The Winery Web Site Report

Where's Your Manifesto?

This is a great blog post from A Donkey and Goat Winery.  It talks very specifically about why they make their wines the way they do.  Here's the opening bit:

We make our wines for the table, not the cocktail glass. We make Rhóne varietals in both colors plus an unusual Chardonnay. We (my husband and winemaking partner Jared and I) strive to make wine as naturally as possible. We've done so since day one. Of late, natural is fashionable, which we do of course appreciate, but the reality is we've done this from the start because we feel it makes a superior wine while aligning with our environmental objectives.

Their "manifesto" goes on at length and in detail.  I recommend you read it.  You may or may not agree with how Donkey and Goat wines are made, but I think you'll have to agree that Tracey and Jared are very clear about what they're doing.

You should have a page like this on your winery Web site or blog.  It's a very powerful, personal statement that will help sell your wines to the people who care about the way wine is made.  As a wine purchaser, it makes me want to buy a Donkey and Goat wine, to see how it stacks up against wines which I like, but don't really know much about how they are made.

Of course, it requires that you have thought carefully about why you make your wines the way you do, and that you're willing to be honest about it.  A manifesto like this gets right down to the nitty-gritty: are you proud of the wines you make and sell?

Add To Cart?

If you look at most winery e-commerce pages, particularly if they are part of an off-the-shelf offering (e.g. Nexternal), the buttons which place a bottle or case of wine in the visitor's shopping cart all seem the same:

In contrast, take a look at the way wine.woot sells its wine offerings.  This button is certainly more compelling:

 

Nick Usborne offers several more good reasons why you might want to reconsider an "Add to Cart" button.  Usborne's point is that online retailers carefully craft their headlines and copy, then blow it with a lackadaisical  "Add to Cart." 

He does allow that 

It can make sense to say something generic, like "Add to Basket", or "Add to Cart" when you have a large online store and are trying to get your visitors to buy more than one item at a time. People are very familiar with the process.

but really, you're not Amazon-dot-freaking-com.  Unless you're a top-30 winery, you're essentially selling hand-crafted products, each of which deserves a hand-crafted story.  

 My point is that wineries need to devote the energy you find at wine.woot to create a one-of-a-kind copywriting treatment for each of its current wines.  Something that says "Here's a story that will engage you while it convinces you to buy this wine." 

True, writing that story is nowhere as easy as slapping up some tasting notes and other information in a standard (boring) way, but I bet it sells more wine.  Note that wine.woot does provide the standard stuff as well, but not without leading with great copy written specifically for a particular item.

Does the wine.woot copy technique only work for inexpensive wines?  Twisted Oak does a woot-like treatment for its most expensive wine -- The Spaniard (at $49 a bottle) -- along with its 16 other wines (priced from $16).  Note also that the copy for the 2007 vintage of The Spaniard tells a whole different story than the  page for the 2006.

Each of your wines is different - why do your product pages all sound the same?

Lazy Sunday: Soda Pop

It's just fascinating to listen to John Neese, the owner of Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, talk about soda pop:

Their soda pop Web site isn't elegant, and they have an extremely obnoxious sound loop on the first page, but they do have a good call to action (featuring 3 different sodas) and clear navigation once you enter the online store.

This is an engaging video because the guy has a good story to tell, and the video itself is professionally edited.

(thanks to Seth Godin for the pointer - you may want to read his take on what this video represents.)

Changed Conditions Ahead

This quote is really, really important to the future of your winery:

The fundamental way in which humans shop and learn has changed dramatically the last five years because of the increased power of word-of-mouth and search. Therefore, you need to change the way you market your products to match the way people learn and find out about them.

(more here).

The important thing is to be found.  That begs the question, What are my customers looking for?  It also begs the question How do they look for things? but there are really only two answers to that question: friends and Google.

What are your { future, potential } customers looking for?

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.

New Winery Blogs, October 2009

Another month, another group of winery blogs discovered:

• Airfield Estates
  http://www.airfieldwines.com/blog/

• Deux Punx
  http://blog.deuxpunx.com/

• Durvillea Wines
  http://www.durvilleawines.co.nz/

• Karra Yerta Wines
  http://karrayertawines.blogspot.com/

• San Martiño Winery
  http://sanmartinowinery.blogspot.com/

Even with more than 230 winery blogs in The List, still only a small fraction of wineries have blogs, despite the fact that they are easy to update, and well-regarded by search engines.

The most important requirement for winery blogging is to commit to regular writing.  The second most important requirement is the ability to tell a good story.

145,000 People Watched This Wine Video...

...about how to open a bottle of wine (without a corkscrew):

Disregarding for a moment that this is not the way to open an older bottle with lots of sediment, imagine that your winery had done this video.  Still funny, but branded.

Wouldn't it be nice to have 145,000 people exposed to your wine (even if you probably don't want them to use this technique to open it)?

(I believe that Paul Clifton is the winemaker at Hahn Estates.  Can anyone identify the label in the video?)

Update: Deux Punx offers us  a slightly different take on the same principle.  Note that, like a corkscrew, this works even when you are drunk.

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?

Lazy Sunday: Do You Have A List Like This?

Whether you agree with this list of 50 things a restaurant staffer should never do or not, it's probably worthwhile to consider a list like this for your tasting room personnel.  Consistent, pleasant, and respectful conduct is one mark of a great customer service organization.

Is this too heavy handed?  If you had a list like this, would you share it publicly (e.g. post it on your Web site or blog)? What do you think?  Leave a comment.

(tip of the hat to the always-interesting Jason Kottke)

Update 11/06/2009: here's part 2, containing another 50 things staffers should never do for a grand total of 100.  As with many things online, the comments are nearly as instructive.