REthink Wine Blog

We sometimes think of winery websites as "virtual tasting rooms". Okay, you can't actually taste the wine on a website, but in other ways a website can, and should, achieve much of what a tasting room does. Next time you're thinking about the content of your web site, or if you're building a new one, a lot of what you already know about your tasting room will help you with your online presence.

Making A Connection

Tasting rooms allow customers to make a personal connection to your wine. Tasting room employees engage with customers in a way that captures a customer's attention in a way that no other kind of promotion can. A winery website has the potential to make a connection in a similar way. What are you saying on your website? Can you imagine an employee in your tasting room talking like the text reads on your site? You have an opportunity to connect directly with customers on your website – don't lose sight of the human being on the other side of the screen.

Honoring the Journey

When somebody shows up at your tasting room you know that they have traveled to get there. You appreciate they have taken the time to visit your winery and you try to make sure they don't regret that investment. A customer visiting your website has also made a journey. Maybe they arrived after searching for your wine on Google or following a link from another site. However they got there, they made a choice to visit your site and have invested some time in exploring it. They should feel like they are getting some value in return, whether it's a special offer on a wine, an opportunity to join your club or an invitation to a winery event.

Beating the Competition

Especially in the big wine centers there are plenty of opportunities to visit tasting rooms. Many people who visit your winery may already have been to one or two others and may visit more after they have left. You need to create a memory of your winery that stands out among the other tasting room visits that day. One the web the competition is even more severe. You are competing with millions of other web sites and all of them are only a click away. How have you distinguished yourself and made sure the memory of your web site stays with each customer?

In an Interview with Wine Business Monthly tasting room consultant Veronica Barclay says that the purpose of a tasting room is to "create memories". A good winery website can do the same thing. But what about the purpose of selling wine? I'll get to that in a future post.

At this year’s Inertia symposium I moderated a session on web site design in which we talked about the wonders of social networking and how it might benefit wineries. Facebook, blogging, twitter: we invoked these words in praise and wonder. But just two weeks ago our own Carole Loomis posted an article, So You Think You Want To Blog starting with the advice, “Think Again”. Two years ago Paul Mabray posted Wineries - to blog or not to blog - NOT whose title is self explanatory. I myself have never before encouraged wineries to blog, advising that blogging is a distraction from more important marketing efforts. So why was I bullish on blogging last week?

First of all, I blame Gary Vaynerchuk (pictured) of Wine Library TV. He delivered an inspiring talk at our symposium shaming the audience for ignoring blogs and social networking and saying that every winery had an obligation to blog or see their business go the way of the dinosaur. He exhorted wineries to stop whining about being defined by reviewers and the press and start defining themselves by expressing their own brand online through blogs and social networks. Gary’s persuasive talk had a lot to do with my attitude toward blogging all day, and has stayed with me since then.

Also, times have changed since Paul posted his warnings about blogging two years ago. Facebook is a multi-billion dollar business and has become a primary communication platform for many people. Barack Obama is the first serious presidential candidate to be able to turn down public financing largely because of his success raising funds online with the help of political bloggers. Bloggers have caught up to print and broadcast journalists as sources of news, analysis and opinion. Vaynerchuk has become a powerful force in the wine world thanks almost entirely to his online presence in video blogging and social networking. This blog has had some success in connecting Inertia to the larger wine community. The ways in which we connect to information and each other are more and more tied to networking services on the web.

So should wineries hop on the bandwagon? For the first time I now say: yes. But before you all go signing up for blogger accounts I have some words of advice on how to get started.

1. Start reading blogs: You wouldn’t sit down to write a novel without ever cracking a book. Read as many blogs as you can and get a feel for the craft of blogging. There may even be blogs unrelated to wine that you can learn from.
2. Be Promiscuous: Now that you’re regularly reading a bunch of blogs, join the conversation. Leave comments stating your point of view. Don’t explicitly promote yourself or your business - you won’t make friends by getting a reputation as a spammer. Instead use this opportunity to get engaged with the community and start finding your online “voice”.
3. Get Social: There’s a bunch of wine related groups on Facebook, as well as the Open Wine Consortium, which let’s you post blog articles, list your events and engage in community forums. One of the main benefits of blogging is community building and social networks give you the opportunity to do this with much less overhead than a blog you have to maintain yourself.
4. Do some research: One of the best things about the web is that there is so much information out there about the web. Problogger, Blog Herald and Copy Blogger are good places to find information on blogging and to get a sense of the issues that bloggers deal with.

Follow these steps and you’ll be engaging potential customers, creating a brand around your online presence and joining a growing community of wine consumers and producers and you haven’t even got a blog yet. When you’re ready to take it to the next level you’ll have to choose a platform, come up with a site design, get a domain and then put in the hours actually writing content day after day, all while keeping the rest of your business going. Yes, it’s going to require a bigger investment of time than emailing your current customer base or updating your website content every quarter and you’re not going to be able to let go of those old responsibilities either. Perhaps my point of view isn’t that different from that stated by Carole and Paul in their posts on blogging. They have a valid point: given the colossal effort involved, why bother blogging? All I’m saying is: when blogging gives you unprecedented power to connect with a growing audience on your own terms, why not?

Have questions on winery blogging issues? Let me know in the comments and I’ll follow up on this topic in the future.

Thanks to everybody who attend the Web Design breakout session at our recent Inertia Symposium and especially to presenters Dom Moreci of Plumbline Studios and Aaron Rutledge & Tom Ajello of Poke New York. We didn’t get through all of the slides that the Pokers prepared, so I’ve made them available online. So go take a look at the 10 Commandments of Web Design.

UPDATE: I’ve taken down the slides for now while the folks at Poke update the presentation. Stay tuned for a new improved set of slides to be posted soon.

It’s only July 1, so you’re thinking you have plenty of time to get your site ready for the holidays – think again. Now is the time to plan and implement the changes to your site so that it is optimized for the traffic that is soon to come your way.

Do it now

Within the next month or so, rethink your keywords and keyword phrases with holiday shoppers in mind. Put holiday keywords in place months ahead – they can take time to propagate with search engines. “Christmas” is, undoubtedly, the most commonly used search term, along with “holiday gift”, “Christmas gift”, and “gift for dad”. Also try “wine-lover’s gifts”, “gifts for red-wine drinkers”, and “wines to go with Christmas dinner”. Be creative and use keyword phrases which are often better for SEO that just stand alone words.

To do in October:

Add seasonal categories to your store— they can be turned on as soon as you need them. Use categories that describe the recipient: “Gifts for Geeks”, “Gifts for Chardonnay Lovers”, “Gifts for the Connoisseur”. Do the heavy lifting for your customers. Many shoppers already have some parameters in mind when they get to your site: “I need to get a gift for my aunt and I don’t want to spend more than $50.” Help online shoppers find gifts for different budgets: “Gifts under $50”, “Gifts over $75”. Avoid generic categories: “Gift baskets”, “Wine and Food Gifts” etc.

To do on November 1:

If appropriate, Dress up your site for the holidays. This could be as simple as changing pictures but may also include a new home page banner. This tells holiday shoppers that you’re ready for them. Follow suit with an email template that echos the same look and feel.

Update your content with holiday shoppers in mind. As the holidays approach, your home page text can be updated with more specific material for shoppers. Use relevant titles and keyword-rich copy that search engine crawlers like. Make sure that changes on your site get transferred to tasting room and other marketing materials.Give shoppers what they want right away.

Most holiday shopping is done for someone else. So, use kickers to help shoppers locate gifts from your home page; don’t make them have to search for gift ideas. Give them shipping information, such as costs and delivery times, right away (on the home page, at the top of the shop page and in every email). Let them know what your return/refund policy is. Answer their questions before they have to ask … or before they decide to leave for the next site. If need be, update the information as it gets closer to your critical dates.

Getting a jump on the holidays necessitates that you start planning now. If you need design or content help you’ll want to get that on the calendar. Planning ahead can be the difference between a very profitable holiday season and one that falls flat.

Pushing five decades of excellence, Communication Arts is the preferred publication among Creatives searching for inspiration, information and award winning ideas. Every year, Communication Arts carefully selects the best of the best creative introduced throughout the passing year and presents it to the rest of the world in its single annuals. Currently, there are five individual annuals uniquely dedicated to advertising, design, illustration, photography and interactivity.

Frequenting the glossy pages of last year’s Design Annual No. 48 is the packaging of several wineries around the world. Listed below are the awarded companies.

To learn more about Communication Arts visit their website.

Communication Arts: Design Annual 48 November 2007. Pages 7, 13, 14, 20, 22.

Think Again.

Many of our winery partners say they’d like to start a blog which can be a good thing if you know what you’re getting yourself into; your customers are out there, critics and supporters, and they want to talk about you and with you. A blog is a good way to connect and can help drive traffic to your site. As Jeff Stai from Twisted Oak and Clark Smith from GrapeCraft can attest, there are several good reasons to start a blog and many more reasons not to:

Blogging is a commitment. Most of the winery personnel I know do not only the job they were hired to do, but a few others as well. The perfect voice for your blog is a brand ambassador; someone who knows your message well, is reliable, a very good communicator, and has the time to post daily.

Blogging takes time. Linked to the need for regular updates is the fact that this takes time. The best bloggers, in addition to posting daily: moderate and respond to reader comments on their own site; read other blogs; and respond to commentary regarding their product or winery on other sites.

Blogging demands a thick skin. Not every comment or post is going to be positive. You’ve got to roll with the punches and keep your cool when responding to criticism.

One word… Spam. Are you and your IT department ready for the barrage of junk mail you’ll receive?

Blogging is as easy as writing a letter to two people; someone you know very well and someone you haven’t met yet. Which is not easy at all. Company blogs must be carefully written with those two audiences in mind, with just enough information to entice new customers without giving away the store, and something new and non-repetitive for existing ones.

There is no kiddie pool for bloggers - just the deep end. Your words are out there - thoughts, opinions, feelings - with all of the typos, misplaced prepositions, and missing conjunctions. Just like your website, a blog is a reflection of your brand, but in a much more visceral way. Make sure that you and your company are ready to take the plunge.

As it appears we’re moving closer and closer to a recession, one interesting fact has come to light:  the Internet continues to be one of the few areas where many multi-channel retailers are experiencing sales growth.   According to an article by Internet Retailer this month, the web currently accounts for only 10% of The Talbots Inc’s sales but accounted for 68% of sales growth in 2007.  Likewise for many other merchants – Staples, Circuit City and the Gap are three examples cited in the article.  Another interesting statistic mentioned – online spending by households with higher incomes grew more rapidly than households with lower income (this is according to comScore, Inc.).  Year over year growth in the over $100,000 category was 28%, while those in the $50,000 to $100,000 category spent 17% more than the previous year.  This is a statistic which is not lost on the wine industry.  And given the fact that margins are clearly higher for direct sales, I think this year, more than ever before, is a perfect year to concentrate on increasing direct sales.  With a down economy facing us, a secondary goal of course, is to protect against margin erosion as much as possible - which leads to the title of this post.  There are two free tools available today to help you increase online sales and protect against margin erosion.

Google Analytics

I know many people are intimidated by the mere thought of analytics, especially if math was not a favorite subject in school.  And if you’re one of those people, I would suggest taking a look at Google Analytics from a slightly different perspective.  When you get right down to it, all of the numbers and graphs you see are really designed for one purpose:  to give you a glimpse into human behavior.  To further simplify, there are really two things you are looking for in all of the numbers:  1) how are people arriving at your site, and 2) what are they doing once they get there?   Remember that each click you see in your Google Analytics statistics represents an actual human being.
How are people arriving at your site?  Look at specific keywords and search engines consumers are using to find you.  Then take a look at the pages they are landing on.  Are they finding what they’re looking for on those pages?  If not, what can you do to improve your landing pages and increase conversion rates?

What are they doing once they get there?  This is where the funnels available to you in Google Analytics become extremely interesting.  Where are customers leaving in the sales process?  After looking at your Google Analytics numbers, I always feel it is important to go back to the website and look at it through the eyes of your visitors.  Follow the same path you are seeing your own customers taking.  Why are they leaving when they do?  What changes can you make to those pages to encourage them to proceed to the next step?

Even the slightest change in conversion rates can be significant in terms of your top-line revenues.

Rethink Compliance™

As many of you know already, our REthink Compliance™ tool was released this past week to all US wineries, fulfillment houses, and compliance services.  And the response has been amazing.  As the tool is free to all, I can’t think of a better way to protect against margin erosion.  REthink Compliance™ greatly simplifies your direct shipment reporting for each state, meaning you have more time to devote to increasing those conversion rates.  So if you haven’t already done so, I would strongly encourage you to register and to sign up for a webinar to see exactly what the tool has to offer.

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.

Content is one of the most important parts of your website. It is how you bring your wine and your winery to life and yet another– very important – way that search engines will find you. There are many important things to consider when reevaluating your current website content, but here’s an easy and quick win: KEEP IT FRESH!

Keeping Your Site Fresh
As you know, it is important that you keep your homepage and all your content fresh and up to date. It is extremely frustrating for someone who visits your events page to only to find events from several months ago, or to see Outdoor Party recipes in the middle of December.

By updating your content on a regular basis you are not only seen as more professional to your visitors, but you also trigger search engines to take another look and move you up in the rankings. The most important page that search engines look at is your homepage, so be sure that you are continually refreshing some of the content on that page.

When did you last refresh your website? Make a plan for upcoming dates to add new and refresh old content: Weekly, if you can; Monthly; Quarterly; and/or Seasonal/Holiday

Here are three key tips to implement now:

Update your calls-to-action (CTAs)
Ask for what you want; make your specials/kickers actionable. Your CTA is what is going to point your visitors in the direction you want them to go. Use CTA’s throughout your site, reinforcing your website goals. Caution: If you don’t have any CTA’s on your home page, they will have nothing to guide their experience throughout your website.

Include a “Seasonal Features” Section
Link to this page from a Kicker on the Homepage. Offer new recipes and food pairings each season. Discuss what’s happening in the vineyard at that time. By doing so, you will give users a reason to visit again, as well as give search engines an additional way to locate you for their searchers. But REMEMBER: keep search engines happy by updating with text-based elements and not simply images.

Keep News & Events Current
The key to maintaining a successful website is keeping your information fresh. By keeping your news and events updated you:

• Hold the attention of your audience, and create interest in your website.
• Provide a reason for your visitors to return – most of us don’t read the same book over and over again. Give your visitors a weekly or monthly “magazine” and they’ll subscribe!
• Increase spending as a direct result of an extended customer focus created on your site.
• Improve the likelihood your website will be indexed higher on search engine results.

Heard something brilliant the other day when I was discussing ecommerce “best practices” with someone at the office. “It’s just shopping” she said. And it all makes sense. We all know how to shop in the real world (and know what we like and don’t like about certain stores), so why should an ecommerce shopping cart be any different?

Over the years, I’ve heard and read so many different articles with different views on how the cart should work on a website, and what are the “best practices” today. Not last month. Today.  Well, considering how much time I spent building ecommerce sites, and how much money I spent shopping on ecommerce sites, I’d like to throw my 2 cents into the mix. Here are my top 10 “how the shopping cart should work”.

1. Use a dynamic shopping cart
When you’re grocery shopping, you wouldn’t want to be sent straight to the cashier every time you put something in your cart. So don’t take the customers away from where they are when they click the “add to cart” button. Let them decide where they want to go next.

2. Allow quantity when adding to cart
There’s nothing stopping you from putting 2 bags of marshmallows in your cart, so why should it work differently on any website?

3. Include a store navigation accessible from anywhere in the site
When you’re ready to move from the produce section to the frozen meats, you don’t always go back to the store’s entrance and start over do you?

4. Include related products on product pages
Not on the shopping cart page. Not on the review your order page. On the product detail page. That way you know the ketchup and mustard are both condiments (related), and you don’t end up seeing one of them sitting next to the paper towels.

5. Forms should be top aligned
UI studies show it is easier and faster to fill out forms if the names of the fields are directly above them. So you work on the form from top to bottom, rather than left, right, left, right, left right, … You get my point.

6. Specify optional fields, not required fields
Most fields are required anyway.

7. Shipping address should be an optional step
9 out of 10 customers ship to the same address as their billing address. Don’t put up the entire shipping address form just to intimidate them. The less work they have to do, the more likely they’ll actually finish the checkout process.

8. Ability to save carts
I know you can’t do this in the grocery store, but don’t you wish you can? So you can put together your cart for next week’s grocery since you’re already in the store, and all you have to do is to come back next week to the store and pay for it.

9. Large buttons
I love it when I get to Home Depot, all I have to do is look up and know exactly where I am suppose to find what I need and pay for things when I’m done. Make your “add to cart” and “checkout” buttons stand out. Please.

10. Beauty is important
White space is good, but too much of it is bad. Wouldn’t a badly designed site and checkout forms make you a little uncomfortable? Maybe it’s not a legitimate site? Maybe it’s not secure? Maybe I should go to someone else whose store “looks” better?