Love him or hate him, wine critic/blogger Steve Heimoff hits this particular nail on the head:
The biggest mistake most wineries make online is to establish a website, put some stuff up, and then let it molder for months if not years. I routinely get tasting samples in the mail ...So I’ll go to the website for info, only to find that the vintage hasn’t been updated for two years!... when you deliberately go to a website expecting something new and useful, only to find a bunch of old, boring stuff, it’s an insult. You actually feel resentment to the company for being lazy and uncaring and unprofessional. Not good.
(from An example of how social marketing works for a winery -- maybe).
The top error for winery websites remains a lack of freshness, from home pages which haven't changed in years, to a lack of information about new vintages, to "News" pages where the last update was more than a year ago.
A related mistake is to throw out the "old, boring stuff" on your website wholesale, instead of archiving items which have long-term value to visitors. Disk space is cheap and search engines are your friends. Someone just might want to read about that 10-year-old vintage they pulled from the cellar for tonight's party. Ideally, your website has information about every vintage you've every produced.
Your winery could do this: pre-fill a shopping cart for returning customers, based on their previous purchases.
Jeez, this is brilliant. If you want e-commerce lessons, study the people who spend lots and lots of money to make sure it's optimized (e.g. Amazon.com, Wine.com).
I wouldn't call it "Guess My Order," though. I think this copy is particularly confusing.
Last night (Saturday, September 24, 2011), the winners of the Sonoma County Harvest Fair were announced:
As I write this on Sunday morning, this story is the most-read news article on the Santa Rosa Press Democrat website.
BUT, not a single one of these wineries has the good news on their websites (either on the home page, or on the "news" page of their site). People are reading the news, searching for the winery on Google, visiting their home page, and finding...nothing.
(Update: as of 8AM Monday, 9/26, Wilson Winery has updated their home page.)
Consider the lost PR value of this oversight. It happens once a year -- you'd think people might plan for it. And yes, it's a weekend, but last time I looked, wineries are open for business on the weekends.
To their credit, Wilson Winery and Gloria Ferrer have updates on their respective Facebook pages (here and here), but unfortunately, these updates will only appear in the news streams of people who already Like them, and will disappear fairly quickly in the news stream.
As Vin|65 pointed out, your winery website is the hub of your (online) marketing activities. Something as newsworthy at this award should be featured on your home page for a week after the event.
Obviously, these winning wines may soon be sold out. A winery in this glorious position should still have an offering of some sort for people who missed out (a different vintage, a special deal).
You lose the value of publicity when you fail to engage the people who look for your winery and wines as a result of that publicity.
Still not 100% sure about what SEO is? This quick video from Common Craft is a good introduction.
Of course, your chances of ranking highly for a general search phrase like Pinot Noir are low. But you probably want to rank highly for searches that associate your winery (e.g. Kosta Browne Pinot Noir) and/or region (e.g. Russian River Pinot Noir) with a particular varietal.
Another example: V. Sattui recognizes that they are a popular picnic spot, and has optimized their site for searches relating to winery picnic.
If you don't know the top 3-5 search terms that bring visitors to your winery, talk to your Webmaster. Then take a look for yourself at where your site appears in the results when you type those phrases into Google. If you're not happy with the outcome, it's time to tackle SEO for your winery website.
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