The Winery Web Site Report

The 2009 American Wine Blog Awards

Although I can't imagine that anyone who reads this blog isn't also reading Fermentation, allow me to help get the word out for Mr. Wark.

NOMINATIONS FOR THE 2009 AMERICAN WINE BLOG AWARDS ARE NOW OPEN!

The following categories exist:

• Best Wine Blog Graphics & Presentation
• Best Industry/Business Wine Blog
• Best Wine Reviews on a Wine Blog
• Best Overall Wine Blog
• Best Single Subject Wine Blog
• Best Winery Blog
• Best Writing On a Wine Blog

All categories require at least 52 posts between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008.  You can nominate up to three in each category.  Click one of the links above to add your nominations as a comment.

If, by some chance, you'd like to nominate this blog, I suspect that "industry/business" and "single subject" are the appropriate categories.

Which Guy Is Your Winery Web Site?

When I read this post over at Copyblogger, I immediately thought of the way some winery Web sites write about themselves. 

Hint: don't be the guy in the suit.  It's all about helping your visitor achieve their goals.

The comments are pretty funny, too, even though they have nothing to do with winery Web sites.

(PS - The Winery Web Site Report uses a PC, but covets a Mac.)

Google Website Optimizer

As a follow-up post to Optimizing Your Web Site vs. Optimizing Your Search Rank, here's a 25-minute video on how to use Google Website Optimizer:

Of course, you've got to start by measuring your site activity with (free) Google Analytics.  If you haven't done that yet, here's How to Sign Up for Google Analytics in Less Than 5 Minutes (Quicktime movie).

Do you have questions about all this Web site optimization stuff?  Leave your questions in the comments!

Winery Video

A shout-out to my friend and fellow ex-SCDS-Trustee, Ted Elliott, who has some nicely produced video on his TR Elliott winery Web site.

My one recommendation to Ted is to upload his video to YouTube.  The exposure can't hurt, and Google (slightly) favors its own Web properties (i.e. YouTube) in search results.

A minor quibble: many people are annoyed by videos that start playing automatically.  It's probably better to have the video paused and display a "play" icon, like this:

Embedded video is now common enough that people know what do to do when they see that icon (go ahead - it's a five-second video).

I also wanted to mention The Winery Channel, which is promoting a number of wineries on its "Fine Wineries" channel:

• Antica Terra
• B Cellars  
• Denner Vineyards 
• Duckhorn Vineyards 
• Justin Vineyards & Winery 
• Paraduxx 
• St. Clement Vineyards 
• Twomey Cellars 
• Vincent Arroyo Winery 

The Winery Channel selects the wineries it covers in "Fine Wineries" based on (a) liking their wines, and (b) a 90+ score from Wine Spectator or Robert Parker.  TWC does ask wineries to share in the production costs, which seems like a win-win.  If you're interested this sort of arrangement (and the enhanced exposure it may offer), you can contact them for more details.

( Thanks to the Mutineer Magazine blog for reminding me to write about The Winery Channel, and an excuse to feature The Dramatic Hamster.)

UPDATE: CNET has a great review of HD Web video sites (most of which are free).

Optimizing Your Web Site vs. Optimizing Your Search Rank

There's a difference, you know, which Rich Page points out in his latest post: 7 (Great) Reasons Why Website Optimization should NOT be Confused with Search Engine Optimization (whew!)

Web site optimization focuses on visitor effectiveness:  making sure that your visitors leave with their goal for visting having been met, and pleasant thoughts about the experience.  Ideally, you've also "converted" them (e.g made a sale, captured an e-mail address, etc.).

Search engine optimization focuses on making sure your site can be found when people go searching for whatever it is that you're selling.

There's not much point in being found unless you're going to delight visitors once they find you.  That's why Web site optimization should come first when you spend time and effort on your Web presence.

What are you doing to optimize your winery Web site?   Leave a comment!

Three Ways To Improve Your Winery Web Site Today

1. Review your analytics (you have them, right?  If not, Google Analytics is FREEEEEE!)  

2. Ask your customers a question (it's not hard.  SurveyMonkey is FREEEEEE!) 

3. Analyze the competition (surfing the Web is FREEEEE!)

More  details in this Startup Nation post: 3 Ways to Improve Your Website Today

Why Blogspot Is Not The Place For Your Winery Blog

A fair number of winery blogs are hosted by Blogger (see The List) , meaning they have URLs that look like

acmewinery.blogspot.com

Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media offers several good reasons why this is a bad idea:  Why Blogspot is the Wrong Place for  Your Business Blog.

I know that wineries are hesitant to plunk down money (even $100 a year) for anything, but if you're at all concerned about the impression you make on visitors to your blog, listen to Rich's advice.  Having a Blogspot blog is like having a GeoCities web site or an AOL.com e-mail address - neither communicates care for your brand name.

Ideally, your blog will appear at the URLs

http://www.AcmeWinery.com/blog/ 

and 

http://blog.AcmeWinery.com/ 

both of which live within the AcmeWinery.com domain.  And, of course, your Web site navigation will have a clear link to your blog.  If you or your Webmaster can't handle this, get some help.  It's not that hard.

Are Rich and I off base?  What do you think?

Lazy Sunday: Rating Systems

You think the 100-point scale is bad?  Take a moment from your Sunday morning to look at rating movie rating systems.  When it comes to rating movies, it appears there's a difference betwen "signficance" and "enjoyable."

The most interesting item is at the end, where movie critics rate the "how many stars"  movie rating system.  And then, as some sites do, the results are averaged.

Are there any wine review sites which aggregate wine scores to arrive at a consensus?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Your Social Media System

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing provides a nice checklist of what he does hourly (!), daily, weekly and monthly to maintain and grow his social media network.

I do think that participating fully in social media as a business and marketing strategy requires discipline, automation routines and a daily commitment. Now, you’ve got to balance that with the fact that much of your activity is about building long-term momentum and deeper networks and that doesn’t always make the cash register ring today. So, some of what I do won’t be right for all, but I thought I would share my systematic approach in the hopes this may reveal some tips that make your experience more fruitful.

The list is good advice for wineries who are interested in social media (twitter, facebook, linkedin, blogs, digg, etc. etc. etc. ...)

Even better, he's now started a series of posts asking the same question of prominent marketers, starting with Chris Baggott on Small Business Social Media Workflow, which focuses on blogging as the centerpiece of his social media strategy.

Check it out!

Everything's A Special Case, Including Wineries Online

I'm continuing my annoying habit of pointing to insightful posts from Seth Godin by linking to That's a special case:

The new business isn't the same as the old business, just with computers.

The same is true of taking your winery online.

As an example, what would your wine club look like if it were truly Web-enabled?  It's not just your old wine club with computers.

It takes work to really think about this sort of thing, but I believe the payoff can be enormous.

Twitter Review: TwistedOak.com

El Jefe was first in line for my free offer, so without further ado, here's a 140-character review of the Twisted Oak Winery home page:

Clean, fun/wacky, odd navigation titles (but right stuff), assumes visitor in-the-know, needs focus on buyer?, no-scroll home (sorta). An A-

A somewhat longer explanation:

• The layout of the page is clean and crisp, with high-quality graphics and good white space.  It does not have an amateur feeling about it.
• The "feeling" of the page is fun and even a little wacky, what with the Twisted Oak signature rubber chicken.
• I recommend that winery Web sites have navigation elements for buyers, browsers, the media, and the trade.  Twisted Oak has all these, but with a unique set of names.  Ordinarily, I would recommend against this (don't make people learn a new language to use your site), but it's in keeping with the overall fun/wacky (dare I say, twisted?) feeling of the site.
• The site assumes that you are in-the-know.  It might be a little disorienting for some people (what's that rubber chicken thing all about?  And that skull!), but at the same time, it's not boring, and regular visitors will feel right at home.
• The page lacks focus on helping people who want to buy wine.  The home page doesn't feature a wine (I actually like the third column layout of the Twisted Oak blog, which lists all of Twisted's wines).
• The home page almost fits on a single screen, which is generally a good thing (a home page which scrolls on forever is probably trying to do too much, making it hard for visitors to figure out how to satisfy the goal that brought them to the site in the first place).   The Twisted Oak home page tries to do a lot, and it does a pretty good job (partly because the "banners" at the right visually segment each thing).  

Let me tell you, it's hard to do a site review in 140-characters!  First of all, I cheated, since I didn't include a TinyURL link to the Twisted Oak site.  Second, I really had to focus on just the home page experience, omitting product presentation, etc.  Third, you can't really give any background information.  The bullets above show how much I had to leave out.

But, it is fun to try and condense the important stuff into a single tweet.  Does your site help visitors achieve their goal (whatever it might be) in visiting?  Do they leave with a positive impression of your winery?  I think visitors to Twisted Oak's winery web site will say that it does.

So, now's your chance to weigh in.  Agree? Disagree?  What did I miss?  Can you do a better review in 140 characters?

(And a most sincere thanks to Jeff "El Jefe" Stai at Twisted Oak for being my guinea pig!)

Free 140-Character Web Site Reviews

Rich Page will review your Web site via Twitter for free.  The only downsides are: 

1. You have to have a Twitter account to get the results.
2. The review is limited to 140 characters (the length of a  tweet / SMS message)
3. It may take him a few days, so don't expect an instant response. 

Because I wish I'd thought of this, I will review your winery Web site via Twitter.  Same deal (free, limited to 140 characters, and it make take me a few days to get around to it).  Just send me a tweet containing the URL at wwsr (the new, official, business-only Twitter identity of The Winery Web Site Report, as opposed to my personal Twitter identity, mikeduffy).

So, you can get two reviews of your winery Web site, from two different people, all  for the same low price (free).

A Blog By Any Other Name...

Most winery blogs have fairly mundane and expected names, e.g. The Acme Winery Blog.

But, there are exceptions:  Michel-Schlumberger's Benchland Blog, Coral Mustang's Tempranillo Tango, and  Far Niente's Terroir: Dirty Talk About Wine among them, and The List tries hard to include them.

My new favorite winery blog name is Back Label, from Dunham & Froese Estate Winery.  Those wacky Canadians!

Your Twitter Landing Page

If you have a Twitter account, under the "Account" tab of your Settings you'll find place to enter a More Info URL.  Now most people just enter the URL of their Web site address or their blog.  For example, Covered Bridge Cellars Twitter profile links to their blog, as does El Jefe. On the other hand, Sol Rouge links to their winery's home page.

But there's something better you can do.

People who click on that link are expecting more information about you.  Don't just throw them onto your home page.  Create a Twitter Landing Page, specifically to address the questions of someone considering following you (or wondering whether to block you from following them).

Here's a terrific example of a Twitter Landing Page from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net, who also wrote this great post about how to create a Twitter Landing Page.  Although ProBlogger focuses a lot on how to make money from blogging, it has useful information for all bloggers about building traffic.

Lazy Sunday: Wacky Wine Labels

Take 5 minutes of your Sundary morning to review these tech-themed wine brands from the fevered minds at woot.com. A sample:

Don't miss the final selection, Pirate Bay Pruno!

The Value of Optimizing Your Web Site

The ubiquitous Google, which has a free product called  Google Website Optimizer, just announced the four winners of the "Website Workout "contest they ran last year, with some impressive results:

For example, by changing the layout of their product page, Colonial Candle was able to increase the number of candles they sold by 20% and improve sales by $20,000 in one month.

If you happen to care about making your winery Web site a sales machine, you may want to watch this 2.5 minute Colonial Candle video:

(or, you can watch all four Website Workout videos, one about each of the winners.)

At least, click through on the announcement to see the before and after pictures of the Colonial Candle site.  It may surprise you (I say this, having looked at a lot of winery sites).

Two take-aways:  Investing time in optimizing your site conversion is worthwhile, and, your intuition about what works (or doesn't work) is probably wrong.

How do you approach testing and optimization of your winery Web site?  Share a comment.

The Most Useless Winery Web Site?

I have a Google Alert for the phrase winery web site, and it turns up things like this post, which includes the following comment:

Bonus points: this is probably the most useless winery Web site I've ever seen. Check it out!

The Web site in question?  Daniel Le Brun, "one of New Zealand's most respected Methode Traditionnelle wines."

Is it the most useless winery Web site you've ever seen?  Well, it does have a phone number and an e-mail link.  And a nice picture of their looks-like-everybody-else's-bottle sparkling wine.  But...

• It doesn't tell people who want to buy the wine where they can find it, other than "most wine 
  retailers, supermarkets and a selection of restaurants throughout New Zealand."  It would be nice to have a little more detail.
• It doesn't offer the opportunity to buy their wine online.  What, they don't like more margin?  Do the Kiwis place some restriction on online wine sales?
• It doesn't have full contact information.
• It doesn't have anything for the media who might be interested in writing or blogging about Daniel Le Brun sparklers. 
• It doesn't have any consumer-oriented information about the wines they sell.

This winery presumably sells a lot of wine, and the focus of their site is on the trade ("call us if you'd like to sell our wine").  For the trade, it's OK (but they're missing an opportunity to support their distributors, retailers, and restaurants with sales materials).  For everyone else, it *is* pretty useless.

Remember: there are four types of visitor arriving at your winery Web site:

1. People who want to buy your wine right now (buyers)
2. People who want more information about your wine or winery (browsers)
3. People who want to sell your wine (the trade)
4. People who want to tell a story about your wines or winery (the media)

If you were Daniel Le Brun wines, what would you do?

Something To Shout About: A Checklist

If my wines were listed here or here, you can bet that I would do all of the following:

1. Create a high-quality image of the bottle with the award (suitable for the media to use)
2. Update the front page of my Web site  
3. Update the product page(s) for my award-winning wine(s) 
4. Write a post for my winery blog
5. Tweet the news to my followers on Twitter 
6. Send an e-mail to my mailing list 
7. Make sure I mention it in my next newsletter 
8. Do a press release (along with a nice bottle+award image)
9. Let my distributors, retailers, and restaurant know about it with a updated product PDF and shelf-talkers
10. Make sure that everyone in the tasting room knows about it (employees and visitors)

In every case, you have the opportunity to make a special offer to the people you are contacting.  For example, people who have already bought the wine might want to add to their cellar.

I can almost bet, though, that most of the award-winners won't do any of  these things.

Winning an award isn't just a time to feel good, it's an opportunity to advance your brand.

(Thanks to the Harney Lane blog for inspiring this post)

WineBusiness.com Suggests The Best Winery Blogs

From the WineBusiness.com list of winery blogs:

Thinking about starting a blog for your winery? Interested in seeing what other wineries are doing? See our editors' picks of the best winery blogs.

I was glad to see that they added their own twist to information from The List, by adding thumbnails and a quick editorial summary (although it looks like they may have just copied the taglines from the various blogs).

WineBusiness.com Reads The Winery Web Site Report!

I was pleasantly surprised last week to discover that this blog is one of the "featured" wine industry blogs at WineBusiness.com.  I noticed that I had a number of visits coming from their site.

Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit!  Thanks, guys.  I'm flattered by the company I'm in (including Lew Perdue and Tom Wark).

Your Winery Concierge

This is a very cool idea from Donati Family Vineyard: offer to facilitate travel itineraries for your wine club members for free (and others for a $40 fee).  Watch the 98-second video:

It encourages your biggest fans (i.e. your wine club members) to visit and buy wine, encourages non-club members to join and, most of all, it builds a deeper relationship between your winery and  those who use the service (and probably increases your standing in the local business community as well).

For people who would like to visit your winery (and those nearby), but don't want the hassle of trip planning, this is a no-brainer.

And the offer itself is particularly attractive, since joining the wine club is free and only obligates you to one two-bottle shipment of wine, which is probably about the same as the $40 you'd pay as a non-member for this service.

I think it's a great idea -- what do you all think?  If not for your winery alone, how about for your local association?

PS - I think that they should allow each wine club member to give this service as a free gift to one special friend. Doing so encourages them to evangelize others (and makes them look like cognoscenti).

Lazy Sunday: Next Christmas Is Coming

I was just noticing that Wine.com has "Business Gift Services" in their main navigation.  That means (among other things) that they think this is an important source of business, else why give that prominence to it?

It reminds me of one year that senior executives in my company were given a cast of Stag's Leap Cabernet for Christmas by the CEO.  It was a memorable gift, which (in my youth and naivete) I drank all too quickly.

It also reminds me how the Wall Street Journal writers Gaiter and Brecher suggest a case of mixed wine as a special holiday gift.

How many of your regular customers are CEOs or company owners?  How many of them might consider giving a case of your best wine for Christmas next year?  Particularly if you remind them next year (and maybe offer something special, like gift wrapping or personalization or a nice price or a mixed case)?

Take 5 minutes to ponder this with your Sunday coffee, and place a reminder in your datebook for next October: Christmas is Coming!

Wine.com Offers Unlimited Shipping For $50

For $50 a year, a Wine.com customer can have all the wine they buy shipped to them at no additional cost.  And there's no minimum order.

Read more about Wine.com's Steward-Ship^TM program.  Normally, Wine.com prices standard shipping at $8.95 an order, plus $1.00 a bottle, so a case would cost $21 to ship.  So customers who expect to buy more than two cases (or 5 individual bottles) a year are going to want to sign up for this offer.

Unlimited shipping is a great tactic to get people to buy more from you online.  Something you might want to consider for your own online e-commerce activities.

Copyright Reminder

We're almost ten days into the new year.  Does your winery Web site have

Copyright © 2009

in place?  This is one assurance to your readers that your Web site receives regular (at least annual) care.

If you have a conscientious Webmaster, it's probably already been taken care of...

Just sayin'.

Widgets, Widgets, Widgets

Here's a widget created for The Winery Web Site Report blog by TrevR (unbidden by me) using WidgetBox:

TrevR of Uncork29 ("the community resource for all things Napa Valley") has created widgets for other wineries including Cartlidge & Brown, Roshambo, and Anomaly Vineyards (click the link on his name above to see all the WidgetBox widgets he's authored).

Of course, you can create one for your own winery blog at WidgetBox and embed it on your winery Web site or other location.  It's very straightforward.

Of course, I'd love it if you'd put my widget on your blog or Web site (click on the "Get Widget" tab up there), but I'm a realist (let me know if you do though).

The Most Prolific Winery Bloggers of 2008

Here are the top five (along with the number of posts made in 2008):

1. LaFond Winery & Santa Barbara Winery  (178)
2. Sokol Blosser  (145) 
3. Stefania Wine (112)
4. August Briggs (101) 
5. Twisted Oak Winery (97)  

An honorable mention goes to Michel-Schlumberger's Benchland Blog, which had a partial-year total of 57 posts, the best of any blog started in 2008.

Although quality and quantity don't always go together, that doesn't seem to apply here.  It's probably because wineries that are interested enough to make 2-3 blog posts a week also care about making posts that are going to engage their communities.  It's pointless to blog if you don't see an ROI of some sort from it, and poor-quality posts (flat-out uninteresting, lacking in information or context, not useful to the audience) kill blog ROI, however you may define it.

As a side note, all of these blogs make extensive use of photographs, either as the focus of the post, or to increase interest in what's being written about.

Surprisingly, neither of the top two  blogs have a link back to their winery Web site(s), although there are certainly obvious places for such a link (LaFond has the name of each winery at the top of the page, but they aren't links!).

If you're a winery blogger and you're not subscribed to these blogs, then you might want to consider it for two reasons: 

• Seeing what other people post about (inspiration), and
• Commenting (when relevant and thoughtful) is a good way to bring traffic to your own Web site or blog.

If you don't know how to subscribe to a blog, 2009 is definitely the year to learn how!

(If you think your winery blog was overlooked, please let me know.  I did my best to check all the winery blogs which I know about, but not having an RSS feed may have caused me to miss your prodigious blogging output.)

New Winery Blogs for December, 2008

The following winery blogs were added to The List last month:

1. Humanitas Winery
2. Madonna Estate 
3. Pioneer Valley Vineyard 
4. Windswept Winery 

This brings the total number of winery blogs that I track to 136 (plus one already added for this month, GarageVino).

Winery blogs are no longer remarkable in and of themselves, like they were when Stormhoek (now a shadow of its former self, IMHO) was the very first winery blog to get noticed in a big way.  Now winery blogs must be remarkable because of what they deliver to their readers.

A winery blog is really just a way of communicating with your 1,000 True Fans.  The trick is to make it so interesting/cool/useful/informative/... that the people who read it want to become your fans too.

Effective Winery Web Sites: January, 2009 Issue

It's been quite a while since I've sent out an edition of my e-newsletter, Effective Winery Web Sites, and I wanted to start the year by reminding people it still exists (and let them unsubscribe if they're no longer interested).

If you didn't receive a copy in your inbox, you can read the January, 2009 issue online.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.  Thanks!

Lazy Sunday: That Internet Thing

It made me really happy to read the conclusions to Steve Heimoff's latest post, especially this one:

Figure out alternatives to the three-tiered system and how to market and sell direct, and not just through the old tasting room, but through the Internet. You may not understand cyberspace, but your kids or grandkids do.

I've always been a little disappointed that the customized Winery Web Site Report (which was the genesis of this blog) never got traction, but it became quite clear that an effective Web presence was not a point-of-pain for most wineries.

Maybe that's about to change.  Regardless, take five minutes with your Sunday morning hot beverage and read Mr. Heimoff's lucid post on the wine industry's unpalatable truths.

Should Winery Employees Like To Drink Wine?

Maybe.   

Just a thought for the first day of a brand-new year, courtesy of the irrepressible Seth Godin.

Best wishes to all my readers for a happy and successful 2009!  Thank you for your time, attention, and comments during the past year.  I truly appreciate it.