The Winery Web Site Report

Tell Google About Your Winery Logo

This is a slightly geeky post, but Google has published a method for telling them about your logo.

The benefit is that it will enable Google to display your branding along with search results from your site.  This is actually a fairly big deal, and a way to stand out from the crowd -- at least until every other winery is doing it, which (given the glacial pace of technological innovation in the wine biz) will be a while.

Pass this along to your webmaster.  They'll know what to do with it.  I expect the nice folks at Vin | 65 and eWinerySolutions are already on it.

SEO for Wineries: a 10-minute video

I watched this 10-minute video on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) today, aimed at sites with less than 50 pages, which probably describes most winery websites.  A very clear explanation of basic SEO for small sites.

 

If you haven't already done it, sign up for Google Webmaster Tools.

Does Your Winery Have Balls?

A lot of wineries cite concern about the possibility of negative comments when asked why they are reluctant about using social media like Twitter and Facebook.

Here's a company in an industry which is easy to hate (insurance) that let's it all hang out on their Facebook page: Esurance.  The comments are unmoderated, so you see complaints with praise.  There are two things that make this page work in favor of Esurance:  they actively participate in responding to customer comments, and they seem to care.

And yes, this takes time and effort on their part.  Social media benefits are not free, or even cheap.

Social media for wineries takes balls.

Additional reading:

Esurance commerical which talks about their Facebook presence (they're "in a relationship"):

 

Article: Hitch Your Boat to Customer Advocacy (also mentions failed Twitter campaigns from McDonald's and RIM)

 

2 Things To Do *Before* You Waste Time With Google Analytics

From this brief-but-insightful-article at Search Engine Guide:

1. what needs to happen on your site to get your business where you want it to be, and
2. identify which metrics will tell you if what you want to happen is happening.

Simple to state, but it requires you to think more deeply about your business.

Is Your Winery a Priest or a Coaster?

If your winery sells wine online (doesn't everyone these days?), this analysis of online wine store growth patterns is relevant.  The money quote:

Repeat business is where your investment online becomes truly viable, but without new customers you will never reach your full potential online.

Of course, you have to have the data about your web visitors to decide where you stand.

Heimoff on "The Biggest Mistake Most Wineries Make"

Love him or hate him, wine critic/blogger Steve Heimoff hits this particular nail on the head:

The biggest mistake most wineries make online is to establish a website, put some stuff up, and then let it molder for months if not years. I routinely get tasting samples in the mail ...So I’ll go to the website for info, only to find that the vintage hasn’t been updated for two years!... when you deliberately go to a website expecting something new and useful, only to find a bunch of old, boring stuff, it’s an insult. You actually feel resentment to the company for being lazy and uncaring and unprofessional. Not good.

(from An example of how social marketing works for a winery -- maybe).

The top error for winery websites remains a lack of freshness, from home pages which haven't changed in years, to a lack of information about new vintages, to "News" pages where the last update was more than a year ago.

A related mistake is to throw out the "old, boring stuff" on your website wholesale, instead of archiving items which have long-term value to visitors.  Disk space is cheap and search engines are your friends.  Someone just might want to read about that 10-year-old vintage they pulled from the cellar for tonight's party.  Ideally, your website has information about every vintage you've every produced.

Catch Me November 30th At The Green Wine Summit

Jo Diaz has a nice post today on the upcoming Green Wine Summit, scheduled for November 29-30 at the Napa Marriott.

I will be part of a panel during the morning breakout session, Green Sales & Marketing: Communicating Green, along with Mimi Gatens, Laura Levy Shatkin, and Lisa Adams Walter.  I am almost certain to offend someone with my take on wineries and their websites.

Please say hello if you're in attendance.  Details on the event are here.

My Annual Harvest Fair Rant

Last night (Saturday, September 24, 2011), the winners of the Sonoma County Harvest Fair were announced:

• Wilson Winery: 2009 Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, Sawyer Vineyard
• Kenwood Vineyards: 2010 Pinot Gris, Russian River Valley
• Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards: 2007 Brut Rosé, Carneros

As I write this on Sunday morning, this story is the most-read news article on the Santa Rosa Press Democrat website.

BUT, not a single one of these wineries has the good news on their websites (either on the home page, or on the "news" page of their site).  People are reading the news, searching for the winery on Google, visiting their home page, and finding...nothing.

(Update: as of 8AM Monday, 9/26, Wilson Winery has updated their home page.)

Consider the lost PR value of this oversight.  It happens once a year -- you'd think people might plan for it.  And yes, it's a weekend, but last time I looked, wineries are open for business on the weekends.

To their credit, Wilson Winery and Gloria Ferrer have updates on their respective Facebook pages (here and here), but unfortunately, these updates will only appear in the news streams of people who already Like them, and will disappear fairly quickly in the news stream.

As Vin|65 pointed out, your winery website is the hub of your (online) marketing activities.  Something as newsworthy at this award should be featured on your home page for a week after the event.

Obviously, these winning wines may soon be sold out.  A winery in this glorious position should still have an offering of some sort for people who missed out (a different vintage, a special deal).

You lose the value of publicity when you fail to engage the people who look for your winery and wines as a result of that publicity.

(previous rants: 2009, 2005)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Explained

Still not 100% sure about what SEO is?  This quick video from Common Craft is a good introduction.

Of course, your chances of ranking highly for a general search phrase like Pinot Noir are low.  But you probably want to rank highly for searches that associate your winery (e.g. Kosta Browne Pinot Noir) and/or region (e.g. Russian River Pinot Noir) with a particular varietal.

Another example: V. Sattui recognizes that they are a popular picnic spot, and has optimized their site for searches relating to winery picnic.

If you don't know the top 3-5 search terms that bring visitors to your winery, talk to your Webmaster.  Then take a look for yourself at where your site appears in the results when you type those phrases into Google.  If you're not happy with the outcome, it's time to tackle SEO for your winery website.

The Little Things Count: Link Color

Yes, there are winery website disasters.

But even small changes, like a red link vs a blue link can make a gigantic difference in click-throughs (and perhaps, conversions as well).

And that's why you have to test and measure!  For the record, I guessed wrong.

(PS - if you worry about website conversion rates, Which Test Won? is worth subscribing to...)

Inexcusable Behavior

Lew Perdue has already taken Pepi to task for their website (article, website):

The Pepi site is quite possibly the worst winery web site ever.

But it's truly amazing to me that any professionally-managed web site has an internal link (i.e. one controlled by the winery itself) which generates a File Not Found (404) error.

So, I am amazed (as was Lew) to go to the Pepi site and get a 404 when I click on the Store Locator link.  A link on the home page, not one hidden away somewhere.  An important link if you want to actually buy some Pepi wine.

Jeez.  You would think that checking for bad links is some sort of rocket science (Hint: it's not - Google's free Webmaster Tools will *tell* you if you have 404s on your site.)

Do you (or your Webmaster) run a regular check for bad links on your winery website?

If not, why?

(Looking at the Pepi News link on the site seems to indicate that the site hasn't been updated since 2009.  So, not altogether surprising that it's broken.  Anyone from Pepi out there want to comment?)

 

 

Pay By Webcam?

This is an interesting development in the world of e-commerce: pay by holding your credit card up to a webcam.

I can't recommend this payment service to wineries for their websites because of the delay in payment (30 days with a 10% rolling reserve), but it's good to keep up with the latest advances.

And hey, it's kinda cool.

(via Dave Kaminsky's Web Video University)

The Anatomy Of A Landing Page

This is just a nice summary from the folks over at Formstack (who, incidentally, do landing pages).

One of the biggest marketing errors I see wineries make is to promote something via AdWords or e-mail, and then direct people to their home page, rather than a landing page specifically tailored to convert the visitor.

From the Bad Ideas Department: 9/11 Memorial Wine

Update 2011-08-25: Lenn Thompson weighs in with a different take on the subject.

I appreciate the nod to charity, but this  9/11 Memorial Wine from Lieb Family Cellars just seems in poor taste.

You can read the original story in the Los Angeles Times, or add your vote to a poll on CBS News.  Here were the poll results just before I posted this:

I expect the reaction might have been more positive if they had donated all the money to charity (not just "making a donation from sales of this wine").

How does this pertain to winery websites?  While there's a tiny announcement on the Lieb Family Cellars home page, it isn't linked to the page about the wines (or on the "Media Room" page, the other place you would expect to find it).  Nope, it's buried two levels down under our wines and then Great Wines for Good Causes  (and why is the wine "Great," but the cause only "Good?"  Just sayin').

If you know (or hope) that a story (good or bad) about your wine is breaking, make the information you want people to see OBVIOUS. 

Thank you.

What Do You Think Of The Black Estate Vineyard Website?

I saw this tweet from Brent Johnson of Vin|65, pointing out this interesting article: Essential E-Commerce Website Features: Tips and Examples.  The article gives examples of product navgiation, search boxes, shopping carts, featured products, filtering and sorting, and product images.

Two wineries were mentioned in the article, Black Estate Vineyards, and Jax Vineyards, both in the "product images" section.  I've written about Jax before, but I was wondering what my readers think about the Black Estate website in general.

Play with their site a bit, and share your insights with a comment!

Why Your E-Mail List Isn't Growing...

Direct marketers (and wineries that successfully market direct-to-consumer) know that "it's all about the list."

Aside from new orders, your tasting room (if you have one), and events where you pour your wines, your website is the best source of new e-mail addresses for your list.  So, why aren't you getting more (or any) signups from your website?

This visually-excellent article from the ElasticPath blog has one answer: the signup form for your list isn't getting enough love on your website.  And they point out the value of testing its location as well.

How do you grow your e-mail list?  Share your expertise in a comment!

Why Most Winery Websites Stink, Part II

According to Overdone: why are restaurant websites so horifically bad?, here's the answer:

Restaurant sites are the product of restaurant culture. These nightmarish websites were spawned by restaurateurs who mistakenly believe they can control the online world the same way they lord over a restaurant.

Substitute winery for restaurant and you're there.  The wine business, in general, is about things being "just so," from the blending of juice to the look of the label.  There are a lot of recovering type-A people in the biz.

There are other factors at work, as this quote points out:

"Say you're a designer and you've got to demo a site you've spent two months creating," Bohan explains. "Your client is someone in their 50s who runs a restaurant but is not very in tune with technology. What's going to impress them more: Something with music and moving images, something that looks very fancy to someone who doesn't know about optimizing the Web for consumer use, or if you show them a bare-bones site that just lists all the information? I bet it would be the former—they would think it's great and money well spent."

which I think does a lot to explain why winery websites frequently fail to work well for visitors.  And, as the article also points out, many designers get paid by the hour, so it's in their financial interest to create works of art, which may or may not meet the needs of visitors.  (Hate mail from web designers in 3...2...1)

 I understand the need for wineries to outsource their Web presence to third parties.  It's just that the real measurement of a website -- its effectiveness in meeting the needs of visitors -- is (a) hard to measure, (b) not generally available for comparison, and (c) questioned by skeptical winery owners.  So, important decisions about website design frequently come down to "Is it pretty?" or "Do I (the winery owner) like it?"

PS - If you missed Part I, it's here.  Some possible fixes are here (including some great reader comments).

Fixing Those Stinky Winery Websites...

After I wrote Why Most Winery Websites Stink, I saw the tweet above from Larry "The Wine Guy" Chandler, who raises a valid point about my post:  I didn't offer any solutions.

So, here are the first two things I would fix on any winery web site that's missing them.  The first is easy, the second, not so much:

1. Install analytics.  If you are trying to improve the performance (by whatever measure) of your website, you can't do it without some data.  If you're not trying to improve, why are you reading this?
2. Make it trivially easy to make changes to your website.  If not, it's almost a guarantee that it will become outdated.  Also, it's vritually guaranteed you can't test changes in response to the data that analytics will bring.

If you've already got these covered, please leave a comment -- you deserve some recognition!  

My experience is that these two items are missing on most winery websites, i.e. the 5,000+ wineries that fight for 10 percent of US wine sales.  90% of US wine, by volume, is sold by just 30 wineries.  These "top 30" wineries can devote entire teams to making sure that their Web presence is instrumented and up-to-date (although that's certainly no guarantee).

Bonus: if you've already made the two fixes above, then the third fix is to make it glaringly obvious where and how people can buy your wine.  My favorite example of this used to be Anderson's Conn Valley Vineyards, but unfortunately they seemed to have redesigned their website and dropped it (dumb!).  Basically, you want site visitors to easily find out:

• how to buy your wines direct (online, as part of a club, by phone, by fax, or at the winery)
• what stores carry your wine,
• what restaurants serve your wine, and even
• other outlets that carry your wine (e.g. K&L, wine.com, etc.)

Yes, it's hard to list the specifc stores and restaurants, but the better the job you do at this, the more avenues you create for potential customers to try your wine.  And yes, you'd like to get the direct sale, but maybe someone is looking for a wine that you no longer have available.  Piss them off, or point them somewhere that can make them a happy camper?  The choice is yours, and it speaks directly to your focus on making customers happy.

Note to cult wineries:  even if people can't buy your wine, it doesn't hurt to explain that clearly and politely.  Unless, of course, you just want to make people feel bad for not being "in the know."

Disagree with my choices?  Leave a comment!

QR Codes and Your Winery Website

It seems obvious, but bears repeating: if you are using QR codes to send visitors to your website, make sure that the page they land on looks good on a mobile phone.

Otherwise, you're just pissing people off.

(Note: this is not a comment on Fiasco Wines.  I just liked the presentation of the QR code on their bottle.)

Why Most Winery Websites Stink

I didn't write it, but what a terrific title!

It comes from the Washington Wine Report, run by Sean P. Sullivan.  And here's the money quote:

90-95% of winery websites stink because they say little about the winery and even less about the wines. They provide largely generic information rather than specific information about who you are and what differentiates your winery.

The post also points out that most winery websites aren't up-to-date, something I've mentioned before.

The comments (36 at last count) are interesting.  Someone points out that the Washington Wine Report website ain't all that great either, which may be true, but is irrelevant to the author's point.  What prevents most wineries, regardless of size, from having an attractive, distinctive site which meets the needs of visitors?

One commenter (JJ) had this thoughtful contribution, which is worth quoting:

Many of the real small wineries simply do not have the time or money to spend on getting every last detail on their website. With web-development costs often into the triple-digits per hour, you can see how the average startup might take a bare-bones and minimally updated approach, particularly if they make more than a handful of wines. Bloggers are by design the generators of their own content, but oftentimes winery folks do not have the skills and/or means necessary to generate meaningful content, which means they’ve got to pay someone else to do it. You’ve got to sell wine in order to pay for things like a website, but without a nice website it’s harder to sell wine. It's obviously a conundrum, and I'm sure that many winemakers put off spending all of that time and money out of frustration that they have to spend so much time and money to make it happen. Perhaps it's not the savviest decision, but it's certainly a reality in the industry. 

And yet somehow, some (small) wineries *do* have nice websites.  What's their secret?  Inquiring minds want to know, so leave a comment...

PS - the person holding their nose in the picture is not Sean P. Sullivan.

Why A/B Testing Is Like Sex In High School

 

I felt a little silly about having posted yesterday about A/B testing results for wine products,  because I'm pretty sure that most wineries (since most wineries are small wineries) aren't doing A/B testing.

Number one reason?  They have no idea how to do it.  Followed closely by "no time to do it."

Serendipitously, this post from CopyBlogger showed up the same day: Why Split-Testing is Like Sex in High School.  Despite the headline, it's a nice little tutorial on split (or A/B) testing.  If your website is based on Wordpress, there's even a handy tool to help you.

In order to do A/B testing, you need some way to measure things.  So, the first step is to make sure you have some sort of analytics package installed on your website.  Google Analytics is free and more than overkill for most winery websites.

What's the first page on your website you should A/B test?  Probably the most popular page on your site, where you should be trying to lower the bounce rate.  Again, you'll need some sort of measurement tool to tell which page that is.

Got questions about A/B testing or Google Analytics?  Leave a comment, and I'll do my best to answer it.

A/B Testing: A Wine Example

Many of you know about A/B testing on websites: showing one of two versions (A and B) of a given page to visitors, and seeing which one generates a better result.

The ElasticPath e-commerce blog, GetElastic (recommended), has a nice post about A/B testing for wine, complete with a real-life example of a wine product page.  The results are, to say the least, interesting (and counter-intuitive).

We'd all like to think we know best when it comes to what appeals to website visitors (and, in my experience, wineries are particularly guilty in this regard), but testing reveals the (sometimes surprising) truth about what drives visitors to take action.

If you have an A/B testing story to share, please do so in the comments.

Update: here's a link to the full case-study documenting a 41% lift in revenue per visitor.

An SEO Guide for Wineries

It looks like Snooth is doing a series entitled SEO Guide for Wineries on their blog.  The first few posts are up:

• Part 1: So You Want to SEO Your Winery's Website
• Part 2: Not All Content Is Created Equal
• Part 3: Understand the Engines
• Part 4: Express Your Authority (added 2011-07-29)
• Part 5: HTML is The Language of the Web (added 2011-08-12)
• Part 6: How Do Search Engines Read Websites? (added 2011-10-15)

I'll update this post as additional entries arrive.

Thanks to Mark Angelillo, Snooth's Chief Technical Officer, for taking on the task of demystifying Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for those in the wine trade.

JAX Vineyards Web Site: A Review (of sorts)

I wrote this on 1 April 2010, but evidently never pressed the Publish button.  We apologize for the delay...

My most-excellent designer friend, Jason Reed, took the time to write me a note about the JAX Vineyards Web site:

Wow- http://jaxvineyards.com/

Wonder who designed it?

This is pretty effusive praise from Jason. which intrigued me.  So, I wrote to Kimberly Jackson, who along with her brother Trent, owns the winery and asked.  She told me that it was designed by Nicholas Masias.

I also asked Jason what he liked so much about it:

What's not to like?

1. It's very easy to figure out where to get their wines, both online and in restaurants.
2. It focuses on the bottle/label, helping you to identify the wine "in the wild".
3. They show the bottle in an "active" state- the cork is open, some of it has been drunk, there are cookies next to it - as if you've already engaged with the bottle.
4. It's memorable, and unique, and beautifully laid out. Bonehead simple, airy and open. It looks like no other wine site I'm aware of.
5. Contact information is easily found.

I mostly agree, except for #5 (you have to scroll down to the very bottom to find the contact information, which IMHO should be at the top of the page for quick reference when using the Web as a phone book).

ZMOT

I hate this phrase: Zero-Moment of Truth (ZMOT).  It's advertising-speak of the worst sort.

On the other hand, I love this quote:

When consumers hear about a product today, their first reaction is ‘Let me search online for it.’And so they go on a journey of discovery: about a product, a service, an issue, an opportunity...

which aptly summarizes the challenge facing wineries (and lots of other businesses as well) today.

Google is promoting a free 75-page ebook called, not suprisingly, The Zero Moment of Truth, which you can download as a PDF.  Chapters 1 (Changing the Rulebook), 2 (The New Mental Model), and 6 (How to Win at ZMOT) are the most useful, but it's a quick read (you can safely skip the foreword, though).

Chapter 6 offers 7 steps for "winning at ZMOT" (another cringe-worthy phrase), which I hope will entice you to take a look at the details:

1. Put Someone in Charge
2. Find Your Zero Moments
3. Answer the Questions People Are Asking
4. Optimize for ZMOT
5. Be Fast
6. Don’t Forget Video
7. Jump In!

Smart winery marketers will download a copy of this book and think deeply about how it applies to selling more of their wines.  The rest of you can proceed with business-as-usual.

Why you still need a website for your winery

John Scalzi echoes a point which was also made by my pals at Vin65:

So, let’s go back to 1998. You’re a new writer winery and you want to establish a permanent residency online. Which would be wiser: Having your own site at your own domain, or putting up a site at GeoCities?

It's easy to get caught up in the swirl of excitement around Facebook, but your winery website is still the anchor for your online presence because you control it.

(By the way, Scalzi writes science fiction, and if you haven't read Old Man's War , you're missing something.)

Should You Let People "Like" Your Wine?

I got some comments on a recent post which doubted the value of Facebook in actually driving sales.

You may find these statistics about the impact of a Like buttom on sales interesting.  One example:

American Eagle added the Like button next to every product on their site and found Facebook referred visitors spent an average of 57% more money than non-Facebook referred visitors

Your Winery Website Is The Hub

Just in case you missed it, I want to call your attention to a great post on the Vin | 65 blog: Your Wine Website is the Hub 

I only wish I'd written it.  The signal-to-noise ratio on the Vin | 65 blog is very high, and if you're not subscribed, you should be.

The Perfect Shopping Cart?

This 16-item checklist from Get Elastic is a great way to see how you winery website stacks up.

After all, the goal of your website is to increase sales of your wine, right?

(If you do e-commerce and you don't follow Get Elastic ("the #1 subscribed ecommerce blog"), you're doing yourself a disservice.)

The Pork Belly Test for Wineries

No, this isn't about Pigs & Pinot.

This is a great test to see if your winery successfully avoids sounding like every other purveyor of fermented grape juice on the Web.  I only wish I'd thought of it myself...

Take The Pork Belly Test at your winery today!

 

What I Want From A Winery Website...

Well, actually it's What I want from a restaurant website from The Oatmeal, but you get the idea.  When you address the needs of your visitors, you win.

Regardless of the industry in which you operate, you've got to be able to think like a visitor.

Never Said About Winery Websites...

The actual site is named Never Said About Restaurant Websites, but boy, so much of it applies to wineries as well.

An example:

I think it shows how unique and progressive your restaurant winery is when you use 90% of the screen area for your theme and ambiance, and 10% for the information I actually came to your site for.

Plenty to think about here...

You might also be interested in How a Terrible Website Will Increase Your Business, which was my source for the link above.

Does Your Winery Website Actually Work?

You would think the answer is "Of course!"  After all, you pay good money to smart designers to make sure it does.

So, I was nearly incredulous when I discovered that the Clos du Val website didn't work properly in either Chrome or Firefox.

It works fine in Internet Explorer (IE), though.  

Here are the screen shots (click the thumbnail to see full size).

Chrome (menu is visually busted, although it does "work"):

Firefox (menu is not visible at all, which means you can't navigate):

Internet Explorer 8 (why do people think there's a problem?):

Nowadays, it's quite easy to install all three browsers on your system (unlike the old days, when IE seemed to go out of its way to make other browsers malfunction), so even if your web designer says everything works, you can (and should) check for yourself.

The moral of the story is "trust but verify."  I'm sure Clos du Val has been happily thinking that everything is fine with their website.  In reality, somewhere between 20 and 50 percent of their visitors aren't able to access it as intended.

(Note: I use Chrome on a day-to-day basis.)

The iPhone as a Model for Winery Web Site Navigation

I've written before about how most websites are way too noisy, and could perhaps take a lesson from mobile websites, which are severely constrained about how much they can display.

This came back to me when I saw the website for the upcoming Facebook movie, The Social Network.  It looks like this:

 

And, as you may be able to see, the site navigation (at the right of the screen) looks just like an iPhone.

It's an interesting design.

When People Call About Your Winery Website...

If the person who answers your phone isn't completely familiar with your winery website, they should be.

Otherwise, how are they going to help someone who needs help with the website?

For example, today I called a business because the event schedule on their website was out of date.  When I mentioned that fact to them, they said "Gosh, it is?  I'll let someone know."  I'm not real confident of a fix, because the person I mentioned it to on the phone clearly has no way to see if the problem gets fixed (assuming that they are interested in such things to begin with).

I don't expect anyone in a small winery to be sitting at a desk waiting for the phone to ring, but when it does, they should have a computer with access to the Web sitting in front of them.

As a manager or owner, you should be visiting your Web site on a weekly or monthly basis, at the very least, to make sure you're happy with what your visitors are experiencing.  It's easy -- just add a repeating event to your calendar.

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.

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.

Old School

30 reasons why websites and e-mail are your best bets as a small business.

...for most growing businesses who have a limited budget, focusing on a well-designed website and e-mail marketing are the essential elements they should focus on, before diving too deep into social media.

Just make sure that (a) your website is easy to change, and (b) let a professional (e.g. Constant Contact, AWeber) handle the mechanics of running a e-mail list.

Submitted Without Comment

We're the same, we're the same, we're... from the certifiably brilliant Seth Godin.

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.

Is The Server Working? Who Knows?

Here, with minor edits, is the opening paragraph of an e-mail I received from a winery today:

Dear [redacted] Customers,

We’ve decided to re-send last week’s e-mail announcing the release of two new [redacted] wines, since many of our customers encountered difficulty in placing their orders on our website. We have since learned that our website vendor was having serious server problems that prevented some of our customers from completing their orders (other orders were placed successfully). Over the week-end, the problems were fixed and the ordering system is now in [sic] working. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your e-mails, alerting us to these problems.

First of all, breathe a sigh of relief that this wasn't your winery.

What would have happened if some frustrated customer hadn't sent them an e-mail?  They might still have a broken e-commerce site.  They might be wondering why that e-mail offer they sent isn't generating as many orders as usual.

I could be cynical and assume that this is just a way of sending another e-mail blast to get people to take action.  But I'm not.  I feel sorry for whatever revenue this winery lost (my understanding is that they are, like many wineries, trying to move slow-selling products).  I suspect it also had some impact on their customer's perceptions as well.

I took a moment to look up the IP address for the winery's Web site (they host their own e-commerce solution).  Doing a lookup through ARIN (the entity which assigns blocks of IP addresses for the US), I could see that their IP address belongs to their Web host, Bay Area Network Systems.  Presumably, that's where the problem occurred, although it's hard to tell from the winery's description.

What can you do to ensure that you won't experience the same breakdown?  Ideally, you have a way to place an order (from outside your own network) that flows all the way through the system and shows up as received.  That's the only way to really be sure.  And even then, as the letter above shows, that's not a guarantee that it's working for everyone.

If you're like most wineries, where Web sales aren't all that important to the bottom line, you probably don't care.  But if you're doing significant revenue via your Web site, you should be asking yourself, "How do I know that my e-commerce site is actually working?"

(If you supply winery e-commerce solutions, I'd appreciate any comments you care to add.  Thanks!)

The Decline Of The Home Page

  

Gerry McGovern writes:

More and more customers are going straight to specific pages on your website, rather than the homepage.

Read the rest here.

And before you decide whether you agree with him, check the statistics for your site.  You should know which page on your winery Web site is most popular (here's why).

Split-Testing E-Mail Layouts

 

I'm just going to quote the e-mail I got from Anne Holland's Which Test Won?:

Can you guess which newsletter template got nearly 12% more clickthroughs? The changes are subtle, but they definitely made an impact. 

Let's face it, 95% of marketers probably don't bother to test their email templates ever ... even though email contributes significantly to the bottom line (especially considering its low cost.) This makes me nuts! 

Testing your email template is fairly quick, easy, and cheap. I hope this week's test inspires a few marketers to consider doing it. OK, my little rant is over.

Go, take the test, and be sure to sign up for her weekly newsletter/reminder.  It's fun (and educational) to see if you can pick the winner each week, and I'm sure it will give you some ideas for improving pages on your winery Web site.

"My God, it's full of wineries!"

 

The US is full of wineries. According to Wines & Vines, there are now 6,589 US wineries (based on my experience with The Winery Web Site Report, probably half of them have Web sites).

76% make less than 5,000 cases a year (41% make less than a thousand).

How do you intend to stand out from the other 6,588 wineries?  You're all selling, in one form or another, fermented grape juice.

What's your unique, engaging story?

PS - the original quote was "My God, it's full of stars!"

Pay Attention To Your Permalinks

 

Lots of people use WordPress as a content management system (CMS).  It's a great tool, has an active user community, and it's free.

You can use it to run your blog or your whole Web site.  You can use it as a free hosted service at WordPress.com (with some limitations), or run the software yourself (many Web hosts offer it pre-installed as part of a hosting package).  One thing, though, is you still kinda need to read the manual if you want to maximize its value as a tool for marketing your winery and wines.

I was reminded of this while looking at Wine Industry Insight.  The "permalink" (URL) of a post at wineindustryinsight.com looks like this:

 http://wineindustryinsight.com/?p=10476

This is the default, and its format is a dead giveaway that WordPress is in use.

A better format for this permalink, one which could increase the search engine ranking for this post, might be something like:

 http://wineindustryinsight.com/2010/04/07/wine-industry-news.html

since search engines tend to pay attention to keywords in a URL.

Fortunately, WordPress allows you to control how your permalinks will appear.

One thing to watch out for: if you change the permalinks for existing posts, you need to create permanent redirects (HTTP 301s) for the old URLs if you want to preserve the current search engine rank/information about those pages.

This is why it's important to set up your permalinks correctly from the get-go.

Dilbert On Your Winery Web Site

Today's strip made me chuckle (click to embiggen):

 

Improve Your Winery Web Site: The Interview

Mary Baker of Central Coast Wine Blogs interviewed me on the subject of winery Web sites, turning it into a three-part series on her blog:

How to Improve Your Winery Website (Mary's own thoughts on the subject - a great read)

Improve Your Winery Website: An Interview with Mike Duffy

Top 5 Winery Website Mistakes

Five Top Things Every Winery Website Should Have

I'd be grateful if you'd take the time (just a few minutes, really) to read through the interview.  As always, your comments are welcome (and appreciated).

How Much Should A Winery Web Site Cost?

Design Vineyard isn't afraid to tell you.

This rather-straightforward practice got noticed by 37signals, which they termed "refreshing."

If you follow that link and read the comments, you'll see that not all designers felt the same way:

While it’s admirable that a prospective client should have a general idea of what a project will cost them, that doesn’t mean you should advertise your prices like Walmart.

The comments are worth a read. Tyson Caly of Design Vineyard does a good job of explaining his point of view. For one thing, it works.

What do you think a winery Web site should cost?

10 Things Every Winery Web Site Must Include

I wish I'd written it: 10 Things Every Winery Web Site Must Include.

None of these things are revolutionary, expensive, or otherwise difficult. Most wineries have this information readily available; it is just a matter of publishing it to their website.

Ah, there's the rub.  Partly because for many wineries, "publishing it to their website" is just too darn hard.

Your winery Web site *should* be the authoritative source of information about your wines (each one of them) on the Web.  Why isn't it?

Google your best-selling wine.  Why isn't your Web page for that wine the number one result?  Worth thinking about.