The Winery Web Site Report

"...make things that SELL."

A great quote, and a great story about the challenges of changing distributors from the Clos LaChance blog: Now that you know, buy some wine.  Even if you don't read the entire post, click through and read the last sentence.

You might also appreciate their previous post on why they changed distributors: Just don't lie.

A minor complaint:  I wish Clos LaChance didn't post under the name "administrator" -- that name has about as much personality as a lug nut.  If you're blogging, give your account a real name.

And some praise: take a look at their contact page.  You can't say it's hard to find someone to talk to at Clos LaChance!

(In other news, today's my 55th birthday.)

Review Your Forms

One of the reasons I think it's important to control your e-commerce experience is because many off-the-shelf e-commerce packages frankly suck.

Here's a great article on the best way to design forms for your Web site.  But you can't take advantage of these lessons if you can't change anything on your site.

Pet peeve: forms which don't allow spaces or dashes in credit card or phone numbers.

Moshin Vineyards Won A Free Web Site!

The winner of the SSU Winery Web Site Challenge has been announced: Moshin Vineyards, a maker of Russian River Pinot Noir.  They were chosen from 60 entrants, and will receive a new Web site designed by students at SSU's School of Business and Economics, and hosted for a year by eWinerySolutions.com.

This is a screen shot of their current home page (courtesy of the most-excellent ScreenGrab! plug-in for Firefox).

 (click for a full-size image)

Currently, the site has no e-commerce capability.  To order, you need to print out an order form, or call them on their toll-free number.  Of course, adding that facility has potential impact on other winery systems like inventory, billing, and accounting.

It will be interesting to see what the new and improved version will look like.  The new site is expected in May, 2010.  I hope the SSU students will blog about the process of designing a new site (and integrating it with Moshin's current systems and marketing).

Congratulations to Rick Moshin and his family on the win!  But what happens when that free year of hosting at eWinerySolutions.com is up?  I hope the site is making money for the Moshins by then...

Do Your Visitors Like Your Winery Web Site?

Inquiring minds want to know, of course.

Wouldn't you like to be able to ask your visitors these four questions?

• Based on today’s experience, how would your rate your site experience overall?
• Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of your visit?
• Were you able to complete the purpose of your visit today?
• What do you value most about the Acme Winery website?

Well, you can, and better yet, you can survey your Web site visitors for free using 4Q.

(note: 4Q is probably a lead-generation mechanism for iPerceptions, but that doesn't make it any less useful.)

So, what's stopping you? 

If you're already using 4Q or other random visitor survey technology, please leave a comment with your experiences.

Who Links To Your Winery Web Site?

 

It's interesting to see what other sites link to your home page (or actually, any page on your site, such as the product page for your best-selling wine).  It's free and easy .

1. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
2. Type the URL of your Web site or Web page into the box at the top and click "Explore URL."
3. A new page will display.
4. Click on the Inlinks button near the top of the Results box.
5. Select "except from this domain" from the Show Inlinks: drop-down box.

You should now see a list of sites which link to yours.  If you like this sort of information, you should sign up for Google's Webmaster Tools (free!), which offers even more details to validated site owners.

Most Winery Web Sites Suck

 

Don't take my word for it: listen to a beverage retailer.

Her complaints: producers without Web sites (I'd love to know which ones, since it seems like most wineries that you'll find in a store do have a Web site), sites without complete information, and sites which make it hard to find information (especially Flash-based sites).

Jeez, guys.  These people are trying to sell your wines.  Help them out for Pete's sake!

If you're in the retail side of things, agree or disagree in the comments!

See also: OwnIT: Your Wine, Your Way.  I'm still thinking the OwnIT concept through, but it's certainly an attempt to address some of the issues that everyone faces when trying to get current, correct winery information.

A $100 Bottle Of Wine

I recently wrote about Jo Diaz's post, What Are The Marketing Costs For a $50 Bottle of Wine? At the time, her post reminded me of something Dave Coffaro wrote a long time ago, but I didn't have time to chase it right then.  

Today, I took a moment to visit the Coffaro Web site and turned up not only Dave's original rant on the difference between what a bottle costs and what it is sold for, but this article from Brendan Eliason, entitled My $100 Bottle of Wine.

(BTW, Brendan is now the owner of urban winery Periscope Cellars.)

One of the things which the Internet has done so well is to remove intermediaries (anyone remember travel agents?).

Brendan's article  show that it's possible to make 95+ point wines for a cost that would allow them to be sold direct and still yield a substantial profit for the winery, even if you can only sell them in states that allow direct shipment.

It occurs to me that there's probably an opportunity for an extremely high-end winery which sells *only* direct to consumer/trade via the Internet.  It would require (I think) a whole new approach/mindset to be successful, but it's possible.

Unfortunately, I'm not rich enough to run that experiment (though I'd like to).  If you know of someone who's trying it in a serious way, please let me know in the comments.

Guest Post: Just How Big Is Winery E-Commerce?

Today's guest post is from Andrew Kamphuis the owner of Vin | 65, which offers "solutions for managing winery websites including website design, ecommerce, content management, and customer relationship management."  It grew out of a conversation with Andrew during the holidays about whether wineries really care about actively improving their Web sites, given that most wineries see a tiny amount of revenue from e-commerce.  Andrew had some interesting information to share, so I asked him to guest blog...

We provide our e-commerce solution to over 200 wineries and wine stores (mainly through white-branded solutions).  Less than 10% of clients make up 90% of sales going through our system.  (Big surprise, ­ but it’s really lopsided).

The real surprise for you is that those 10% are really doing some giant numbers.  We aren’t talking club or allocation sales either.  The sales they are doing would rival tasting rooms.  And while I don’t know their total sales I’ll tell you, this ain’t no 5% of their gross Direct to Consumer  (DTC) sales.

I believe that a few more wineries will get 20 - 40% of their DTC sales from the web this year (2010).  I believe that online sales is the most profitable segment for a winery.  What we need to do is to get wineries to believe.

I ordered wine at several high-profile wineries right before the holidays.  My wine all shipped, but I didn’t get a single tracking e-mail ­ -- a couple of the brand sites didn't even send me an order confirmation.  I ordered wine in the tasting rooms of 10+ wineries in Napa over a month ago ­ -- not one asked me for my e-mail address.  This is all basic stuff ­ before they start optimizing the site.

I believe that until a winery makes the website a part of their business ­they won’t see numbers.   Apple, Amazon, Zappos,  etc. -- ­ these guys all send tracking info, order info, etc.  and they all encourage feedback, encourage second orders, etc.  Wineries get how to set up their tasting room to maximize customer experience, but until they maximize customer experience on the web, the web is just going to be a sad number on their sales sheet.

That’s my two-cent holiday rant.

I believe. And this year I think I will have the customer and case study to prove it. 

Thanks, Andrew! I hope to have another guest post from you in a year's time with that case study.

In the meantime, if you don't already subscribe to the Vin | 65 blog, you should.  It regularly provides similar insights into wineries on the Web.

PS - tomorrow is the last day to take my 2010 Winery Sales Survey.  Please do!

Test And Measure

Here's an interesting approach to re-designing your existing Web site.  Rather than the "one fell swoop" approach, you might want to try "test and measure."

Net result: a 210 percent increase in sales of a $29.97 product (no, it's not wine - so sue me!  The principle is still valid).

Again and again, the secret to improving your winery Web site is the ability to easily make changes (and test them).

 Is your site easy to change?  If not, what are you doing about it in 2010?

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(If you haven't already, please take my 2010 Winery Sales Survey.  Thank you!  The results will be summarized in a future post.)

(I note that I'm not the only person conducting a winery survey.)

Wineries In The Twenty-First Century?

Alder Yarrow at Vinography has this to say about winery Web sites:

I'm happy to say that at least all the wineries had web sites (which wasn't true until just a couple of years ago). But many of the sites were out of date (meaning they didn't actually list the winery's current releases); a few failed to list phone numbers or e-mail addresses; and probably close to 50% of the wineries that offered public tasting rooms hadn't bothered to place themselves in Google Maps so that customers could easily find them.

(from his post, How Wineries Will Fail in the 21^st Century).

Current releases? Given the the fact that you only release wines a few times a year, it should be a "release checklist" item.  Phone Number?  Readers of this blog know that your winery phone number should be in the header of every page on your site (in subtle, but obvious fasion).  E-mail?  Not as important as your phone number, so put it on the Contact Us page.  Map?  It's a given for *any* retail Web site (e.g. a winery with a tasting room).

(If you have a moment, please take my 2010 Winery Sales Survey, and pass the link along to any other wineries you know.  Thank you.)

Do You Have A Mobile Web Site?

 

If you have (or know of) a winery Web site which treats mobile users differently, please leave a note in the comments.  I'm trying to assemble a list of wineries (so far, Frog's Leap) which see value in providing a more appropriate experience to mobile visitors.

If you're not pursuing a mobile Web site for your winery at this time, please leave a comment as well, perhaps with your reasons.

This Is Your Web Site On iPhone

The iPhone is a best-seller (despite AT&T).  As a single phone, it is probably the dominant US-based mobile phone today.

If you haven't yet taken time to see what your winery Web site looks and feels like on an iPhone, please do (I'm sure at least one of your family or friends owns one).  Some sites are truly hideous. Flash-based sites don't work at all.

This has been a public service announcement.  Thank you.

PS - the Apple tablet computer (the iSlate?) appears to be coming soon.

PPS - Everflight does mobile winery Web sites.

Love And Hate And Winery Web Sites

Brandy Bell, over at Donati Family Winery sent out the following message on Twitter:

hey #winos, what are you looking for in a winery website? what do you hate about some sites? gimme the dirt ;)

Larry Chandler gave her these replies:

@DonatiFamily Love: Few clicks to buy wine + Flash-free. Hate: must register before knowing total cost + search 4 the buy button

@DonatiFamily Also: hate sound without asking. Love clear bottle images. Love brief descriptions with option for more.

Brandy thanked him, and asked another question:

@LarryTheWineGuy GREAT feedback, Larry! what about consumer education?

To which Larry replied:

@DonatiFamily If educating consumers about your wines, terroir, and winemaking fine. Otherwise link to existing educational sites.

All great advice, all aimed at improving visitor experience.

So, what do you love and hate about winery Web sites?  Please leave a comment!

Winery Web Site Navigation

Here's the navigation from a winery Web site I recently visited, for a high-end Napa Cabernet Sauvignon:

• Acquire
• Wines
• Winemaker
• Vineyard
• Pedigree
• Mailing List
• Contact
• Trade

There's nothing terribly wrong with it (aside from its position on the page).   The question is, "Could it be better?"

The purpose of navigation is to help your visitors get where they need to be on your site, regardless of where they start (remember, visitors from search engines may land anywhere on your site).  As I've said before, visitors come with a goal and a Back button.  You want to make sure they reach their goal, whatever it is.

Back when I created the original idea for The Winery Web Site Report (a custom, printed report), I believed that there were four primary types of visitors to your site, based on their goal in visiting:

1. people who want to buy your wine right now (possibly as a gift).
2. people who want more information about your wines
3. people who want to sell your wines (the trade)
4. people who want to write about your wines (the media)

I think this remains true today (although I've learned there are some important nuances to consider). 

The problem with most navigation is that people don't seek to improve it based on measuring what people do (another reason to make analytics your first priority).  Navigation (should) appear consistently (same items, same place) on every page of your site (with the possible exception of checkout, since that's a process you don't want to interrupt).  Typically, navigation is a horizontal bar below the page header, or a vertical list in the left-hand margin.

Here are the things that absolutely need to appear on every page of your site.

• Winery Name and Logo - every page should make it clear what site the visitor has reached.  Having the logo be a link to the home page is a standard convention.  
• Address and E-Mail - the address may be your street address, or it could be "Diamond Mountain, Napa, California."  Regardless, it should probably link to a Google Map (unless you don't want visitors).
• (Toll-Free) Phone Number - make it easy for people to talk to you, whether to ask a question or order.  Remember, people use the Web like the Yellow Pages.  Don't make them hunt around your site for contact information.  Toll-free service is cheap - use it.  And track whether people called via your Web site.
• Buy Now - this provides clear direction for people who came to buy.  This link should take the user to a simple list of all the wines you have available for sale.  If you don't sell online, that's fine.  Tell people where/how they can buy your wines.   You've got a potential customer in hand - don't lose them.
• Our Wines - this link is clear to visitors who may want to buy, but want more information about your wines first.
• Trade - information for this item is less important than the preceding two, but should be visible.  Generally, smaller type and a position off the main navigation bar are best, but don't hide it below the fold.
• Media - as for the trade, this is not a primary item for most people, but important to its intended audience.
• More Info - Yes, it's a catch-call.  Yes, I'd like a more elegant name for it.  This is intended to give visitors who have a goal other than { buy, wine info, trade, media } a clear place to go.  Here is where you describe and link to the "next most important" items on your site.  This is the one place that a drop-down menu might be appropriate.
• Sign Up - every page should allow you to capture the visitor's e-mail address for future contact.

Your name, logo and contact information are really part of the header on each page.  The links for Trade and Media are "de-emphasized".  The Sign Up is a (ideally) small box in the left or right column (topic for a future post).  As a result, we've really only got three items on our navigation menu.

Buy Now

Our Wines

More Info

In addition to the essentials above, here are some navigation items to consider (and test) as part of your navigation menu:

• Visit Us - if you want people to come to the winery, or you are known as a great place to visit (V. Sattui does this well), then it probably deserves consideration as a navigation item.
• Give Wine - if a lot of the wine you sell is sold as gifts (or you'd like to increase the amount), consider giving site visitors clear directions.  Don't just assume that people will check the "gift-wrap" box during checkout.  Again, even if they can't do it online, explain what you can do, and who to call.  I always point out that wine.com makes "giving wine" part of their primary navigation for a reason.
• Blog - if you have one, be sure to link to it.  A common omission.
• Events - for some wineries, one of the main sources of foot traffic are events.  Like Visit Us, if it's likely that a visitor to your Web site is looking for event information, consider adding it to your primary navigation.
• Wine Club - if club sales are important, and you actively promote your club, then it's likely that people will be looking for it, and should be able to find it easily.
• Shopping Cart - if someone places an item in their cart, it's good to enhance the visibility of the fact.  Many sites use the right column for this.  You might also have a cart icon which changes depending on its state.  This is a "low emphasis" navigation item, and not a candidate for the primary menu.
•     - like an 800-number, these 16x16 "social media" icons make it easier for people to connect with you.  These are small items which, like Trade and Media don't require prime navigation real estate.

Look at your analytics to find the top 5 search phrases that deliver traffic to your Web pages.  Ask yourself: If I came looking for this, would I know from the navigation elements where to click to move closer to my goal?  If the answer is "No," consider changing your page navigation.  The goal is for a visitor to look at the navigation and easily decide on their next click.  While More Info may not be elegant, it is certainly clear.

Of course, don't go off the deep end.  Five clear primary navigation items is about right.  Seven is right out.  I'm not a fan of drop-down menus in general, as you end up playing hide-and-seek.  And I  absolutely hate dislike cutesy menu item names.  "Acquire" is probably OK, given the high-end nature of the wine in question, but I still think "Buy Now" is about as clear, direct, and imperative as you can get.

As you can see, not all navigation elements are equal (e.g. trade and media, your blog, the shopping cart).  A good designer can help you give the proper visual emphasis to each element (e.g. smaller, lighter text for less-important items, proper placement of items on page).

"What about the ubiquitous About Us menu item?" you ask.  Frankly, that's not what people are most likely to be searching for.  It may be interesting, and you may want to link to it from your home page, but it's not primary navigation.

What do you think?  I'd love some comments from people who actually test the effectiveness of their site navigation!  And feel free to link to examples of great (and not-so-great) winery Web site navigation.

Lazy Sunday: Question Assumptions

I've been harping about the need to test how your winery Web site performs.

What if, instead of selling wine, you were dealing with something  really important, like electing a President?

This video (at the 10:45 mark - just drag the progress button to the right) spends less than 5 minutes demonstrating --  in a very dramatic way -- that your intuition about what compels people to take action is very likely completely wrong.

Enjoy it with your Sunday morning hot beverage of choice.  It's worth watching all the way to the end (at the 33-minute mark -- the last 15 minutes is Q&A), as he follows with a segment on how a visitor's prior experience changes what they respond to, and another complete case study not related to political campaigns (but not related to wine, either).

Lessons From Wine.Com

Wine.com sells a lot of wine.  As a result, I think that wineries looking to sell more wine online should look at wine.com to see if there are any lessons to be learned from how they do things.

Here's a brief MarketingSherpa case study of how wine.com lifted order value 15% by making better recommendations to site visitors: 

The system made relevant suggestions in real time as customers browsed the site. The types of recommendations included: 

• Customers who viewed this item also viewed...
• Customers who bought this item also bought...
• Products ultimately purchased by customers who viewed this item...
• Top sellers in this price range...
• Customers who searched for "xxxx" ultimately bought...
• Items related to search "xxxx"...

Obviously, this doesn't apply to a winery with just one wine to sell, and the level of technical sophistication is beyond many winery Web site owners.  But you're probably not making any recommendations at all, and that is a mistake.  For example, you could routinely suggest adding some of your best-selling wine when someone makes a purchase of a different wine.

If you're interested in the article, be sure to print it out, as it goes behind the MarketingSherpa "pay wall" after November 28th.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

A Free Web Site For Your Winery

Courtesy of Sonoma State University and eWinerySolutions.com.

The winning winery will receive both the completed new design and the ecommerce website, and free hosting and maintenance services for one year from launch date...The website will be designed and built by Sonoma State student teams during the 2010 Spring semester, under the guidance and tutelage of Sonoma State faculty and eWinery Solutions management.

Apply here.  Note: your winery must be located in Sonoma County.

You may want to read the rest of the rules before throwing your name in the hat.   Technically, you're nominating yourself to be in the running for a new site, which is perfectly fine.  As I write this, there are already six nominated wineries.

I guess someone forgot to include me (recognized authority on winery Web sites) on the announcement.  I had to find out from Wine Industry Insight this morning.  Some days, I'm just not feeling the love.  <grumble>

Seriously, I look forward to seeing the results.  Maybe they'll ask me to judge. <grin>

Smart marketing on the part of Richard Kline to get the SSU wine program's tacit endorsement of his product.

Automated Pairing For Your Wines

You can add the following wine-and-food-pairing widget to your winery Web site for free:

Flash	Non-Flash

Give it a quick try and see what you think.  It's provided by Natalie MacLean, a well-known wine writer based in Canada, and the widget drives traffic to her site (which is why she's giving it away for free, of course).

Here's a report on Wine & Food Matcher from my friends at VinTank which looks at the pluses and minuses of the widget (and its associated mobile-enabled Web site which provides the same functionality on Web-enabled smart phones like the iPhone).  

Natalie MacLean uses her experiential judgment to hand pick every one of her food and drink suggestions in her mobile application and widget. As she explains “I’m still very old fashioned. I like to make human decision the last factor and still think you need the human touch.”

The VinTank report provides a much more complete evaluation than I could. From a winery's perspective, the widget doesn't make specific brand recommendations regarding wine, which allows any winery to use it without concern of lost sales.

[Update: Natalie pointed out to me via e-mail that the VinTank report focuses on the "mobile application" version of her pairing application (for iPhone and Blackberry), as opposed to the "widget" version (for Web sites).  While that is true, the report does  briefly mention the widget, and the basics of selecting a food or wine and receiving pairing suggestions are much the same.  The mobile app, available as an iPhone or Blackberry application, costs $2.99.]

As shown above, MacLean provides Flash-based and non-Flash based versions of the widget.  I recommend the non-Flash version, since it seems more responsive, and the scrolling behavior of lists works the way you expect.  The only functional difference appears to be the moving images at the top.

Your thoughts? Please leave a comment!

The Very First Thing Your Winery Web Site Needs ... Is Analytics

 

Yesterday, I asked you to guess what what the first thing I recommended that a winery change on their Web site.

A quick look at the site's HTML told me that this winery probably wasn't measuring traffic to their Web site.  I didn't see evidence that they had an analytics program of some sort installed (e.g. Google Analytics, free).  They might be analyzing their raw Web server log, but it seemed unlikely.

Without solid information about how visitors are using your site, you have absolutely no hope of improving your site's performance (however you choose to measure it).  In the Web world, improvement requires testing, and testing means measurement.

If you aren't measuring your Web site traffic, why not?  (I know,  "My site doesn't generate many sales, so it's not important to measure what it's doing."  Ack!)

Clueless about analytics?  Leave a question in the comments, and I'll be happy to answer it.

The Very First Thing Your Winery Web Site Needs

A colleague of mine in the wine biz asked me to look at one of her client's winery Web sites and give her my quick impression.

You want to know what I told her was the very first thing they needed to change?

Leave your guess in the comments, and I'll tell you all tomorrow.

More 404

I recently wrote about how it can help your site to have a custom 404 page.

Here's a fun test to see which of two 404 pages works better.  It's always nice to see the results of testing, but of course, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).  No matter what works for other people, you should always test to see what works best for your site.

I enjoy the weekly tests at WhichTestWon.com, so I signed up to get notified when they post a new one.  You might also find one of their free PDF reports about testing to be of interest.

Search Phrases

It's virtually impossible to make your winery Web site the number one result when someone searches for wine, or red wine, or even pinot noir.  You may use Google AdWords to place your advertisement on the first page of results for these terms, but you'll pay dearly for the privilege, and may not see much in the way of results.

Allow me to suggest an alternate way of thinking, by way of this image:

 

Optimizing for search terms which indicate a person is ready to buy wine right now is probably a more effective approach (and cheaper, too).  To quote the Wall St. Journal:

Sprint is buying the top ads tied to phrases consumers tend to search for when they are close to making a purchase, such as "cellphone rate plans" and specific products like "Samsung Reclaim," rather than more generic phrases they search for at the beginning of the shopping process, like "Sprint," "AT&T" and "cellphone."

Of course, it gets back to the fact that you need to be able to update your site easily.  Otherwise, you won't be able to create pages which are targeted to particular types of searches.

And yes, it takes time, always in short supply at a small winery.  Which is why a winery blog can be a great tool for this sort of thing.  Which of your wines goes well with pizza?

Online Marketing Challenges

Which of these 7 marketing challenges do you face with your winery's online presence?

1. I need to reach more people.
2. I need to reach better people.
3. I need more resources.
4. I need to improve testing and usability.
5. I need to redesign my site.
6. I need to obtain better metrics.
7. I need to improve conversion rates.

Please leave a comment so I can address your top challenges in a future post.  

In the meantime, you might enjoy this two-part article about strategic challenges for online marketers (part 1, part 2), which asks the bigger question into which these challenges fit: what makes people buy?

Another Way To Improve Your Winery Web Site

I can attest that this technique from 37signals works really well:

A great way to figure out the weak spots in your product is to demo it live in front of an audience (not just a couple people at an office). Talk through it and read the UI out loud as you click around and do stuff. You’ll notice all sorts of little things that can be improved.

If you pay attention to yourself while explaining to someone how to order a bottle of wine from your site (either starting at the home page, or perhaps as the result of searching), you'll see places where "Why do I have to do that?" or "Why isn't this clearer?" are obvious questions.

On your Web site, it shouldn't take more than 3 clicks for someone to put a bottle (or a case) of wine in their shopping cart, starting from the home page.  First click: select "Buy Wine".  Second click: choose the wine you want to buy.  Alter quantity if necessary. Third click: add to cart.  And a properly-designed list of wines for sale can eliminate the third click.

How many clicks does it take on your site?  Why is that better?  Please leave a comment.

No Time To Blog About Your Winery?

Rich Brooks calls BS:

You see, blogging isn't some self-indulgent activity; it's investing in the future of your business. Blogging increases your search engine visibility, establishes your credibility, and generates inbound leads. In my opinion, it's probably the best marketing tool you have at your disposal, and once you get it set up it's nearly free.

Paul Mabray of Vintank has said that a winery has no business blogging until it has the basics down pat.  His list:

• Customer Service
• eCommerce
• Site Design
• Content Strategy

is hard to argue with.  Unfortunately, these tasks look a little daunting if you've already got a Web site for your winery.  It's even worse when you know you need to make changes, but it seems you have to move mountains to make anything happen.

Because it's easy to set up a blog, I see it as an entry point for improving your winery Web site.  If you start a blog for your, and it gets results (readership, interaction with your fans, increase sales) then perhaps those basics look a little less daunting.  Maybe blogging belongs on Paul's list as an element of "content strategy."

There are some clear advantages to blogging for your winery.  First and foremost, you control it.  This means you can update it whenever you want.  In addition, 

• Blogs appear to have higher search engine visibility  (at least if they are updated regularly)
• It's easy to add new content in response to perceived needs or sudden news
• A blog post allows you to call attention to pages within your primary Web site
• Your blog  provides a way to interact with your customers and potential customers through comments
• The tone of your blog can be more personal and less marketing oriented
• Adding images and video is easy

The truth is that having a effective online presence of any sort takes work, and there's always more that can be done.  If you're willing to make a commitment to blogging, don't let the fact that you haven't quite gotten the basics perfected on your winery Web site keep you from using a blog to market your wines.

I guess what I'm trying to say is to find an online marketing approach that works for you.  Then make continuous incremental improvements.  Static is another word for "dead."

(although, if you're screwing up Customer Service, please stop everything else and fix that right now.)

Getting Married On The First Date

 

I was watching a video which stated that the #1 mistake people make with their Web site is expecting that a visitor will make a purchase on their first visit.  They likened this to expecting to get married on a first date.

We know this doesn't happen: typical online conversion rates of 1-2% mean that only 1 or 2 out of every 100 visitors make a purchase (and it may not be their first visit).

Ideally, every one of your visitors would give you their e-mail address so that you could stay in touch.  The reality is that even if you give someone an incentive (say, free shipping shipping included on their first order), only about 10% will do so.

BUT...

Once you have their e-mail, you can send them periodic e-mail messages, building trust and interest over time by sending useful information.  You can even automate the process of sending these follow-ups using an autoresponder (a program which automatically sends a sequence of timed, personalized e-mails in response to the initial receipt of an e-mail message from a site visitor).  AWeber, Constant Contact, and iContact all offer autoresponders; your current e-mail marketing service may also.

(of course, you have to write the messages that an autoresponder will send, but once you've done it, you've automated a key part of your online sales process.  And you can even hire someone to do the writing, although I recommend you stay closely involved to preserve your winery's "voice").

If you really want to use your winery Web site to sell more of your wine (or club memberships), building your e-mail list by offering a real incentive to sign up is a must.

404

What happens when a user asks for a page on your Web site that doesn't exist?  Technically, the Web server returns a 404 status code to your browser, which means Not Found (according to the HTTP specification that governs exchanges between your browser and a Web server).

In  many cases, you get the Web server's default 404 page, like this 404 from Kendall-Jackson:

 

It's kind of boring, isn't it?  Here's an example of a much more interesting (and amusing) 404 page from Twisted Oak:

 

Does this sort of detail matter?  I think so.  Which one would you rather encounter? Even if you're not as twisted as Jeff Stai (I mean that in a good way, Jeff!), you shouldn't leave it up to someone else to decide what your visitor is going to see when something goes amiss.

You should periodically check your server logs and/or analytics reports to see what 404 errors are generated by your site - people may be accessing outdated/incorrect links from other sites, which your webmaster can automatically redirect to the appropriate page.  People may also be consistently misspelling a page URL, which again, you can silently fix for them.

What do visitors to your winery Web site see when a page isn't found?  You can test for yourself by going to www.YourDomainGoesHere.com/unlikelypagename.html and seeing what happens. 

(For suggestions on how to display 404 errors on your site, check out these best practices for 404 pages and some nice-looking sample 404 pages.)

What Are People Doing On Your Web Site?

It's not just an academic question, you know.

Here's why you should be interested the answer to this question: if you know what people are doing on your Web site, you can make changes and improvements which help them to do it.

It seems obvious, but I hadn't really thought about it until I watched the video below.

And that's why you should be using some sort of analytics on your winery Web site, and why you should look at those analytics at least once a month.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Yes, people actually give wine as gifts.  That's why Wine.com makes it part of their main site navigation (3 times!), and why you might want to consider adding it to your site navigation (at least for the holidays, if not year-round):

Here is some excellent advice on pre-holiday e-commerce preparations for your winery Web site.  The best part of the advice is to shop your own site now, so that you have time to make changes before the holiday rush.  And don't forget to devote some thought to how you'll be getting people to visit your site to do that shopping (mail, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc.).

People give holiday gifts.  It might as well be wine, and it might as well be your wine.  The secret: get the idea in front of people early (the week before Thanksgiving?) and make it trivially easy to give your wine as a gift.  Having a gift presentation that will be memorable for the recipient doesn't hurt, either.

(Need more inspiration?   Take a look at what Wine.com does.  There's plenty of room for your winery to improve on their offerings, perhaps in conjunction with a local gift basket company.)

Sweet Jesus! Even More Google Analytics Stuff!

This post from Bryan Eisenberg has a ton of good stuff for those of you using Google Analytics to measure the performance of your winery Web site.

What do you measure on your Web site?  Leave a comment.

Harvest Calendar

Goosecross Cellars mentioned this informative 2009 Harvest Calendar in their blog update about this year's harvest.  Not only does it show when things were picked, but what is happening to them now that they're fermenting (e.g. remaining brix in the Cabernet tank).

This was done using Google Calendar (free!) and framing the result (using HTML) on their Web site, so it's something that you could emulate next year with very little effort (each update is basically an all-day event on the calendar).

Best of all, Goosecross fans can subscribe to the Harvest Calendar with their blog/RSS reader, meaning that they don't have to come to the Goosecross Web site to see if anything is new.

A well-deserved shout-out to Goosecross for this excellent innovation using off-the-shelf parts!  This is a winery which really does seem to embrace technology to tell the story behind their wines.

People-Pleasin' Pictures

Do you actively take pictures of the people who visit your winery?  You should, and here's why.  People like to share (good) pictures of themselves, particularly if those pictures offer some sort of "bragging" opportunity ("Here I am in Wine Country!").

Assign someone to take those pictures, and post them on your Web site (ideally with each group on a page of its own).  Make sure when you take the picture to get the e-mail address of at least one person in it.  Then, when the photo is posted, drop them an e-mail with the URL of their picture.  They are almost sure to share it with their friends, bringing new traffic to your site.

(Update: my assumption is that you will ask before taking anyone's picture.  Don't want to creep anyone out.  I think that most people will appreciate a group shot with everyone in the picture.)

Unfortunately, some wineries have Web sites which require an act of God to change/update.  That's one of the reasons that blogs and Facebook Fan pages have become popular winery tools - they're designed for easy updates.

If you do use blogging software, your e-mail notice should invite your contact to leave a comment on their visit and identify the people in the picture.  On the page with the photo(s), you can add a link to a "special deal" for those visitors, and/or a link to information on visiting your winery.  At the very least, make sure that there's an obvious link back to your Web site.  Remember, the goal is to get new people interested in your wines (and maybe even buy some).

While you can use your Facebook Fan page for this purpose, you'll have more control over the form and content (and better measurement) with a blog page or a page on your regular Web site.

It's probably be worth paying some aspiring college-age blog-savvy photography student to do this as an experiment, perhaps on a weekend when you're expecting lots of visitors.  If you're running Google Analytics or otherwise tracking your visitor traffic, you should be able to quantify the results.  Be advised that this sort of traffic-building effort takes time, however.

Of course, it all goes back to being able to add content to your Web site easily.  Can you?

Promoting Popular Content

 

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that your home page may not be the place most visitors start their visit to your site, AKA the most frequent entry page for your winery Web site.

Let's say that the most frequent entry page on your site is the product page for a particular wine.  What happens when you add a promotion for that wine to your home page?  It could be as simple as adding a picture and a link.

The idea is that your visitors tell you (by means of the most frequent entry page) what they are looking for.  Putting a pointer to that information on your home page can help people get where they want to go faster, and may also attract others (something that's interesting to one group of your site visitors may also be interesting to other groups of visitors).

You'll notice that many sites (Amazon , the New York Times, etc.) offer lists of what's "most popular."  They don't do it for their health -- they do it because it drives traffic to the rest of their site.  Ditto for bloggers who have a sidebar with links to their most popular posts.

Of course, to know what's popular, you need a tool (like Google Analytics) which will tell you what's going on with your winery Web site.

And then, you need to do something with the information, like change a page.  If you want to improve things, you need to experiment (which means, yes, an occasional misstep is possible).

And this is where most winery Web sites fail: it is still way too hard (complex, costly, ...) to change content on most winery Web sites.  If I have one recommendation for wineries thinking about spending money on their site it's thing: spend some of that money making it easy to change things.

How do you make changes to your site?  Leave a comment.

69 Tools To Improve Your Winery Web Site

Bryan Eisenberg, a well-known expert on Web site conversion, offers 69 Free (or low-cost) Tools to Improve Your Website.  I've previously recommended several of these tools in this blog.

If you could improve just ONE thing about your winery Web site, what would it be?

995 Pounds

What would doubling the conversion rate on your winery Web site be worth?  In other words, twice as many sales?

If it's worth more than 995 pounds sterling (roughly $1585 in US dollars) over the next 12 months, you might want to take a look at this offer from Scratchmedia.

I'm not endorsing this program, but I don't think you can make progress if you don't do *something* different.  This is a fairly straightforward approach where:

• you will get some personal attention
• a reasonably sophisticated approach using A/B testing will be taken, and
• the provider has a vested interesting in being successful (the results are going to be part of a case study for a book).

Participation is limited, so if you're interested, go check it out.  If you're not interested, I'd be interested in knowing why in a comment.  Thanks!

Update (2009-10-03): Some additional details on the offer.

Call Tracking

When someone visits your winery Web site, one of the possible outcomes is that they call you up.  That's actually A Good Thing.

Tracking that conversion, however, can be a bit of a pain.  Even if you have a script for the people who answer your phone that reminds them to ask whether a caller visited your Web site first, what do you do with the data?

If By Phone integrates with Google Analytics to provide a more unified view of what's going on when clicks turn into calls.

(via the TheGrokDotCom)

Your Turn!

I've been posting my opinions daily for the past couple of weeks, so  I thought I'd take this opportunity to openly invite you to give me some feedback and direction.  Please (please?!) take a minute to leave a comment with a question you'd like answered, or a challenge you face with your online presence.

If you can't think of a question or a challenge, I'd love to know what you wish you could do with your winery Web site.  If you want to comment anonymously, just use a fake name (e.g. "Anonymous") and a fake e-mail like jdoe@example.com.  I'd rather have an anonymous comment than no comment at all.

I truly appreciate the time you take to read my blog, whether you stop by daily or just once in a while.  Thank you!

My Annual Harvest Fair Rant

On Saturday night, the Sonoma County Harvest Fair gave out its wine awards.  The Sweepstakes Awards went to  Adler Fels (2007 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley) and Owl Ridge (2008 Sauvignon Blanc Sonoma County). 

As of this morning (Tuesday), still nothing on the Adler Fels Web site about their win.

Owl Ridge, to their small credit, added a brief note on their home page on Monday morning.

OWL RIDGE walks away with Harvest Fair SWEEPSTAKES Award for 2008 Sauvignon Blanc - Sonoma County!!!!

No information about where I can buy some (nor does it appear to be available for sale in their online store), no explanation of why that's the case.

Is this too hard?  Is there something I'm missing?  Or do wineries really not give a damn about making use of their Web presence to drive sales?

Sign me Discouraged.

Managing Club Memberships Online

Most winery Web sites allow people to sign up for their wine club.

But really, your wine club members should be able to manage *all* the aspects of their club membership online, including cancelling it.

(I can hear wine club managers pulling their hair out - bear with me.)

First of all, do the self-test.  If you had a subscription (to anything, not just a wine club), wouldn't you like to be able to cancel it online?  The same applies to your wine club members.

And if people *really* want to cancel, are you creating a good (possibly final) impression by making it harder for them to do so?  Obviously, you want to understand why they're cancelling, and provide a better alternative (for them, not just you) if at all possible.  If you really wanted to make it hard for someone to leave your wine club, why not just hide your phone number and e-mail address and be done with it?

Usually, when someone wants to cancel by phone, you'll offer them alternatives, such as suspending the account for one or more shipments.  The same applies online: club members should be offered the chance to temporarily suspend their membership (with a definite date when that suspension will become a cancellation).

The copy for that offer should promote suspension as an option, as opposed to simply offering it.  Suspension should be an attractive alternative, not just one of two possible actions.

When you do your regular club mailing, members who are suspended should get a reminder of what they are missing, with links to "reactivate now" and "manage membership" (like "cancel" but less obvious).

And obviously, as the suspension period comes to an end, you want to let them know that cancellation is imminent (and possibly incent them not to let it happen).

If they have previously tried to cancel, suspended their membership, and now want to cancel (while in the suspended state), their membership should be cancelled without further ado.  They've made their choice.

Regardless, whenever someone cancels, you should always ask for a reason, to better understand what's going on "out there." Provide radio buttons for common reasons to make it easy for people to provide an answer, along with an "other" selection with a fill-in box.  You might consider sending a "We still like you" note by snail mail immediately following a cancellation with an offer that can be redeemed if they rejoin the club.

You may want to do a once-a-year mailing to those who left for a reason other than "I don't like your wine," again to try and return them to the fold.  If you think that these efforts to recapture a former member are too much work, just consider the ongoing revenue stream that a loyal club member represents.

Of course, it helps if your club memberships, at every level, deliver real value to members.

(this discussion all started with this form to let people suspend shipments while away from home)

What do you do when a wine club member wants to cancel?  Can they do it online?  Why do people typically leave your wine club?  Leave a comment!

Want To Improve? Just Ask.

When a visitor leaves your winery Web site, wouldn't it be nice if you could ask them these two questions?

1. Why did you come here today?

2. Did you get what you came for?

Actually, it's quite possible to do just that.  Any takers? 

Key Performance Indicators For Your Winery Web Site

Here are five key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider when looking at your Web site:

1. Conversion Rate: How many people "convert?" A conversion can be ordering wine, joining your wine club, signing up for your e-mail newsletter, calling the winery, subscribing to your blog, etc.  You get to decide.

2. Average Order Size: Pretty straightforward, and one which you want to watch over time.

3. Days & Visits Until Purchase: How much time, and how many interactions does it take for someone to finally decide to buy from you?  This can be surprising.

4. Visitor Loyalty and Recency: How often do people return to your site?

5. Task Completion Rate:  I support this one whole-heartedly.  It doesn't matter if someone visits your site if they can't accomplish what they came to do.  Hard to measure, but well worth it.

Read lots more details in this post from the author of Web Analytics: an hour a day. He offers a sixth KPI and some rules for using them effectively.  I really like what he has to say about Task Completion Rate.

Lazy Sunday: Teeny Tiny Text

Consider that at least some of your customers and potential customers are getting older.

Then see what Google, who thinks long and hard about making changes, and then tests the bejeezus out of them, has done to their home page.

Something to think about if you're planning a site upgrade and you have lots of teeny tiny text, particularly on pages where people shop.

Just sayin'.

5 Things To Check On Your Winery Web Site Right Now

This post from Vin | 65 is one I wish I'd written: 5 Signs that Your Web Developer "Gets" Search Engine Marketing

It outlines five things that you or your Web designer should be worrying about, and how to check (almost) all of them without moving from your chair.

You can check if you site is using Google Analytics (item #5) by using your browser's "View Source" feature (typically available when you right-click on the page) and looking at the very bottom of the page for  code that looks like this:

<script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9999999-1"); pageTracker._initData(); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script>

OK, now go check the other four things!

Vin | 65

I am a bonehead.

I know the team at Vin | 65 has lots of smart things to say.

And they have a blog.

And now I'm subscribed to it.  (what took me so long?) 

You should subscribe, too.

(You can see all my wine-related blog subscriptions under "Wine-Related Blogs")

Google Webmaster Tools

Readers of this blog already know that I'm a big fan of Google Analytics for wineries to track traffic to their Web sites.

A terrific adjunct to Google Analytics is Google Webmaster Tools, which basically shows you the data that Google has about your Web site, in an easy-to-understand fashion.  Like Analytics, Webmaster Tools are free.

It's easy to install (as long as you can edit the HTML of your home page, or add a specifically-named HTML file to your Web site) and well worth it.

To further whet your appetite, here are 6 tips for using Google Webmaster Tools.

Go Wide With Your Wines?

If the intent of your winery Web site is to actually sell more wine (as opposed to tell the world how wonderful you are or show pretty pictures of your manicured vineyards), then take a look at this post from Chris Baggott on his latest experiment.

Now I completely understand that toasters and wine are completely different products.  But Chris's point is this:

Go wide, with pages that are designed to be search friendly and target the exact terms people use to search with organic landing pages specifically designed for only those terms.

I think he's on to something here. Best of all, it doesn't take a lot of money to try this experiment for yourself.  I'll be interested to see the results from his experiment.

The Importance of (Forceful) Language

Here's a real world (and trendy-social-media-related) example of the one-hundred-and-seventy-three percent difference that language can make.

You should read it.  And then go tell your winery Web Site visitors that they should buy your wine.  Or at least follow you on Twitter.

(via kottke.org)

FWIW (For What It's Worth)

I was reading a post on the Steven Kent winery blog about a wine whose proceeds will benefit breast cancer research.  My late mother survived breast cancer, so I'm interested in supporting the search for improved treatments.

The post closes with an invitation to buy the wine when it becomes available:

Approximately, 150 cases of the wine will be released on September 6th. If you want a terrific wine and to support a great cause look for this wine (it will be named shortly) in our store in September.

FWIW, I have two observations, which have general applicability to winery Web sites:

First, if you want people to take some action, make it easy for them.  In this case, how about allowing me to provide my e-mail address so I can be notified when the wine becomes available?  Heck, even a mailto: link would work.  To their credit, Steven Kent provides the release date, but smart marketers know that convenience improves response.  At the very least, knowing how many people are interested helps in making pricing decisions, which could lead to a larger donation for breast cancer research.

Second, why wait?  Even though the wine won't be available until September 6th, why not let me place the order *right now* while I'm most interested in it?

Yes, there are some logistical issues involved (will your shopping cart support pre-orders, etc.), but once solved, they can use these same marketing techniques for all their wines, not just this one.

And so can you.

Our Wines Are In The Wine Shop, But Why?

Paige over at Erath Winery invited me to take a look at their new Web site.  While it will take me some time to look around and do my "winery Web site evaluation thing" (much as I did for Twisted Oak recently), looking at their site navigation prompted me to ask this question:

Why do wineries have main navigation elements for both Our Wines and Wine Shop?

Lots of sites do this, but it seems like a false dichotomy: we describe our wines over here, and you can buy them over there.

Maybe I'm missing something, but Amazon (who arguably knows a thing or two about selling stuff online) doesn't describe books in one place, and make you go somewhere elseif you want to buy them.  There is no Our Books and Book Shop in their navigational scheme.

So, winery Web site owners (and designers), what's the rationale behind this split?  Please leave a comment!

Sites Which Are Blogs

I have a number of alerts which help me find new winery blogs for The List, and one of them turned up the Hawkes Wine blog. 

What makes Hawkes Wine worth mentioning is that their site (like the original Stormhoek site) is a blog, built using WordPress.  In other words, the front page of the Hawkes Wine Web site is the home page of their blog.

Any other good examples of this type of site?  Leave a comment.