The Winery Web Site Report

Where is the OK GO of Wineries?

A great post from Leah Hennessy of Millennier on how winery branding is pretty stuck:

...here’s my beef. I’m SO TIRED of people in EVERY ASPECT of the wine industry automatically handcuffing wine to media and branding that has been used for the last 40 YEARS. If you want new consumers then you have to do something new.

This captures exactly my rant about "yet another winery website with a picture of a vineyard."  Not that I'm opposed to pictures of your vineyard, but (a) for most people, one vineyard looks pretty much like another (just like wine labels), and (b) everybody else is doing it.  At least use a *distinctive* picture of your vineyard (to check if it's distinctive, ask yourself if someone looking at the picture alone could tell it was your vineyard -- you see my point).

Wine is a traditional product.  I think it's still hard for consumers to give up corks.  Can you imagine the uproar if wineries tried different packaging (even it were more imaginative than a damn cardboard box)?  So, some things we're sorta stuck with.

Think of the Old Spice Guy and The Most Interesting Man in the World, and then think about how, just maybe, you might step outside your comfort zone for marketing your wine.  Like rubber chickens.  People actually like seeing a new approach (at least if it's well-executed).

PS - this is a much better OK GO video IMHO (alas, video embedding is disabled for this one).

8 Things Your Winery Website Should Have

I think about this list every time I start working on a new website

1. Google Analytics, because if you can't measure something, you can't improve it.
2. A custom 404 page (or handler), to help visitors find what they're looking for.
3. A robots.txt file, to manage how your website is crawled by search engine spiders
4. A favicon.ico file, so your site stands out in browser favorite/bookmark lists.
5. Uptime notification, so you know if your web site is unresponsive.
6. Google Webmaster Tools, to see how Google sees your site.
7. An XML sitemap  for Google, to make sure than Google sees your site correctly.
8. A reboot notification (for hosted sites), so you know when your hosting company reboots your server.

These are all things which your winery website should have in place.  If you don't manage your own web infrastructure, ask your webmaster about them.

Getting People To Talk About Your Winery

Here are 6 tips that sound pretty smart to me.

Lazy Sunday: Wine By The Glass

Literally.

If you don't follow Serious About Wine, you're missing out on some interesting design and marketing ideas.  Those wacky Kiwis!

My Vineyard

Now from Facebook, it's MyVineyard.

Quote: Run your own vineyard, harvest grapes, make delicious wine, and share it with your friends!

Your Winery Blog

Don't have one?  Neglecting the one you already have?

This post points out why you might want to reconsider the value of a winery blog.  With a new emphasis on fresh content, Google's latest search engine update (called Caffeine) makes regular posts to your winery blog even more valuable.

Of course, you should already know (using a tool like Google Analytics) what percentage of your traffic comes from search engines, and that will help you make an informed decision about the value of search engine traffic.  Here's a picture of the traffic sources for this blog over the past 30 days from Google Analytics:

What's yours look like? 

Cutting Through The (Mental) Clutter

I occasionally rant about how most wineries seem to look and sound alike.  You know, the whole "picture of a vineyard on the home page" thing.

This post from Naomi Dunford is a great explanation of why you should make an effort to do something different from every other seller of fermented grape juice.  Basically, because your brain is designed to attenuate repetitive stimuli.  We tune things out. 

Consider this commercial.  It's so effective because you've never seen anything like it before.

There's now a sequel, which is still fun, but less effective because it's the second one.

World Cup Marketing

 

I bet you didn't think about it (I sure didn't).  But almost any big event can be an opportunity to promote your wines in an interesting fashion.

Here's a clever World Cup marketing program that sells web design books, of all things.

If computer geeks can do it, so can your winery.  It just takes a little imagination and planning.  This sort of thing becomes easier if you have a (rolling) 12-month plan for marketing your wine online, something I highly recommend.

For another interesting take on monthly wine marketing on your winery Web site, take a look at what Swanson Vineyards is doing.  Each month they have a specific lifestyle-related promotion, featured on their homepage.  Of course, you have to commit to updating your Web site every month, but you should already be doing that.