  Actually, they go by names, but the relationships are unclear.  Whose writing am I reading?

Regardless, visit the Via Vecchia blog, We Stomp, and give them some feedback on what they're doing.

(My recommendation - add some posts that talk about what you're trying to accomplish at Via Vecchia, and who the players are.  The posts could probably benefit by being shorter, single-thought entries.  I like the photos, and clearly, there's a story in there somewhere.  Just let it out!  And maybe think about a Web site for more static information?)

Simple, but Brilliant

Do you sell your wine in stores?  Do people know what your label looks like?  With the holidays coming up (a big time for buying wine), don't you think it would be a good idea to remind your customers what your label looks like?

In The Winery Web Site Report, we recommend a large image of your wine bottle on your home page (rather than the more commonplace picture of a sunny vineyard).  Why?  Because your bottle and, more specifically, the label is the thing that customers will see in a store or restaurant.

Lazy Sunday: A Different Kind of Blog Post

No, not this one.  I'm doing it the "regular" way.

But this is a different approach to blog posting.  It does the thing that I think you should try to do with your winery and wines, which is tell a story.  It uses images.  It's not afraid to be a little "out there."

It would be very cool if someone liked your wine/winery enough to do a posting like this.  In fact, I've written my own post about this before: Inviting Bloggers to Visit

The truth is, a clever post can get your wine in front of people who might not otherwise have known about it.  I've never been to Alain Ducaisse or had an all-white-truffle menu, but it sure looked like an interesting experience.

Another reason I find this post worth mentioning is that food, like wine, is ultimately about how it tastes.  Reviews and blog posts are just surrogates for the actual experience.  This post demonstrates an innovative approach to that challenge.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for the pointer.

How Not to Build a Web Site

Also from the Harvest Fair / Wine 2006 special edition of Northbay biz magazine: How Not to Build a Web Site

(by yours truly)

My basic point is that starting out to build a Web site by hiring a designer is the wrong way to start.  You really need a team of people to help you make a Web site that is visitor effective, easy to update, and integrated with the rest of your business.

Gold Medal Lessons

No, this post isn't about the recent Sonoma County Harvest Fair award winners (but congratulations to Wilson and Ledson on their win).

Instead, I wanted to mention that Gold Medal Flour has a blog, and there's a lesson for winery owners:

...Any product or service, no matter how straightforward it seems, has a story to tell. And there are people in your community who want to form a connection with the experts who know your products best. Getting started with a blog is a great way to begin to tell that story.

Every winery has a story to tell.  Whether you blog about it, or tell it via your Web site (hint - most wineries don't), or write interesting direct mail letters, or create a print ad that tells the story, that fact is at the heart of your potential success.

Corollary: if people think they've already heard your story, they will tune you out.  That's why I have a strong aversion to pretty pictures of vineyards on winery Web sites - unless you've got a scarecrow, or a rubber chicken, or bare vines, or something out of the ordinary, people think they've already heard your story (our grapes are the best blah blah blah...).

How Good Winery Web Sites Work

From the Harvest Fair / Wine 2006 special edition of Northbay biz magazine: How Good Winery Web Sites Work

The article, by Kathleen Dreessen, prominently features our print publication (The Winery Web Site Report) and its findings. I liked this quote from Dirk Hampson of Nickel & Nickel:

Hampson also feels wineries could do more online marketing. “I think wineries are in such a traditional industry—where wine has been made for 5,000 years—that I don’t think they’ve been as good at adapting to this particular form of communication,” says Hampson. “It’s partly because wineries keep thinking it’s all about tasting, and there’s so much more we do.

Anyway, it's always nice to get mentioned in the press, and I think the article does a good job of representing those of us who are trying to help wineries realize their full online potential (including Cultivate Systems, eWinerySolutions, and Inertia Beverages - all mentioned in the article).

(Full disclosure: I write a monthly column on business and technology for Northbay biz ).

New Winery Blog: Mountain Spirit Winery

Lesley and Darren Barkett of Mountain Spirit Winery in Salida, Colorado wrote a nice note to let me know about their winery Web site and new winery blog.  Sadly, I'm not above being flattered:

Thanks for all you do to promote our wine industry.  I was hoping you would add our new blog to your list of winery blogs.  www.mountainspiritwinery.com/blog.html is the address.  We're trying to generate a little interest by posting a coupon code on a posting that offers discounts off our wine. Thanks again for your help.  You have been a great resource for us.

It's always nice to hear that people appreciate The Winery Web Site Report blog.  The Mountain Spirit Winery blog is brand-new (only a few posts), but I like what I see.  First thing, of course, they need to add a link to the blog from their home page (maybe right up there at the top next to the 800-MS-WINES number).

I hope that Darren, Lesley, Mike, and Terri will follow through with pictures.  The one picture of their press was broken when I looked at it (the link generates a 403 "Forbidden" error).  It's always good practice to look at your Web site and blog using someone else's computer -- the one down at the library, or your neighbor's -- just to see what the rest of the world sees when they visit.

And apropos of a new winery blog, here are 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch.

(As always, we've added the Mountain Spirit Winery blog to our comprehensive list of winery blogs, bringing the total to 33.)

Marketing Law, Marketing Wine

Take a look at this 10-step online marketing checklist.  It's aimed at law firms seeking to market themselves, but it has a number of lessons for anyone doing online marketing, including wineries:

1. Have a Web site
2. Start writing a blog
3. Optimize your Web site for search engines
4. Offer a client extranet (give your customers special access)
5. Let your Web visitors sign up to get an e-newsletter
6. Use Web usability techniques
7. Avoid content mistakes (i.e. things nobody cares about)
8. Present yourself well
9. Google yourself to see how others see you
10. Present Web seminars

With the exception of number 10, each of these applies to wineries seeking to do a good job of marketing themselves online (and number 10 for wineries might be "Make a video that people want to pass along").