The Winery Web Site Report

Backing Up Your TypePad Blog

Rich Brooks over at Flyte provides four videos which are of extreme importance to TypePad-based winery bloggers: How to Backup Your TypePad Blog

Winery blogs that use TypePad include:

• Anne Amie Vineyards
• La Gramiere
• Dover Canyon
• Farella Vineyard
• Kinkead Ridge
• Perrin & Fils
• Preston Vineyards
• Quady Winery
• Segue Cellars
• Tablas Creek
• Twisted Oak

If you're a winery blogging with TypePad, please leave a comment!  If you're using TypePad, what have been the pluses and minuses for you?  How do *you* back up your blog?

Word of Mouth Marketing

Based on my wacky belief that the best way to sell more wine is to get people talking about your wine, I point you to Guy Kawasaki's book  preview of Andy Sernovitz's Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.

The most powerful word-of-mouth advocates might be the customers who have only done business with you once so far. They are the most excited; repeat customers are probably accustomed to the great product/service and therefore, ironically, less likely to talk about it.

For example, one of the best winery tours used to be, maybe still is, at Sonoma-Cutrer.  I learned a huge amount about how Brice Jones and friends were engaged in trying to make the very best Chardonnay (now trying something similar with Pinot Noir at Emeritus Vineyards).  I would always recommend that people make an appointment and take the tour.

Guy's post gives some thought-starting examples of ways in which companies generate that all-important buzz.

Social Wine Discovery with Adegga

In the comments to a recent post, I received a comment from André Ribeirinho.  Since I'm interested in the backgrounds of people who read and comment on my posts, I followed his link to www.adegga.com, which is currently a closed-beta test for a "social wine discovery" site (but, as I recommend for any site-in-progress, they do have a way to let you express your interest in knowing when the site goes live).

Fortunately, they have a blog which gives a little more insight into what they mean by "social wine discovery" (discovering new wines based on other people's choices), and a peek inside adegga showing how the site actually works/looks.  It's interesting to note a shift in their tagline from "social wine shopping" to "social wine discovery" over the course of time.

André does a good 30-second elevator pitch:

At adegga we are building a place where users can share their passion for wine with friends. A place where conversation around wines can take place and where all users can take valuable information from that. Allowing them to learn and shop wine in a better way.

How does this differ from sites like Corkd ("the simple way to review and share wine")?  It remains to be seen.  Vinography's Alder provides a list of why community tasting note sites will fail:

1. lack of a comprehensive wine database
2. variable quality of user-generated quality (Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap)
3. lack of incentive to participate
4. lack of critcal mass of reviewers (members)

André sees answers to those problems:

1. Creating a universal identifier for each wine, along with improved search/match
2. May not be an issue for Adegga's intended audience (friends writing for friends)
3. Better tools for sharing and participation (I agree here)
4. Taggers, not just Reviewers (this is his weakest rebuttal)

(I recommend you read his full post).  Alder himself noted the conditions for success:

So here's what they need to do: solve three of these four problems.

noting that #4 may be unsolvable.

Alder also rants at length about CellarTracker's shortcomings mentions "cellar tracking" as one benefit these sites can provide their members, and it wouldn't surprise me if André and his team are thinking about a Basecamp-style "simple is better" approach to the  issue of keeping track of your bottle stash, given his response to Alder.

I've signed up to find out when adegga goes live, so I'll let you know what I think when the site goes live.  Are any of my readers involved with the private beta test?  If so, leave a comment.

New Wineries and Their Web Sites

I was reading the Flying Trout Winery blog, which mentioned a new winery from Trey Busch, evidently a well-respected winemaker in the Walla Walla, WA area.  His new winery is named Sleight of Hand Cellars, although all I got from the Flying Trout post was "Slight [sic] of Hand."

Being me (and the author of a blog on winery Web sites), I was curious to see what sort of Web presence this new winery might have.  My first stop was Google, where I tried several search phrases in an attempt to locate their Web site (double-quoted words must appear together and in order):

• Slight of Hand winery
• "Slight of Hand" winery
• "Slight of Hand" winery Trey
• "Slight of Hand" winery Trey Busch
• "Trey Busch" slight of hand winery
• "Trey Busch"

The final search led me to Congrats to Trey Busch, a thread in one of the West Coast Wine Network forums:

Trey will be ending his run at Basel Cellars in order to make his own wine. The new venture will, appropriately enough given Trey's rightful devotion to Pearl Jam, be called Sleight of Hand Cellars. Trey is the only Georgia Bulldog, Pearl Jam lovin' guy making wine in Walla Walla that I know of. Congratulations to Trey and Jen.

Trey himself added a comment, which fortunately had nearly all of his contact information, including a Web site address:

Trey Busch
Winemaker/Owner
Sleight of Hand Cellars
Walla Walla WA
trey [--at--] SofHcellars [--dot--] com
http://www.SofHcellars.com

(by the way, Googling sleight of hand cellars returns the Appellation America page for Sleight of Hand Cellars as the number 1 result - unfortunately, it doesn't tell me their Web site address!).

Interestingly, SleightOfHandCellars.com is available, so I'm curious why Trey didn't purchase it (even if he plans to use the shorter version because it's quicker to type).  Ideally, you should own as many of the names that people looking for your wine are likely to try.  I can see that the domain name is registered through GoDaddy.com, which only charges about $9 per domain (and usually offers a discount when purchasing more than one).

Go visit www.SofHCellars.com - it's using the free hosting GoDaddy provides as part of a domain registration, so it shows some advertising at the top.  It's not hard to change by paying GoDaddy a few bucks a month for basic hosting, and I would recommend doing it ASAP.

The good thing is that the imagery that Sleight of Hand appears to be using as its logo/label is front and center, and it's a pretty memorable image (more so without ads!).  The image should be sized so that you don't have to scroll to see the entire page (particularly, since there's no reason for the page to extend "below the fold").

The other thing that Trey/SoH is missing is the opportunity to capture an e-mail address for people who visit the site.  And maybe an RSS feed for the techno-savvy who want automatic notification of changes to the site.

Mike's Recommendations for Your First Winery Web Site:

• A big picture of your (distinctive and memorable) logo.
• Contact information (as much as you have).  I would recommend that you put the owner's name, the winery mailing address, a working phone number, and the owner's e-mail address.
• A one or two sentence description of the kinds of wines you make.  For example, at Appellation America, Trey writes "Our flagship wines will be a right bank style blend, based on Cabernet Franc and Merlot, as well as a superstar Syrah."
• An invitation to supply an e-mail address for updates.  I would offer some sort of benefit (e.g. free shipping on their first order) to overcome most people's natural resistance to sharing their e-mail address with a stranger, along with a very clear statement that you will never sell or rent their e-mail address, or send them spam.  Oh, and don't forget to send them an initial (and ideally, personal) e-mail to thank them for signing up, and plan to follow up at least quarterly.  Your e-mail also might invite them to "tell a friend".
• If your wine is available somewhere, you might tell people how to find it.  For example, Trey's Sleight of Hand wines can be purchased here.

Even if you don't have a drop of your wine bottled, the above items will allow you to promote your Web site (via press releases, media stories, back labels, corks, T-shirts, etc.) and realize value from it.  For example, Sleight of Hand got this nice write up in the Seattle Times, which probably generated some Web traffic for them.  But without an easy way to indicate their interest in SoH wines, those visitors may be lost for good.

The excuse is: we'll have our site up soon (Sleight of Hand has " :Website in development: " at the bottom), but that can take longer than expected.  Once you have your visual identity established, you should get a functional one-page site up.

Moral of Post: don't even think about promoting your winery if you don't have a one-page Web site that can do the handful of things listed above.

I'd be happy to get comments from established wineries about their first Web site, or from new wineries like Sleight of Hand with their experiences in creating a Web site.  I know there are a zillion things to do when starting up any enterprise, but why does a basic Web presence get such short shrift from a new winery?

Regardless, best of luck to Trey Busch in his new enterprise.  I look forward to seeing the Sleight of Hand Cellars site evolve over time.

Lazy Sunday: Law for (Winery) Bloggers

An informative and useful post: 12 Imporant US Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

(Yes, I've been writing a lot about blogging of late, rather than winery Web sites - so tell me about a winery Web site that is breaking new ground or otherwise doing something worth commenting about)