The Winery Web Site Report

e-Tasting is Here

Steve Heimoff has a great post on Kendall-Jackon's new e-Tasting program.

The real point is that there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be doing the same to help promote your wines with people you would ordinarily travel to visit.  It's not just for behemoths like K-J.

The K-J model is one-to-one video, which is trivially supported by Google Talk and Skype, both of which are free.  Many new laptops come with built-in Webcams (the Toshiba I'm using right now, for instance), so the camera barrier is going away as well. If you or the other person doesn't have a built-in camera, a decent USB Webcam like the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 costs less than $75 at Amazon.

Anyone besides K-J doing remote one-to-one tastings with critics, distributors, etc?  If not, why?

Is Your Winery Web Site Memorable?

Here's a post-worth-reading from 37signals about making memorable (Web site) designs.

To sum it up briefly, your site may look good, but what does it say?

The comments make for interesting reading.  You can see the pragmatists vs. the designers at war.

It's similar to the recent brouhaha when Google's chief visual designer resigned in a huff because all the design choices at Google are driven by data: what actually happens when a user looks at it?

It's all about selling more of your wine, right?  I'd rather have an ugly Web site that generated lots of wine sales, than a beautiful site that no one ordered from.

What do you think?  (he said, putting on his asbestos pants...)

Lazy Sunday: What's Your Baxter?

Baxters are cool.

Does your winery have a baxter?  I know some that do.

If you've got one, tell us about it.  If not, take time over your Sunday coffee to think about what your winery might be missing by not having a baxter.

(Vincit Veritas means "Truth conquers")

Want To Build Your Mailing List?

Run a contest, using bloggers to promote it, says MarketingSherpa.  And offer prizes to the bloggers who help publicize the contest.

In the example, the contest winner got a new Nintendo video game console.  The blogger who referred them got an iPod shuffle, and the blogger generating the most newsletter signups got an iPod Nano.

The example above has absolutely nothing to do with selling wine, but the techniques used could work very well for a winery trying to build their mailing list.  There are lots of blogs which probably target your demographic (other than wine blogs, which might see it as a conflict of interest).  You might have to do a little legwork, though -- just like the folks in the example had to research "mommy bloggers" whose audience (moms) was the target demographic.

If the prize you're offering has a wine-related aspect (a fancy cork puller, a set of interesting wine books, ...), the likelihood that people entering the contest are potential customers goes way up.  And your first newsletter to them should offer a deal to help encourage that potential.

(I'd recommend offering wine as a prize, but I'm sure there are 17 legal reasons why you can't...)

Do you have any list building tricks to share?  Leave a comment!

PS - The article above is only free until April 1^st, so print a copy of it if you find it worthwhile.

PPS - I recommend MarketingSherpa's free e-mail newsletters with case studies like the one above (subscribe here).

Don't Have An Opinion, Have Data.

Prime Cellars of Napa is inviting your opinion on two possible labels for their new Chardonnay.  It's a fun exercise, so go over and leave your thoughts in the comments.  

Done that?  OK.  Now let me tell you that, IMNSHO, this isn't the best way to approach the problem of choosing a label.  Here's the comment I left with my vote:

The best thing to do is print them both out (ideally on label stock), paste them on bottles and go down to the local market (one with lots of bottles on the shelf - e.g. Molsberry Market in Santa Rosa), and see which one stands out the most from the crowd of Chardonnays on display. Don't have an opinion, have data!

And if they truly both suck, start over. The attractiveness and recognition factor of your label is one of the most powerful tools you have to sell your wine.

Just like winery Web sites tend to all have nice pictures of vineyards, most wine labels tend to be remarkably similar-looking.

Of course, even doing this hands-on experiment requires that you be brutally honest when looking at your bottles on the shelf.  It would be better if it were someone "impartial" making the call.  But it's hard to find an impartial judge (one way might be to time how long it takes someone unfamiliar with your wine to find your bottle on the crowded shelf).

Another problem with the "give us your opinion" approach is that the people whose opinion you want (people standing in the supermarket aisle deciding what Chard to take home for dinner) are probably not the people visiting your blog (current customers and wine industry types).

Please don't think I'm against asking people what they think.  But it needs to be the right people, in the right setting.

An old CEO of mine once told me that the front of a package needed to get the person to pick up the package and look at it -- that was half the battle.  Consider that if all the labels fell off in the Chardonnay aisle at Safeway, you'd be looking at a lot of green bottles with the same shape.

Aside from making the owner / marketing VP happy, your label has to do two things:  First, your label needs to be distinctive and communicate your name and identity (fun, luxurious, inexpensive, unpretentious, ...).  Second  (and perhaps most important if you sell through stores), your label needs to stand out from a sea of other labels, and ideally, induce someone to pick it up and put it in their cart.

But, hey, thats just my opinion.

Marketing Experiments

Everyone wishes they had more time to run experiments on their winery Web site (at least, I'd like to believe so).  Experimentation (testing) is really the only way to find out what works, and whether it can be improved.

Fortunately, the people over at MarketingExperiments.com have time to run all sorts of interesting experiments, and they publish the results of their experiments for free, both as Flash slide shows with intergrated audio, and as HTML with an accompanying MP3 audio track..

The easiest way to find out about new research is to sign up for their newslettter.  Like any good Web site, their newsletter signup is featured prominently on every page.

Check it out!

Lazy Sunday: WWRPD?

WWRPD? = What Would Robert Parker Drink?

If you haven't spent 26 minutes watching the abrasively-named Robert Parker's Bitch, it's worth taking the time with your Sunday morning cup of brewed beverage to listen to the dulcet voice of Tina Caputo.

Robert Parker's Bitch from Josh Hermsmeyer on Vimeo. 

I know at least one winery owner whose express strategy is to craft 90+ point wines for Mr. Parker.

On the other hand, what's the point of a wine that's made to "taste and spit?"

Is winemaking Art or Commerce?  What is Lost really about?

(Note: this is Tina's mini-documentary, although Josh, who appears in it, posted it on Vimeo.)

See Tina's and Josh's original posts.  And of course, Save The Feral Unicorn!

A Good Topic for A Winery Blog Post

What's the worst thing that's every happened at your winery?

Why is this a good topic?  Because it makes for an interesting story.

And it almost forces you to be honest and authentic.

And it generally makes people sympathetic.

And it shows that you're willing to be open and transparent.

And that's what makes for a good blog post: a good story, honesty, and authenticity.

Are Winery Web Sites Dead?

Maybe.

There was an interesting article in the most recent Fortune about Facebook, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg is quoted:

We think that if you can build one worldwide platform where you can just type in anyone's name, find the person you're looking for, and communicate with them," he told a German audience in January, "that's a really valuable system to be building.

Here's a list of wineries on Facebook., courtesy of Tim Elliott of ACAN Media.  I'm sure he'd like to know if he missed your winery's Facebook page.

Do you see Facebook replacing your winery Web site someday?  Leave a comment!

Lazy Sunday: Dharma Initiative Merlot

Who could resist the chance to bring a bottle of Dharma Iniative Merlot to the next dinner party they attend?

(note: requires a bottle of Merlot with an easily removed label -- any suggestions?)

My apologies to anyone who's not a Lost fan.  Here;'s a little more on the fictional Dharma Initiative.

New Winery Blogs for February, 2008

Only one this month, I'm afraid.  It's from New Zealand, and they've already posted 23 times this year, which is a positive sign.  Check it out.

• Sandihurst Winery
  http://www.sandihurst.blogspot.com/

As always, you can find all the winery blogs I know about on The List.

Wine Marketing & Website Tips

Even though we disagree on some things(e.g. spelling it Web site vs. Website), take a look at Rachel Coe's blog over at 4theGrapes.com ("focused on small, boutique and micro wineries").

In particular, you can vote on her next blog topic:  would you rather see "What NOT to do for your winery Website" or "Things to know when starting a new website or redesign"?

I've subscribed to her blog.  You should too.  And go vote in her poll.

(via Twitter)

Sampling Wine By Mail

The best way to sell a wine is to give someone a sample of it.  As much as I wish the Internet were a solution to everything, the fact that you can't taste a wine over the Net is inescapable.

But, here's a French winery using their Web site (alas, I don't read French) to get wine samples into the hands of potential customers by mail.  They charge about $5 (3.90 euros) for a single 60 ml sample, which isn't as good as a free pour at the tasting bar, but not unreasonable, either.   (The winery promotes their effort as a way to be greener, by keeping people out of their cars.)

Coupled with a video that leads a sample-drinker through a tasting of the wine, this isn't a bad idea.

And if you give the $5 back if they order the wine after sampling it, it shouldn't be too hard to convince people to give it a try.

The biggest obstacle for wineries (I would think), is the additional work of producing a sample-sized bottle of their wine.  Please leave a comment if you know what's involved in this.

Will this replace your tasting room?  Not yet.  

(via Serious About Wine)

Those Pesky Words: Search vs. Action

People use different words to search than to take action.  That's the finding of a new UK study (a copywriting outfit, which apparently is smart enough to do research as to what happens to the stuff they write).

This is an important distinction for winery Web sites, and something you should consider when writing for your site.  Search is only part of the battle, and people express themselves differently when searching.  Consider "cheap wine."  No one really wants to drink it.  They're really looking for good wine under $20.

Always remember that visitors to your site come with a goal already in mind, and that the Back key is their response when they don't read or see something which points clearly toward their goal.  That's why checking your bounce rate for the pages where people first encounter your site is so important.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Steve Bachman of The Wine Collector for winning The American Wine Blog award for Best Business/Industry Blog.

I read Steve's blog, and so should you.

Are You as Brave as Skittles?

Skittles (you know, the rainbow colored candy thingies that aren't M&Ms) has done something really interesting with social media.  They've (almost) completely done away with their Web site.  

Instead, when you go to www.skittles.com, you get the little floating menu above, with links to:

• Home (the Skittles page on Wikipedia)
• Media (their YouTube channel and their Flickr page)
• Chatter (a running Twitter search for tweets containing the word "skittle") 
• Friends (their Facebook page)
• Other Gobbledygook (just a drop down menu with links to parent company Mars) 
• Products  
• Contact   

The last two are the only pages at Skittles.com. In other words, most of their Web "presence" consists of links to social media.  All they're missing is a blog.

I'm not sure a winery would do something this extreme, but it does show what's possible when you think about it.  A slightly less-extreme version is what Donati Family Vineyard is doing with their "Winespace" and by featuring social media connections on their home page.

What do you think about Skittles.com?  What can your winery take away from this experiment?

And what wine (if any) goes with Skittles?

Survey Results: How Do You Read Blogs?

Here are the results of my How Do You Read Blogs? survey conducted a couple of weeks ago:

Out of the 51 respondents, the majority use a Web-based reader like Bloglines or Google Reader.

The second largest category still types in a URL (or uses a bookmark) when they want to visit a blog.  Ack!   Let me just say to these people that you will enjoy reading blogs so much more when you start using a tool that shows you when something new has been posted.  Trust me, a Web-based reader is easy to use, and you'll be able to follow more blogs more easily if you use a tool designed to help your maximize your productivity.

The third largest category was Other, with 8 respondents, but a closer examination reveals 4 of those 8 use Google Reader and 1 used the RSS feature built into Safari:

Since Google Reader is Web-based, and Safari's RSS feature is a browser built-in, that means that the vast majority of people (who took the survey, anyway) are using a tool to read blogs -- most likely, a Web-based tool.

I'm glad to see that people are subscribing to blogs, even though roughly 25% are missing out on the convenience of a subscription.  If you are are a winery with a blog, you might want to consider showing people how easy it is to subscribe to your blog.  The directions could be sent to them via e-mail, in your e-newsletter, or as a one-page insert in your next snail mailing.  The nice thing is that it doesn't just help people read your blog -- it makes all their blog reading easier, and that reflects well on you.

At the very least, show your fans how to use FeedBlitz to receive your blog posts via e-mail.  It will save them the frustration of visiting your blog only to find there's nothing new to see (which makes for grumpy fans).

Don't Forget to Vote for The Winery Web Site Report

Today and tomorrow are the last two days to cast your vote in The American Wine Blog Awards, where this blog is nominated for "Best Business/Industry Wine Blog."

If you find this blog informative and useful, I'd certainly appreciate your vote.  Just click the badge:

Voting ends tomorrow night (Wednesday, March 4th) at midnight, so cast your vote today.

"And thank you for your support."