The Winery Web Site Report

Lazy Sunday: Winery Magazines

I was listening to an online video (about setting up membership/subscription sites, not really appropriate for my winery readers), and one suggestion they made when researching market potential was to see how many magazines pertained to the topic at Magazines.com (a site where you can subscribe to magazines).

There are 6 results when searching for "wine": Food & Wine, The Quarterly Review of Wines, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Press Northwest, and WineMaker.  Notably absent are Wines & Vines and Wine Advocate.

There are exactly zero results, however, when searching for "winery".

I'm just sayin'.

Saturday Morning Peeve

We all have our pet peeves.  Allow me to share one that I have about Web sites.  When I see

Copyright (C) 2007, Some Random Winery.

I  just get all twitchy.  You see, there's a way to actually have an honest-to-goodnes copyright symbol appear, like this:

Copyright © 2007, Some Random Winery.

which appears the way God intended it to.

The trick is to use © (the HTML code which generates the © symbol) in place of (C).  It can be a little tricky, but you have to agree that it looks much nicer.

This has been a public service announcement.  You may now continue about your Saturday business.

Winery Web Site Developers

There are three companies I generally recommend talking to if you are looking to outsource your winery's Web presence.  Alphabetically, they are:

• Cultivate Systems
• eWinerySolutions
• Inertia Beverage Group

The strength of these companies is that they are all focused solely on wineries.  Each of the companies above has a different offering, which is why I encourage wineries to talk with all three.

Some of you may have had your sites developed by Winery Websites (part of WorldZoo).  They show about 30 winery sites in their portfolio (some for well-known wineries), but they seem more focused on the marketing aspect of a Web site rather than a fully integrated fulfillment.  Most of the sites I looked at appear to use Nexternal Solutions for their e-commerce solution.

Many of you may be familiar with Inertia's REthink Wine Blog, as it does a great job of making them visible as thought leaders in the Direct-to-Consumer (and now Direct-to-Trade) area of the wine biz.  I was curious if either of the other two companies were actively blogging, and I'm pleased to report that eWinerySolutions now has The eWinery Blog, with nine short, interesting posts since the start of June.  Like the REthink blog, it's written by several different people.  I looked for a blog at Cultivate and Winery Web, but couldn't find any sign.

If you're a winery, I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a comment about your experiences in getting your Web site built, and how you feel about the result (no need to name names).  What do you really like about the outcome, and what do you still wish for?

If you're one of the companies mentioned above, please leave a comment describing what distinguishes your offerings to wineries. 

If you work with wineries to develop their Web presence, please feel free to leave a comment as well.

New Winery Blog: Crofut Family Winery

Just discovered, and with only two posts, it's the Crofut Traveling Wine Bottle from Crofut Family Winery in Minnesota:

Just south of Minneapolis is Crofut Family Winery and Vineyard. Here in some of the richest soils of the world, historic and modern comforts combine to produce a respected winery destination.

Incidentally, there are more than 15 wineries in MN.

It's been a while since a Crofut last posted, so I hope this won't become an inactive winery blog.  You've really got to make time to blog (he said, after a couple of weeks without a post), and if it's not something you enjoy, you won't make the time.  I hope the Crofuts will keep at it.

As always, I've subscribed to their RSS feed using Bloglines, and added them to our list of winery blogs, bringing our total to 52.

WWSR in Wines & Vines

The Winery Web Site Report (WWSR) got a nice mention over at Wines & Vines in Tina Caputo's article Get More Out of Your Winery Blog, which also mentions our comprehensive list of winery blogs.

Like most print publications with long lead times, Tina interviewed me some time ago, and I'd forgotten all about it. I just discovered (from my blog stats) that traffic was heading here from the article. 

Of course, Tina talks with Josh, Jeff, and Jason.  But I get the last word.

Welcome to all of you who followed the link from Wines & Vines, and a big thanks for including me in your article, Tina!