The Value of Test and Measure

(full disclosure: this is not the online sales graph for a winery)

What happened in December of 2009?  The company involved started to make changes in their Web site, one at a time, measuring the changes.

Notice that I didn't say "they redesigned their entire Web site."  And it was pretty horrible to start (and it's still no prize, in my opinion).

They just started with a pretty horrible design, and started removing the "rocks" that impeded customers from making a purchase.  Turns out, they didn't have to remove too many.

You can read the full story here.  If your site gets at least 50 visitors a day (which may be the first problem you need to solve), you can get the same treatment (for a price).

I apologize that this story isn't about a winery Web site, since that's what you come here to read about.  But I think it's valuable because it talks about incremental changes guided by measurement, which applies to your winery Web site as much as it does to a site selling The Amazing Bible Timeline.

Comments

[rick]

Yep. testing and improving iteratively will almost always help. But wineries for some reason refuse to actually take online marketing and sales seriously, even now, so while it would be nice to see more wineries care about this and implement some kind of testing program...

[Mike Duffy]

Actually, there's a very good reason they don't take online *sales* very seriously: online sales represent a tiny bit (2%?) of total revenue for most small wineries. Tasting rooms and wine clubs (plus wholesale) account for the vast bulk.

It's why I've been contemplating giving up on this blog...it's preaching to the choir.

[rick]

Well, online sales represent a small part of sales because they don't do anything with it. After all, the person who comes to your tasting room from, say, Kansas, isn't coming back to get a few more bottles in person.

It's a vicsious cycle - people don't do anything to make online an important part of the sales and marketing mix then say it's not worth it do anything since those parts of the business aren't significant. The thing is, I'm fine with wineries saying that they don't care much about online - just don't complain about their lack of sales then. People don't get to neglect a sales channel, then complain if they're having a tough time financially.