REthink Wine Blog

No one doubts that when it comes to electronic commerce and e-marketing in the wine industry, wineries with a tasting room have a significant advantage. The visitors that walk into the tasting room immediately become customers or well-qualified prospects that can be added to a winery’s “contact list” for future outreach. But if you don’t have a tasting room, building a contact/customer list is a much more daunting task. But if e-mail marketing and online sales is part of your direct sales strategy, then it’s a task you must take up and address.

Here are some creative strategies for building customer and contact lists that have been successful for other wineries without tasting rooms. 

1. Business Teaser Cards: A few wineries, when printing business cards for all their employees, have used the back of the card to offer the holder a 10% or even 20% discount on their first purchase. Often each card has a code on it that buyers can use to assure their online discount and to track who’s business card led to the sale. It’s a creative way to invite new acquaintances to the website when without the discount/invite you’d only be handing out a business card with no call-to-action.

2. Event Giveaways: One Sonoma winery with no tasting room but with a guest house on their property always brought a sign to the tastings they attended announcing that following the tasting a drawing would take place for a weekend getaway at the winery’s guest house. The sign carried beautiful pictures of the guest house and the property. All the attendees had to do was drop their business card in a fishbowl or fill out a simple slip of paper with name, state and email. Within a day of the tasting the winery did their drawing, contacted the winner and set up when they would visit. But more importantly, the winery would also contact via email every single person who entered the drawing with a “thank you” message and an offer of 15% on their first purchase. Their list continues to grow.

3. Contests: A number of wineries without tasting rooms have found that contests are a fantastic way to draw prospective customers to their website. The best contests should be easy to enter, but also give the entrants a feeling of participation or connect with the winery, winemaker or brand. One winery has used its back label as a canvas for the contest by inviting entrants to design their own 100-word back label on a specific subject. The winner had their entry published on the label when the wine was bottled! The contest was announced with a press release and an ad, and the winner was announced on the website and in a press release. They received hundreds of people visiting their site to participate, all providing their entry of back label copy along with their e-mail address. The winery grew their mailing list and customers were able to engage with the brand. Win-Win.

Prospecting and building your email contact list must be an ongoing project if increasing online sales is part of your marketing strategy. If you don’t have a tasting room, you’ll need to think creatively. The time and effort that goes into a very creative customer prospecting program will pay off in an enhanced email list, and ultimately increased sales.

The recent news that Amazon is looking to get into the wine retailing game broke like a wave a few days ago. What the impact of the multi-billion dollar company coming into the online wine selling market will be can’t be said at this point. And there is also great deal of speculation of exactly how they are going about doing business online with wine.

But this isn’t what was truly interesting about all the press on Amazon’s wine program. Down deep in these stories was an estimate by Barbara Insel of Stonebridge Research on the size of the e-commerce market for wine. Insel, one of the top analysts and business consultants in the wine industry, estimated for the reporter that $2.8 billion of America’s $30 Billion retail wine market comes in the form of direct sales. Although the article didn’t mention this fact, that $2.8 Billion is only winery-direct sales and does not include online wine merchants.

Also interesting was Insel’s estimate that seven percent, or roughly $200,000,000, of that $2.8 billion in direct sales occurs exclusively online. It’s not winery club sales. It’s not tasting room sales. It’s pure online transactions from winery to consumers. We think this is significant because it demonstrates just how large the upside is for savvy wineries looking to increase their sales. There is clearly a lot of room to increase the 7% to something more. It’s likely that this percentage will increase over time in an organic fashion. But for individual wineries that are hovering around that 7% figure with their own sales, they can find a way to increase it substantially through strategic online marketing and prospecting for qualified customers in every venue they offer their wines.

The fastest way, however, to increase your pure online sales is to talk more frequently to the customers in your data base. Consider your email marketing program, for instance. Are you leveraging your communications as best as you should be? Consider a few of Angela Sanchez’s Tips for Increased Email Conversion.

To get an indication of what it would mean to increase your online sales from 7% to 10%, imagine allocating three percent of your volume sales that had been sold to wholesalers, and selling it instead direct to the consumer. Amazon will have some sort of impact on overall online wine sales. But you can impact your own bottom line right now by shooting for an immediate 3% increase in direct sales through strategic e-commerce marketing.

It’s 8am in Tahoe and I’m enjoying a cup of Peet’s French Roast on the deck overlooking a very calm lake. I’m thinking about topics to blog about today (yep – I’m on vacation, but the blogs never stop!). The last several months has seen a great number of exciting changes for us at Inertia: a new CEO, a successful Direct Sales Symposium, the release of REthink Compliance for all wineries, growth and expansion for our Direct to Trade program, the announcement of BRIX – Inertia’s open source CMS initiative, and the list goes on.

And there’s a lot more to come – the next year promises to be even more exciting for Inertia, with continued momentum and even more excitement on the horizon. 

Lots to blog about.  

But what’s most immediately on my mind is the recent addition of two new marketing superstars to my team. Indulge me for a moment while I call them out.

Jason Williams joined us in June as our Channel Marketing Director. He comes to us most recently from Lancaster Estate, where he was responsible for all Direct Sales & Marketing initiatives, including programs in support of both the Lancaster Estate and Roth Winery brands. Prior to Lancaster, he spent 5 years with Mondavi in both direct and traditional sales capacities.  He’s also been a wine educator for Opus One, managed a steakhouse in Arizona, and is a Marketing Steering Committee Member of the Alexander Valley Winegrowers Association.

Now at Inertia, Jason is leading marketing efforts for our Direct to Trade program. Perhaps you’ve seen some of the announcements we’ve made recently here on the blog about efforts our Channel Development team has undertaken to build the program. Jason is working closely with that team to grow the program – with both winery and trade participation. Jason will be a voice on this blog in the future, so I won’t steal his thunder on how we’ll be growing the program! Stay tuned ~ and welcome Jason.

Our 2^nd superstar joins us recently from Yahoo, having just completed a project in their London office launching the local reseller channel for Yahoo! Search Marketing in Europe. Jennifer Lemming rounds out our team as Inertia’s Corporate Marketing Director. In addition to her work with Yahoo, she has worked with various companies in marketing roles including new product development for 3M as well as brand management and sports marketing for Coca-Cola, Kodak, and Samsung via a boutique marketing agency. Jennifer received her MBA in marketing and e-commerce from Vanderbilt.

As our Corporate Marketing Director, Jennifer is responsible for building and growing the Inertia brand, as well as defining and initiating client development programs. Perhaps you’ve seen us blog about our quarterly client workshops – or most recently our direct sales symposium at Copia. And perhaps you’ve seen Inertia in the press. Or maybe you’ve noticed our advertising in Wine Business Monthly or Wines & Vines. Jennifer will lead these efforts – and then some. Look out for her on the blog as well.

As we continue to work diligently to provide solutions for our winery partners to sell more wine, much of our success in doing so will be dependent on the efforts undertaken by our marketing department. I’m thrilled to have both Jennifer and Jason on board to lead those efforts and look forward to an exciting future for us all.

Now back to the lake.

This past Friday we hosted our annual Direct Symposium at COPIA in downtown Napa. This was our 5th year hosting the event, and the turnout was strong, with an energetic and engaging list of speakers on the agenda.  

Our theme for this years’ Symposium was Innovations for Today’s Wine Marketplace. Ted Jansen, Inertia’s President & CEO, opened up the day with a thought-provoking talk on the concept of “Accidental Innovation”.

Following Ted was Gary Vaynerchuk, of WineLibraryTV fame. For those unfamiliar with Gary and his energetic style, visit his site… you’re sure to be entertained!

Breakout sessions followed the keynotes – and this year we tried something a little different. We asked attendees to vote on their topic of interest. Based on those results, we lined up the following breakout sessions and speakers:

Direct Shipping Compliance
Speakers Matt Mann, Mike Brown and Sheri Hebbeln of Inertia took the audience through the basics of compliance management and how a topic which appears on the surface to be overly complex and confusing, can actually be simple; especially with the right tools to help manage. Compliance is a necessary endeavor for anyone engaged in  Direct Shipping in the U.S.; Inertia’s FREE REThink Compliance tool was designed to provide a solution to help ease the burden of managing a winery’s compliance needs. The audience was walked through REthink Compliance, and lots of conversation was sparked.

Website Merchandising
Inertia’s Carole Loomis and Angela Sanchez led a session on ways to manage and optimize a website for greatest sales. With this years’ holiday season just around the corner, they led participants in a discussion on preparing for OND (October November December).

Marketing Through Online Social Networks
One of the more popular sessions was led by Joel Vincent (Open Wine Constortium) and Gary Vaynerchuk (WineLibraryTV). Paul Mabray sat in on the session, as well, during an extensive question & answer period. The audience – and speakers! – were in no rush to head out for the lunch break, diving into questions on everything from how to engage in social media, through to whether or not there is a place for PR management in the social space.

Selling Direct to Trade
Andrea Johnston of Inertia, moderated a session on the nuances of selling direct to the trade across the U.S. A line up of panelists contributed input from various perspectives; John Hinman, from Hinman & Carmichael, Gillett Johnson, with International Vines, Inc., Cristin “Moxy” Castro from Impressa, and Mitch Schwartz, VP of Sales for Inertia. Conversations touched on everything from how best to engage with, and sell to, the trade, to leveraging Inertia’s Direct-to-Trade program to legally and effectively open new markets and engage with new customers.

Wine Blogging
Tom Wark, of Fermentation, Wark Communications and Specialty Wine Retailers fame, led a very popular session on Wine Blogging. On the heels of the morning session in which Gary V. expounded on the need for all attendees to get into the blogging habit, lots of attendees packed into this session to get more information on how and why. Panelists included Mike Duffy, of the Winery Website Report, Julie Ann Kodmur and Deb Harkness, of Good Wine Under $20.

Website Design
Four speakers brought perspectives on website design to their audience; Ben Chinn of Inertia, Aaron Rutledge & Tom Ajello of POKE/NY, and Dom Moreci of Plumbline Studios. Attendees learned how to design their websites for best user experience, and ultimately the greatest sales. 

Finally, John Hinman wrapped up the day with his Keynote speech on how a dynamic wine marketplace in which consolidation is occurring in nearly all aspects of our industry, is creating a snowball effect for which it’s time to decide whether you batten down or ride the wave.

A special thank you to all of our sponsors:
Platinum Sponsors: Wine Tasting Network & Copper Peak Logistics.
Gold Sponsor: Card in the Box
Silver Sponsors: Wark Communications, Open Wine Consortium, Plug n’ Pay, POS Resources, & Payment Logistics, LLC

Thank you as well to all those who attended. Your participation and engagement in lively conversation with the speakers was appreciated by all. We look forward to seeing you all again next year – in the meantime, Inertia is continuing to expand on the workshops and training sessions that we hold throughout the year. If there are topics you are most interested in discussing, or speakers you’re interested in hearing from, let us know. Contact us at marketing@inertiabev.com.
 
Cheers!

Inertia’s 5th Annual Direct Symposium will take place on July 11th, from 9-3:30pm at COPIA in Napa. This year, we’ve expanded our agenda to include interactive sessions on topics chosen by attendees. Last month, we released a survey on what we were hearing from our clients and industry partners as the ‘hottest’ topics in the direct industry. Topics included:

• Website Design
• Website Merchandising
• Selling Direct to Trade 
• Direct Shipping Compliance
• Allocation Program Management 
• Wine Club Management
• Wine Blogging
• Online Social Networks

We asked attendees to ‘vote’ on their topics of choice for breakout sessions at our July Symposium. The results were tallied, and we have our winners… 

• Selling Direct to Trade: Access. Control. Sales. 
• Direct Shipping Compliance: A Dynamic Marketplace. Your Options.
• Wine Blogging: Brand Building, Customer Loyalty and Sales
• Online Social Networks: Consumer- to-Consumer, Peer-to-Peer Engagement
• Website Design: Designing for Best User Experience & Greatest Sales
• Website Merchandising:  Sell More Online 

Our Symposium agenda will allow attendees to participate in two breakout sessions of their choice: One in the morning, one in the early afternoon. During each of these sessions, panelists will lead an interactive discussion with the audience around a designated topic. Based on several workshops which we led earlier in the year, we know our clients are eager to engage and look forward to some good interaction.

Because of limited space in each of our breakout sessions, we request that attendees reserve their spot in the session of their choice as soon as possible. Signups will be taken the day of the Symposium, at check in, but to ensure you get a seat in the topic of your choice, send your request through today (along with your RSVP if you haven’t already!) to rsvp@inertiabev.com.

See you in July!

Yesterday Inertia hosted another successful seminar at Copia. The topic of the day was ”How to Build and manage a Successful Allocation Program“. The attendance, content, and reception by the audience, exceeded our expectations.

Over 30 wineries were represented in the audience, nearly all were not current clients of ours. This is the first open workshop which we have hosted specifically for non-clients. We regularly host workshops and webinars for our client base, but have recently begun to open the doors to the broader wine industry.  We plan top hold more of these open workshops on a regular basis (topics may include Web Site Sales Strategies, Wine Club Program Management, Selling Direct to Trade and Compliance Management, among others). Stay tuned.

The seminar started with Dan Chapin from Inertia reviewing the “3 Principles of a Successful Release Model“. Dan reviewed the need for any winery considering an allocation program to focus on Exclusivity, Creating a Perception of Scarcity and Conditioning of Purchase Behavior. For more information, or to receive a copy of his presentation, email us at sales@inertiabev.com.

Susan Moore from Aptalent, then spoke on “The Care and Feeding of your Mailing List“. Susan discussed ways to reach key consumers, how to grow your customer list, and how to maintain your engagement with those new customers to help build loyalty and longevity in their engagement with your winery. For more information, email susan@aptalent.com.

The next speaker was Jennie Haug from Revana Family Vineyards.  Jenny is an enthusiastic and engaging speaker. She brought a great case study of how Revana switched from a simple mailing list model, to an allocation model this past spring; they ran their very first allocation release this April.  Jenny told of the learnings Revana
gained from managing their first release, and provided the audience with some of the implications she’s now bringing to their next planned release. For more information, email jennie@revanawine.com.

After Jenny, Barry Waite and Steve Gant from Vintrust led an engaging discussion on the importance of the packaging and presentation of any fine wine at the final stage in their path to the consumer. Most specifically, they addressed the different packaging options for shipping wine direct to the consumer, and how those packaging options are a part of the entire brand building process for any winery. The discussion generated several questions, and initiated good conversation.

The final speaker was Harry Parsley, owner of Silver Stag winery.  Harry has deep experience in the wine industry, starting with being the wine buyer for Lucky Stores, then President of Buena Vista, and now owning his own winery.  Harry gave great information to the group on how to manage your trade relations. He engaged the audience with his entertaining and informal discussion style - bringing years of experience in both buying and selling wines to the audience.

We look forward to bringing more of these seminars to the industry - and hope to see you there in the future!

A few years ago I worked for a company who put the senior management team through a course in Change Management.

The course was intended to teach participants about how they personally managed themselves (emotionally & professionally) through change – as well as how to identify and help others manage through change.  There were 60 of us in the course, and nearly all of us managed staff of anywhere from 5 to 100+ people. While the company itself wasn’t actively implementing any major changes at the time, the course was relevant nonetheless: change is constantly happening around us and is a natural part of both personal and professional growth. For our company to continue successfully down the path we were seeking, the ability to do so in an efficient and effective manner was critical.

The course was fascinating and I’ve found myself referencing back to it on a number of occasions. Now, in my role here at Inertia, I find the skills I learned in this course to be very helpful. We are a small, young and very energetic company. By nature, we as a group tend to desire change – every day we are working hard to affect changes to our own business, our clients’ businesses, and ultimately an entire industry with very deep, traditional roots. But our ability to recognize and assist through change those we are working so hard for (our clients, partners, and the wine consumer in general), is how we will best affect the growth and end goals we seek for all.
 

THE PHASES OF ACCEPTING CHANGE
In the course, we learned that not only are there ‘phases’ to accepting and engaging in change, but that not everyone makes it through all phases – or even  needs to – on their way to ultimately accepting change.

The phases are as follows:
1. Awareness – of why the change is needed
2. Desire – to support and participate in the change
3. Knowledge – of how to change
4. Ability – to implement new skills and behaviors
5. Reinforcement – to sustain the change

Some people are more prone to desire or accept change than others, and may skip directly from the 1st phase (awareness that change is needed) to the 4th or 5th. Others, get stuck in the 1st phase, resisting the acceptance of why the change is needed at all. Regardless of how a person makes it through each of the phases, the ability for a company to efficiently grow is dependent upon the ability for all employees to help implement and re-enforce the changes necessary for growth.

I managed a staff of 20+ at the time. The deeper we got into the course, the better I understood my own style of change (I tend to hit every phase, and can move more quickly through some phases than others). More importantly, however, was the insight I gained into why certain members of my staff were either struggling through some of the individual projects they were working on, or were having more challenges than others in group project work. Suddenly, I had a much clearer picture of my entire division and where the stop gaps were on our path to reaching our goals. And, I believe I became a more effective manager because I was able to better understand my employees needs; some simply needed more information or discussion on why change was happening, others needed more guidance on how to implement the change, etc.

A couple of weeks ago, Inertia had what could be identified as major change, occur. A new CEO joined our team, and the organizational structure of the executive management team subsequently adjusted. As noted earlier, we are a company actively seeking change, and working daily to affect it. As a result, the ‘change’ brought with Ted Jansen’s arrival was anything but major. Instead, it was welcomed as the next step in our natural growth and as a way to help open doors for even more change.  I’m looking forward to the continued growth of our company and to being a part of the exciting changes taking place in the wine industry today. The times they are a-changin’!

I had an opportunity to speak at the Specialty Wine Retailers Association Symposium this past Wednesday at the Kendall-Jackson Wine Center in Santa Rosa. It was an intimate group of attendees, representing everyone from the larger, multi-channel retailers and wineries, to service providers who help enable retailers and wineries to get their products into the hands of consumers across the country.

Kenneth Starr was the keynote speaker, and he engaged attendees with a good overview of the legal battleground which retailers face with shipping their wine to consumers throughout the country.

I spoke on a panel with Dom Moreci of Plumbline about Wine Retailing in the Online Space.  We touched on everything from the basic necessities for building and managing an e-commerce business, to innovations and utilizing Web 2.0 strategies to engage your customers.

I’ve included the full presentation here: SWRA Presentation_Ktaaffe, Inertia

As a quick highlight, I broke my discussion into three “buckets”, defined as the Need to Have’s, the Nice to Have’s and Innovations to Consider. If you are an online retailer or winery selling online, consider the first two bucket’s mandatory to finding success. Move into innovations if your brand, your customers and YOU are ready for them.

A special thank you to Jeff Stai of Twisted Oak Winery, for allowing me to take attendees on a ‘Day in the Life of Jeff’ as he travels through the Web 2.0 space!

Found an interesting chart today on marketingcharts.com defining the top online retailers by conversion rate.  This chart shows the total percentage of visitors to a website who completed a transaction during their visit in the critical December timeperiod. All I can say is “Wow”.

Check this out:

To refresh any memories, a website conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who took a desired action – in this case, placed an order. So, from this info, it appears that nearly 30% of all visitors to thepopcornfactory.com placed an order in December! It should also be noted that retailers only qualified for evaluation in this list if they had a minimum of 500k page views in a month. That’s a lot of popcorn transacting across the web. 

Again, wow.

I’ve been in the direct, online business for many years now. I have certainly spent my share of time obsessing over my own conversion rates, and how to increase them. I’ve hired agencies to help. I’ve tested different variables to help encourage purchase. I’ve implemented multiple promotional strategies (Free Shipping! 50% off! Buy this NOW!). All paid off in different ways, and I’ve felt relatively successful with my efforts, but never to the tune of 30%!

I have a new personal goal.

So how do you improve your conversion rate?  And what is it that’s driving such high numbers for these sites? I think it’s a number of factors – all of which must play together truly move the needle. Here are my 5 suggestions to start you along the path of improving your conversion rate:

1) Know where you come from.
Do you know your own conversion rate? You better, if you want to improve it. Use Google Analytics or other analysis tools to define your conversion rate.

2) Grab a friend
Grab a friend who may be unfamiliar with the nuances of your website and ask them to help you ‘experience’ your website. I suggest you ask them to do two exercises. And don’t forget to watch the entire process. Literally, stand over them – and DO NOT coach them along!

Exercise A) Ask them to visit your homepage and experience your site. Don’t tell them to shop. Don’t tell them to read. Just see what they do. We’ve talked a lot with our clients about the importance of having an easy and intuitive navigational path for our clients (see an earlier post by Ben Chinn, our Director of Web Design & Development: http://blog.inertiabev.com/index.php/2006/10/09/site-structure-and-navigation/), as well as the importance of asking for what you want with headlines and ‘Calls-to-Action’ on the part of the visitor. Both of these efforts can have the desired effect of leading your visitor through your website – ideally to YOUR desired end. Did your friend follow your desired path throughout your website? Did they ‘see’ and act on the things you intend your visitors to? Or did they miss key messages entirely?

Exercise B) Ask your friend to visit your website now with the goal of purchasing a specific product. Start them at your homepage, and watch the path to purchase. Did they get lost? Struggle to find the right page that the product would be on? Did they find the product and the ‘buy now’ button with the minimal number of clicks? Ask them what information they would want to see in order to make that purchase (price, label, tasting notes, reviews). Did they find what they needed? Did it take a few minutes or many minutes, and a lot of ‘back button’ usage?

3) Resolve to Test and Measure
It’s ok to fail. Seriously. That’s what testing and optimizing is all about. Set a plan for what you want to achieve (in this case, higher conversion rates), list all of the potential tactics for reaching that goal, and get started. There are a number of things you can test: headlines, promotions, graphics/images, positioning of information on a webpage, the order of your navigational links, etc. For each tactic tested, watch “before and after” results. Did things improve or get worse? If they got worse, great! You learned what doesn’t resonate with your visitor. Another item off your list…

4) Take Baby Steps
Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just because your conversion rates may be lower than you like, and the shopping experience of your ‘friend’ was clunky, doesn’t mean your entire site needs to be overhauled. Commit to taking baby steps to learning about improvements in your conversion rates. Implement small changes at a time, and measure their impact. Learn what helps your visitor along to purchase and what doesn’t. And give yourself some time to learn. Commit to testing something over at least a week, if your visitor traffic is significant enough to give you ‘usable’ data. If it takes a month to get a real read on results, then give it a month.

5) Be Relevant and Meaningful
Your visitor is going to engage with you, and continue to engage with you if you provide something relevant and meaningful to their needs. Think about your own online shopping experience. When you need something and a site has it, that’s relevance. But when you make that relevant product or information entirely MEANINGFUL to them, you’ve now started a relationship. How do you make things meaningful?

•  Watch how visitors move through your site. Which pages do they spend the most time on? This can give you an idea of the type of content your visitors are most interested in. Finding a lot of activity on your Recipe’s page? Put it up front! Make it easier to find your Recipe pages, add a link to this page from relevant product pages.
•  Watch what visitors are purchasing. Likely the bulk of your sales are on products you’re well known for, have greatest distribution on, and/or highlight the most on your website. But if a sleepy Zin that’s getting no play on your homepage is actually selling fairly well, it’s telling you to give it some presence. Try it out. Suggest to visitors that this is a “Customer Favorite”, and post any reviews that you can get from your customers on that product.
•  Don’t forget about your follow up marketing, as well: Email. Once you know what people are purchasing, and where they are going on your website, send emails that demonstrate this. I buy a lot of products on Amazon.com. And, at least once a month I receive an email suggesting other relevant products. This makes my experience with Amazon more meaningful to me. I buy. They suggest. I like that. 

What are you doing to stimulate conversion rates? Have you ‘experienced’ your website? Are you bringing something meaningful and relevant to your customers? Think of it this way: if your website was achieving a 15% conversion rate, what kind of sales would that translate to?

Again. Wow.

Your website is a virtual storefront, accessible worldwide. No other vehicle provides such wide-range access to potential customers. And, unlike print material, your website is a dynamic vehicle through which you have the opportunity to provide timely information for your customers. Leverage this channel to engage with consumers, extend the reach of your brand, and – most importantly – sell more products.

Here are some quick and easy steps to make the most out of your website.

Know Your Visitor
There are two basic types of visitors who come to a winery’s website: Consumers and Customers.

• Consumers include anyone interested in getting information on your winery or wines. These could be the general consumer looking for a special wine or tasting notes; the media, seeking information on a winemaker or wine brand to help craft a story; or the trade, seeking information on reselling a particular wine or brand.
• Customers are anyone looking to purchase online.

Your website should be structured and maintained in a way that addresses the needs of both visitor types. 

Optimize Your Content
Your website has the luxury of being able to host as much content as is relevant to your brand, your customers, and your business objectives. You want people to know about your product, your company, your story, and how to contact you. You want them to discover whatever information they are seeking. This is a key raison d’etre for all websites.

Enhance and update the information on your website as often as your business updates:

• Have a new event coming up? Add it to the website.
• Have a new release or accolade? Add it to the website.
• Something new and exciting in the vineyard? Add it to the website.

Be careful to avoid cluttering your website, however. Remove anything outdated or irrelevant to your visitors, current campaigns, or your brand. Visitors get bored easily… if they can’t find what they’re looking for, or they find too much information to weed through, they’ll leave.

Use your website effectively and you’ve now got a channel through which to communicate and engage your customers on a regular basis. By doing so, you are not only giving customers a reason to return, but you also trigger search engines to take another look and move you up in the rankings.

Optimize for Sales
If online sales is your primary goal, there are several simple Best Practices which you can apply to help merchandise effectively.

Start with the homepage. Give visibility to your best selling or featured products. Provide an easy path to purchase those products. And ask for the sale by including a compelling Call-to-Action up front. 

Don’t stop at the homepage. Ensure your Wine Store is easily shopped through. Categorize your products in a way that makes sense for your product mix (Red, White, Reserves, Exclusives, etc.). And provide information which helps close the sale: price point, tasting notes, accolades, winemaker’s notes, etc.

Use sidebar areas on category and product pages to feature additional wine or pairing suggestions. Add a “Top 10” list, or your Winemakers’ Favorites. 

Finally, watch what sells and merchandise appropriately. Use a web tool to analyze your customers’ buying and click-stream behavior. Use this information to streamline the path to purchase, as well as to ensure you’re highlighting the most relevant merchandise. Notice that your Reserve Cabernet is outselling the 90-point Chardonnay you had featured on the Homepage? Replace it!

Make the most of your website. Ensure that you are doing your best to drive new traffic, convert visitors to buyers, increase sales, and extend the reach of your brand. Take a few moments this month to consider the above. Your customers will thank you for it.