The Winery Web Site Report

Your Label Is You

 

I've often said that your wine label is the most important marketing element you have.  How else do people recognize a bottle of your wine?

And that's why a picture of your wine bottle(s) should be on your home page.

And that's why you want to consider whether your bottle will stand out on a store shelf or in the memory of someone who drank it at a restaurant or a friend's house.

And that's why you may want to compare your label with these 25 distinctive wine labels sent to me by aceWeb  designer (and pal), Jason Reed of Jason Reed Web Design.

Which is your favorite?  Leave a comment!

Baby Steps

Do you have a winery blog?  

If so, have you posted (for all to see) what wines your wine club members will receive this year?

Online marketing isn't difficult, but you have to think about it.  Congrats to Three Rivers Winery for demonstrating a small but important way of going about engaging people in their wine using their winery blog.

If you have a winery Web site (What am I saying?  Of course you do.), club selections for the current year belong on your site (with links to the product pages for those who want to order a particular wine, but aren't club members).

Baby steps, folks.  Don't redesign your web site every 3 years; pay a little attention to it every week.  This is the Toyota method of "continuous improvement."  And yes, I appreciate it's hard to do in the midst of everything else.  But if you're wondering why those direct sales from your Web site aren't happening, this is probably why.

(PS - Three Rivers: you need a link from your blog to your Web site.  Thanks!)

w00t! I'm a finalist!

This showed up in the mail this morning:

Congratulations!! You are a finalist in the category of "Best Business/Industry Wine Blog" in the American Wine Blog Awards. I will be sending you a badge you can use in any way you see fit. The voting begins tonight at www.fermentation.typepad.com and will end at 11:59 on March 4. Congratulations!! Tom.... Tom Wark Wark Communications

(I'm grateful just to be nominated.  But if, after you look at the other nominees in this category, you feel that it's warranted, I'd appreciate your vote!)

The Most Important Web Site Statistic

What is it?

Your bounce rate.  Here's why it 's important.

Bounce rate is insightful because from the perspective of a website visitor, it measures this phenomenon: "I came; I puked; I left." (OK, technically it also means the number of sessions with just one pageview.)

(read the rest of Stop bouncing: tips for website success at The Official Google Blog)

The beauty is that Google Analytics (free, remember?) offers this statistic right on its dashboard for your winery Web site.  You are using Google Analytics (or some other stats package), right?

Here's how to use this statistic to improve your Web site:

1. Identify your top "entry page," i.e. the first page that most visitors to your site see.  Hint: this may not be your home page.
2. Look at the bounce rate for that page.  A bounce rate of 75 percent means that 3 out of 4 visitors took one look at the page and left.  As a target, you want this page to have the lowest bounce rate of any page on your site. 
3. Look at the source of traffic for that page: 1)  typed directly into the browser address bar, 2) referred from another site, or 3) referred from a search engine.  If they came from a search engine, look at the search term.  If they came from another site, look at the referring page (no, I mean actually look at it.  In particular, what words are used to link to your page).  What does that tell you about their reason for clicking through to your page?
4. The hard part: based on what you know about how people are getting there, generate 2 or 3 theories about why visitors leave.  Consider that you may not be addressing their need in visiting the page.
5. Based on one of your theories, change the page (copy, layout, emphasis, ...).  
6. See what happens to the bounce rate for that page over the next month (with enough traffic to the page, this might be the next week, or the next day).
7. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

  I'd love to tell you there's a quicker way to improve your bounce rate, but that's the basic process.  You can speed it up a bit by using Google Web Site Optimizer (also free), which allows you to perform step 5 more easily.

Bottom line: identify your top "entry page" and lower its bounce rate.

Social Media Marketing Tips

If you're considering using Facebook and/or Twitter to help drive interest in your winery and wines, check out this useful post over at the Startup Nation blog, entitled Social Media Marketing Tips

Learn Everything on YouTube

Well, maybe not everything.

I just wanted to call attention to Flyte New Media's channel on YouTube, which presently has 8 videos covering a variety of topic of interest to wineries on the Web (and Twitter).  Here are the titles (linked to the video):

1. Google Analytics: Where Does Your Traffic Come From?
2. Use Google Analytics Filters For Better Traffic Reports 
3. Google Analytics Dashboard:  Measure Your Web Site's Success 
4.  How to Get Started on Twitter: Signup and Setup
5. Twitter: How to Find and Follow People on Twitter
6. TweetDeck & Twitter: Better Manage Your Tweeple 
7. How to Engage People on Twitter  
8. How to Get Followed on Twitter  

Each video is about 5 minutes long, which makes it appropriate for learning something while having a cup of coffee or a Diet Coke.

You can also subscribe to Flyte's YouTube channel, and receive periodic notification of new stuff by e-mail (it does require setting up a free account on YouTube).

(Of interest to TypePad users: Flyte also has several videos on backing up your blog content)

An Exemplary Winery Blog Post

This post from Selene Wines on bottling their 2008 Sauvignon Blanc has lots of great pictures and explanation.  It gives readers the experience of being there.  Only one question: how does the wine get loaded into the system?

There are lots of great winery blogs out there, but it's a pleasure to call attention to The Selene Wine Blog.  I'm glad to see that someone nominated them for Best Winery Blog of 2008 over at Fermentation.

Thinking of Redesiging Your Winery Web Site?

Then you absolutely need to read this first: Redesigning Your Website: Who's Taking Care of the Content?

Users visit websites for content — to read, to learn, to assess, to compare, to buy. And they'll return, time and again, if the content is useful, relevant, interesting, entertaining, up-to-date. We all know it’s true: Content drives readership on informational, promotional, and e-commerce sites.

And my favorite line: 

“Hey Ed! Go get that content from the storeroom. We’re ready to load it into the site.”

If you want your Web site to help sell your wine, what you say to your visitors is critical.  A plain site with great copy will sell more than a great-looking site with average copy.

French Wine In One Minute

Hilarious.

The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of The Winery Web Site Report (except maybe that bit at the end).

 

(stolen shamlessly from the Sandihurst Wine blog, an interesting blog about making wine in New Zealand which just got added to The List)

This is the kind of wine video that could go viral.  Anyone care to try this for their region or varietal?  Even better: Biodynamic Wine in One Minute (Laurence Sterling, I'm talking to you).  And it's just the sort of thing that Tom Wark might do.

Lazy Sunday: What Consumers Want

This 15-minute video of a TED presentation by Joseph Pine (author of "Mass Customization") should stimulate the thoughts of anyone who runs a winery.  

If you're not sure you want to watch the whole thing, skip to the 12:00 mark and watch the last 2 minutes.  I'm pretty sure that you'll warm up your Sunday morning coffee and sit back to watch the whole thing.

Wine Marketing With Twitter

Dell Computer makes exclusive offers to people following them on Twitter, makes $1 million.

Here's how DELL did it (the image above is a sample "tweet").

There's nothing stopping your winery from doing the same (well, maybe not the $1 million part).  Why not try an experiment?

• Get  a Twitter account, if you haven't yet (choose a name like your winery name, e.g. AcmeWinery)
• Create a compelling offer (something you know will be popular with anyone)
• Make sure you set limits (one to a customer, must be a follower) 
• Make sure you set a time limit (one day) 
• Have a promo code that works with your checkout system
• Tweet the offer (with details available on your site or blog)

You want it to be a compelling offer because (a) you want to generate buzz, and (b) you want to increase your followers.  Don't make people order a case to take advantage of this offer (you can experiment with other offers later).  You want to set limits so that you don't get killed (and again, you want them to follow you).  A time limit prompts action, and limits your exposure as well.  The promo code makes it work with your online shopping cart.

See what happens.  Blog about it.  Leave a comment here to tell me what I got wrong. Try it again.

Hint to Inertia Beverages, eWinerySolutions, and Cultivate: make it easy for your clients to do something like this. Gosh, you might even write a blog post or newsletter item on how to do it.

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey -- it ends Monday!)

VinTank's Social Media Report Survey

If you write a wine blog (e.g. Vinography), a winery blog (e.g. Dover Canyon), or a wine industry blog (e.g. Fermentation), please spend five quick minutes taking VinTank's Social Media Report Survey.  If you have to hunt around for your monthly pageview and unique visitor statistics, it may take you a bit longer.

Why should you?  Because VinTank is trying to produce a free report with real numbers on the wine industry's use of social media.  We'll all benefit from that.  

I'm interested enough to see their results that I'm willing to invest my five minutes.  I hope you are, too.

Take the Survey.

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey, too!)

My (early) Birthday Present from Adegga.com

OK, I've probably worn out my welcome with four posts in a single day, but it *was* my birthday after all.

Here's a early-birthday present from a couple weeks back from Adegga.com: Meet-A-WineBlogger: Mike Duffy from The Winery Web Site Report.

Thanks for the nice words, guys.  It's nice to be recognized so publicly.

Yay, me!

Happy Birthday, Dear Wine Club Member

Since it's my birthday, I was wondering if you make a special offer to members of your wine club on their birthday?  It's another way to "touch" your best customers in a personal way.

What, you don't ask them for their birth date?  (Just the month and day, please!)

Do you acknowledge customer birthdays?  Leave a comment.

(and in case you were wondering, I'm 54 today -- there's a picture in the attic that looks terrible)

Twitter Review: C. Donatiello

Continuing with my offer of free Twitter winery Web site reviews, here's my 140-character review of C. Donatiello Winery:

Clean design, but a little sterile:what do I do next? Flash-based.Must log in to order. No links for trade or media. Text hard on old eyes.

A somewhat longer explanation:

• The layout of the page is very clean, and to me feels a little sterile.  The colors don't seem warm and inviting.  There's a lot of whitespace on a standard 1024x768 display, so it appears small.  It is nice that the home page fits on a single page (no scrolling required).
• There's no clear call to action, and the menu choices are muted, leaving a visitor to wonder "What do I do next?"  Missing full contact information on the home page -- people do use your home page as a phone directory listing.
• When I originally reviewed the site, the central image was a Flash movie.  This isn't a bad thing per se, but it does cause problems for people looking at your site on an iPhone.  It appears that (since I did this Twitter review on February 1st) the issue has been resolved.  Note: there is a way to have a Flash movie for those who have Flash, and a static image for those without:
• You should require as little as possible for someone to order wine from your site.  Requiring them to log in before they can do anything erects one more obstacle to making a sale. 
• I recommend that winery Web sites have navigation elements for buyers, browsers, the media, and the trade.  This site lack top-level navigation for the trade and media.
• I found the text to be small, which makes it less inviting to read.

I'd like to thank Chris Donatiello for his willingness to let me do this.  He also asked me to take a look at Bradford Mountain and Healdsburg Ranches.  Still game, Chris?

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

Remember, if you'd like to receive these Twitter reviews, please follow wwsr on Twitter.

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey before it closes on Monday!)

Crushpad's Bailout

What wine goes with a financial meltdown?  Bailout Wine, of course.  Buy this Napa Cabernet at $39 a bottle, and you get $2 back for every 100 points the down drops from that point until bottling on August 14, 2009.  If the Dow drops 1500 points, you'll get a $30 refund.

Of course, if the Dow drops 1500 more points, you'll need a drink.

And if you buy a case, they'll throw in a free T-shirt.

(I'd like to think they got the idea from me)

Need A Chart?

LovelyCharts is something I posted about over at Northbay biz (I write a monthly business-and-technology column for them called Tech Talk), but since wineries sometimes need to make flow charts and organization charts, I thought this might be of interest to my readers here.

LovelyCharts makes attractive looking charts (e.g. flow charts, site maps, wireframes, org charts, and network diagrams) which can be exported as JPEG or PNG images.  You can use the wireframe feature to prototype Web site designs.

Best of all, it's free.

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey)

Response Time

Here's a post about how long it took some wineries to respond to an e-mail query about whether a particular bottle was ready to drink.  The wineries involved were Tobin James Cellars, Grgich Hills Estate, and Frank Family Vineyards.  Response time varied from 90 minutes to over four days.  Not a scientific test, but surely an interesting result.

(as a side note, Grgich prominently mentions their Facebook group on their home page)

Have you tested your winery's response time to e-mail queries?  You should.  In fact, it's something you should monitor on a regular basis.

How long do you think it should take to get a response to an e-mail question about drinkability?  Please leave a comment!

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey)

My One-Question Survey: How Do You Read Blogs?

Since you're reading this blog, I'd really appreciate if you would take my survey.

If you have a wine-related blog, I'd appreciate you sending other people to my survey.  The link is

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=bszk0DP9pAszDw57PmawgQ_3d_3d

which you should just be able to cut and paste into your blog post.  Thanks!  (and if you'd like, please leave a comment)

Lazy Sunday: Chocolate and Wine

With Valentine's Day next Saturday (men: don't forget!), I feel obligated to bring you this story about chocolate-covered wine bottles.

Another example of creative packaging is dipping a bottle in eight ounces of chocolate. "I was reaching out to my local Napa chocolatier for our typical 'wine and chocolate truffles' gifts, when we thought, 'how cool would it be to dip the entire bottle in chocolate?'"

Here's a direct link to the Cellar360 order page for 2005 Souverain Dessert Syrah, Alexander Valley - Chocolate Covered, just in case you're still shopping.

New Winery Blogs for January, 2009

Quite a few new winery blogs this month (34!!!), perhaps as the result of New Year's Resolutions.

• Bodhichitta Winery
  http://www.bodhichittawinery.com/blog

• Cadaretta
  http://www.cadaretta.com/blog/

• Caliza Winery
  http://www.calizawineryblog.com/

• Champagne Tarlant
  http://champagne.typepad.com/tarlant/

• Diliberto Winery
  http://dilibertowinery.com/blog/

• Dunham & Froese Estate Winery (The Back Label)
  http://backlabel.blogspot.com/

• Duplin Winery (Behind the Vine)
  http://www.duplinwinery.com/index.php?page=duplin-winery-blo

• Flora Springs Winery & Vineyards
  http://www.florasprings.com/blog/

• Forty-Five North Vineyards & Winery
  http://fortyfivenorth.com/

• Fotinos Brothers Winery (Amuse Bouche)
  http://blog.fotinosbrotherswinery.com/

• Gherardi Wines (Margaret River Blog)
  http://www.margaretriverblog.com/

• GarageVino.com
  http://garagevino.com/

• Hahn Estates
  http://hahnestates.blogspot.com/

• Harney Lane
  http://www.harneylane.com/blog/

• Harpersfield Vineyard
  http://www.harpersfield.com/blog/index.php

• Hollywood Hills Vineyard
  http://hollywoodhillvineyards.blogspot.com/

• Iridesse Wines
  http://iridessewines.wordpress.com/

• J. Kirkwood
  http://www.jkirkwood.com/page20.html

• J. Maki Winery
  http://www.jmakiwinery.com/journal/

• LaBelle Winery
  http://www.labellewinerynh.com/

• La Péira
  http://lapeira.wordpress.com/

• Levendi Winery
  http://blog.levendiwinery.com/

• Lionheart Wines (The Grapevine)
  http://www.thegrapevineblog.com/grapevineblog/

• Little Hills Winery
  http://www.littlehillswinery.blogspot.com/

• McPherson Cellars
  http://mcphersoncellars.com/blog/

• Monteluce Wine
  http://robbeecham.wordpress.com/

• Olypmic Cellars Winery
  http://www.olympiccellars.blogspot.com/

• Parallel 44 Vineyard & Winery
  http://www.parallel44blog.com/

• St. Josef's Winery
  http://stjosefswinery.com/blog/

• Sanglier Cellars
  http://blog.sangliercellars.com/

• Seven Stones Winery
  http://sevenstones.ca/blog/

• Sodaro Estate Winery (Scion Says)
  http://sodarowines.com/news/

• Summerwood Winery & Inn (The Winemaker, The Chef and The Blog)
  http://thewinemakerthechefandtheblog.wordpress.com/

• Zucca Mountain Winery
  http://zuccamountainvineyards.blogspot.com/

The List now contains 171 entries.  If yours isn't on it, please let me know!

Your Winery's Media Site

One of the four types of visitors to your winery Web site is the media (you should be so lucky!).

Do you have a section of your winery Web site devoted to helping these very important visitors get what they need?

Melissa Dobson of Family, Love, Wine, Love Blog has some good points about media sites in her post Winery Marketing: Where's Your Winery's Media Site?.  Check it out.  

A media site for your winery doesnt have to take a lot of effort: here's a nice simple example of media & trade support at Donati Family Vineyards.  All it takes is a little thought about what a reporter might need:  background, images, press releases, other media coverage, and, most importantly, who to contact (with a direct line).

While you're at it, you may want to take a look at wine.alltop.com ("Top Wine News"), which is where I ran across Melissa's excellent post.

Some Tasting Room Advice

Mitch is absolutely right.  It's one thing if people don't wish to share their e-mail address, or they don't have one, but not to ask for it is a major breakdown.

Do you have a list of "things we want to have happen when a customer visits our tasting room?"  You should, and getting an e-mail address (and permission to send e-mail to it) should be one of those things.  Having a list like that ensures that your staff is aware of all the things that should be happening (and why).

But the foremost item on your list should be "Did our visitor leave with a positive impression of our winery?"

Your Winery and Yelp

Have you checked out your winery on Yelp?

Just like having a (free) Google Alert and a (free) Twitter Search for your winery name and related phrases, it's always good to know what people are saying about you on customer-generated review sites like Yelp.

For example, here are user-generated reviews of wineries near Paso Robles, CA from Yelp.

And of course, you may want to try a search like "Acme Winery" sucks -- just to see if anyone thinks so.  Placing the name in quotes returns pages with the phrase "Acme Winery" and the single word "sucks" on them.  Placing the all the words in quotes ("Acme Winery sucks") will return pages with that complete phrase on them.

Would you rather not know what people are saying about you?

Call for Wine

My friend Edward asked me if I knew anything about Call for Wine.  They specialize in "high-quality professional outbound telesales, exclusively for the wine industry."  I hadn't heard of them, but I found their "how we got started" story interesting:

Founder Mark Parton was lying on his couch in Chicago a few months after a Sonoma vacation, when the phone rang. Armida Winery was calling. Mark had joined their wine club during his visit and was happy to get the call.

I thought it was really nice that they called me. It sort of made me feel like I was part of the winery. Parton said during a recent interview. I also bought wine they were offering on special.

Parton, who has run telemarketing call centers for consumer direct sales of technology items, began wondering why the five other wine clubs he'd joined didn't call. Sensing an opportunity, Parton and his wife were soon packing up their car and moving to California wine country. Call for Wine, five years old this year, now has a customer list that has grown to 15 wineries. His operation has moved from the kitchen table to offices with space for 30 telesales reps.

"You can pretty much outsource everything," Edward points out.  True enough, but you want to ensure that the quality and attentiveness remain high, particularly when it involves interacting with customers.

Would you use Call for Wine?  Why or why not?  Leave your vote in the comments.

Regardless, maybe you should be thinking about how to follow up with new/current customers by phone.  Something to think about on a Sunday morning.

(PS - If you like premium Napa Cabs, take a minute and go join Edward's mailing list)

The $300 Million Button - Do You Have One?

 

How successful would your tasting room be if you required people to show you their driver's license before they walked in?  The same thinking applies to your Web site.

Here's how changing one button increased the number of people purchasing by 45 percent for a large online retailer.   Overall, that simple change was worth $300 million dollars.

Always minimize the mental effort that someone must expend to make a purchase.  And don't just guess - test!

How many of you have actually purchased wine from your Web site?   I'll bet you haven't...

(via kottke.org)

Lazy Sunday: Review Methodologies

Most of you probably don't follow Merlin Mann's blog, 43 Folders, but I encourage you to take 5 minutes and read On Thumbs, Stars, and Little Men with your Sunday coffee:

If every critic ala Ebert, in his way would disclose the yardstick by which he generates the stars, thumbs, or Little Man of his reviews, it would go a long way toward educating readers;

I think it's valuable advice for wine reviewers.  What do you think?