I don't care whether you use Google Analytics or not.  If you do, however, you should bookmark this page:  Google Analytics: The Missing Manual.

Then start working your way through it.  What a terrific resource (and it's free)!

PS - If you don't have some sort of analytics running on your winery Web site, then shame on you.  Google Analytics is free and contains everything you need to improve your Web site (except the will to do it).

Design Vineyard isn't afraid to tell you.

This rather-straightforward practice got noticed by 37signals, which they termed "refreshing."

If you follow that link and read the comments, you'll see that not all designers felt the same way:

While it’s admirable that a prospective client should have a general idea of what a project will cost them, that doesn’t mean you should advertise your prices like Walmart.

The comments are worth a read. Tyson Caly of Design Vineyard does a good job of explaining his point of view. For one thing, it works.

What do you think a winery Web site should cost?

Funny, in a sad sort of way: A conversation  I have every month or so

Let's say I'm out in the county on a Sunday tasting wines, iPhone in my pocket.  Your winery has a Flash-based site, another one doesn't.

Where do you think I end up tasting?

Mobile experiences need to be fast, easy-to-navigate, and deliver concise information.

(thanks to Jason Reed of Jason Reed Web Design for the pointer)

I wish I'd written it: 10 Things Every Winery Web Site Must Include.

None of these things are revolutionary, expensive, or otherwise difficult. Most wineries have this information readily available; it is just a matter of publishing it to their website.

Ah, there's the rub.  Partly because for many wineries, "publishing it to their website" is just too darn hard.

Your winery Web site *should* be the authoritative source of information about your wines (each one of them) on the Web.  Why isn't it?

Google your best-selling wine.  Why isn't your Web page for that wine the number one result?  Worth thinking about.

It's powerful.

Never forget: you don't just want customers, you want fans!

Why isn't your winery doing this simple thing?  Leave a comment.

PS - it's not the same as putting your main phone number in an e-mail.

Have a read with your cup of Sunday morning coffee: The brand, the package, the story and the worldview

A teaser:

We start with this: if I've already purchased and liked your product, the packaging isn't nearly as important. I'm talking here about packaging as a sales tool for converting browsers into buyers. (If you're already a buyer, all I need to do is remind you what we look like).

If this doesn't make sense to you, wander into the wine section of your local market and look at the all the pretty labels.

Enjoy your Valentine's Day!

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.)

"As often as you want people to think about you."

One of the best answers to this question that I've heard.  Of course, you have to balance that against how often people actually want to think about you.

More good answers to common blogging questions from Rich Brooks at Flyte New Media.

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.

 

Do you believe that wine is fun?  Learn About Wine does.  Here's the promotional blurb for their BLIND DATE Cab + Burger event:

Hey, we can pour great wines and you can take them all on a cheap date! Speed date, whatever… let’s get together and taste 20 really interesting wines and see which one you like best.

This is a small 1 ounce pour but… you will taste an entire bottle by the end of the tasting! All wines are pre-poured, but we will not tell you which one is which until you have tasted them and noted your favorites. Then we will unveil the wines…. One at a time…

Who is the best in this line up? Taste-date them all and see which one you like the best.

Seriously folks – this is a lot of fun and the wine list is “ridiculous good” !And the Cabs (mostly from the 2005 vintage) do seem interesting.  The event appears to be a series, each one featuring a different varietal paired with In-N-Out's deservedly-famous Double-Double.

Wine and food is a natural, and the fast-food angle is an easy way to draw attention.  Consider working with a local restaurant (fast food or otherwise) and promoting it via your Web site (of course) and social media.

Man, I'm hungry!

(via Iconoculture)

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...

 

MyWineDirect has some interesting predictions for the future of the wine business to accompany your Sunday morning coffee.  

I found #10 (white wine will make a comeback), since according to Nielsen Marketing Research, Chardonnay is still far and away the most popular wine in America (followed by Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot).

(my Nielsen information came from a breakfast talk by Bob Aldridge of St. Francis Winery last month.)

What do you see in your crystal ball?  Leave a comment.

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.

 

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.

 

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.

New winery blogs continue to appear on the scene.

• Jordan Winery (The Journey)
  http://blog.jordanwinery.com/

• Kaella Winery
  http://tinyurl.com/yzw27jf

• Longboard Vineyards (barreled)
  http://longboardvineyards.com/blog/

• Mandola Estate Winery
  http://mandolaestatewinery.com/

• Modus Wines (My Life as a Winemaker)
  http://www.winemakerjasonmoore.blogspot.com/

As always, they've been added to The List, my comprehensive list of winery blogs.

 

At the Direct To Consumer Symposium last Tuesday, I ate lunch at the same table as three emissaries from Harlan Estate.

First of all, it was interesting to see Harlan representatives at a show where, ostensibly, people are trying to figure out how to sell their wines direct, a problem which Harlan doesn't appear to have.  Perhaps it's related to their recent acquisition of Diamond Oaks.

Second, they make 2,000 cases of a $500 a bottle wine ($6,000 a case).  About 60%, or 1200 cases, is sold to their mailing list.  30% goes to the trade, and the remaining 10% is donated or placed in their wine library.

(I'm probably overstating things, since 600 - 800 of those 2,000 cases are significantly-less-but-still-expensive The Maiden, not the Proprietary Blend).

If they have real costs of $100 a bottle (hard to imagine, even with the fancy stationery), that's a  very nice profit. $5.76 million from the mailing list alone.

Nice work if you can get it.

Here's the secret.

Hey, what did you expect?

Having just attended the Direct To Consumer Symposium (DTCS) on Tuesday, I can say that everyone wants to know how to forecast the ROI for social media.  It seems pretty clear that it's hard to measure (although there are definitely things you can measure, it's not easy to equate them with hard dollars in your bank account).

The big issue for wineries, large and small, is that Twitter (and other social media venues) takes time, which means a person.  And that person costs money.  And that has to get paid for, somehow.  Which brings us back to ROI.

Fundamentally, you either have to believe in social media, or you have to be big enough to afford the experiment.

I tend towards the view that social media has value, but it's primarily the sort of value associated with having a pleasant, competent person answering your phones.  

On the other hand, Rick Bakas of St. Supery gave a case study of using Twitter (plus a landing page) to sell 250+ cases of their 2003 Merlot (at $150 a case, including shipping, it was a terrific deal).  Of course, he also pointed out that two subsequent offers didn't garner as strong a result.  It appears that offers need to be spaced out to avoid "offer fatigue."

(Disclaimer: I bought one of those cases.)

So, how are you trying to make $$$$ with Twitter?

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.

I'll be closing the 2010 Winery Sales Survey tomorrow, so if you are a winery owner and you haven't yet taken the survey, this is your last chance to help me out.  As I've mentioned, the results will be summarized in a future post (no individual winery information will be released).

Thanks for helping me out!  I really appreciate it.