Vin65 Blog

Is Facebook sending your winery website more traffic than Google?

In February the San Francisco Chronicle published an article 'Facebook directs more online users than Google'.

From a winery perspective, is this true – does Facebook send you more traffic than Google?

Looking at our platform, the short answer is no and it's not even close. Across all the wineries, Google accounts for 27% of traffic and Facebook referrals only account for 2.3%. (See the first graph to the right.)

The longer answer is that it depends on the winery. Some of our clients are "getting" Facebook and those that really "get it" receive almost twice as much Facebook traffic as Google traffic. (See the second graph on the right.)

Our platform is search engine friendly. It auto creates a lot of key elements Google is looking for (in tech speak, it creates a XML site map and auto create meta descriptions, titles, and friendly URLs). Basically Google traffic can come with little effort.

Unfortunately Facebook traffic requires planning, effort and it takes time. (There are a lot of great social media pundits in the wine industry that can assist you with your social media and Facebook strategies.)

Is Facebook traffic worth it?

My gut feeling is that Facebook traffic is higher quality traffic. Traffic comes from either a winery fanpage (in which case they already have some kind of relationship with the winery) or they come from a friend (a social referral). A Facebook friend whose positive comment on a winery's fanpage seen by a friend in their newsfeed is more powerful and influential than a list of search results on Google.

Furthermore this traffic coming from Facebook is probably not a cannibalization of existing traffic.  So it's a case of the pie being made bigger rather than being divided up differently.

As a side note Google recognizes the power of Facebook and is now ranking Facebook pages higher in its search results.

Facebook is becoming a larger and larger source of traffic and I bet if we revisit these graphs in a year they will be considerably different. Whether it's worth it now depends on the time and effort it takes and what that costs you.

New Admin Interface

A little bit of a self promotion. This morning we launched our new interface on our admin panel. (137 websites are awaking to the new interface today, the other 160ish sites are seeing the new UI in the next couple of weeks).

We have some clear goals around our admin panel. It has to be as simple as possible. We want the user interface to be intuitive and friendly (both for a positive experience for our users and because it cuts our customer support costs).

We have some lesser known goals. The interface has to work with some of the technology in place. The CSS has to be light and fit well into existing code. The overall interface has to be 'white brandable' for some of our partners.

Here are some of the decisions we made with a new user interface:

1. Our users vary in the technology they use. Unfortunately 7.3% of our users are still using IE 6 and we felt we had to still support that 8 year old browser. 15% of our users are on Macs.  Firefox and Safari both represents sizable percentages of users (so no browser specific code). Screen resolution also varies drastically, with 27% of our users still using the 1024x768 resolution.
2. Our users involvement vary. 40-50% of users login on a daily basis. Other users don't log in for months. We wanted to make sure when users first login, they would not feel overwhelmed by the new interface.
3. Our users vary in their technical capabilities. While we don't rank our users technical savviness, we know that some of our users are very web savvy, while other users are not as savvy. We needed to make sure the non-savvy people would feel okay with the changes.

If your a current admin panel users - we would love your feedback. Either email me directly at andrew@vin65.com, or leave a comment below.

Welcome Brian Zacharias

We would like to welcome Brian Zacharias to the Vin|65 team this morning. (We'll get his picture up someday)

Brian joins are team in a programming and development role.  For the first few months he will be working on some custom development projects. Brian has a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems and has a strong background in webservices, C#, and database development.

If you end up talking to him, seeing him in the office, or seeing him at the gym with us make sure you say hi.

How to choose a website/e-commerce provider.

There's been a great discussion on Open Wine Consortium about choosing an e-commerce platform. The discussion has been going on for almost a year and every so often the conversation sparks up again. (Right now it's six pages long)

These discussions often degrade into a platform feature comparison and what you can do on each platform. At Vin | 65 we offer one of the best all around feature sets for a winery (obviously I have a personal bias here). However I feel that comparing features is really the wrong way to go.

I firmly believe it has more to do with your developers and marketers than with the features itself. With a professional experienced developer you gain a lot of knowledge that you wouldn't necessary have yourself. (Just like having an experienced wine maker producing your wine)

So how should you choose an e-commerce platform? And what is the best deal?

1. Compare the external sales you can achieve with each platform. Website design has a huge impact on sales. (Often the initial visit is all about the experience and story you tell) Marketing opportunities such as capturing visitor information, have an impact on sales. The website developer and marketers should be able to assist you here.
2. Compare the internal costs you will save with each platform.  Which platforms are going to let you do your job more efficently. (This often comes down to which provider has the best features, and the easiest to use features)
3. Compare the ongoing platform costs in terms of licensing fees, in terms of support, and how much time the platform will require from you.

If you want to get a whole lot of differing opinions, be sure to read the OWC thread.
 

You Are Expected To Do It All!

As a small winery owner you are expected to do it all. You are running the big show. You are on the hook for the results.

Here is a shortened list of responsibilities:

• Grow the grapes
• Pick the grapes
• Fix the tractor
• Manage the workers
• Make the wine
• Ship the wine
• Market the wine
• Create a brand
• Design the labels
• Manage selling channels
• Stay on top of compliance
• Manage the website
• Run the tasting room
• Manage the books
• Collect the money
• Remember the customer is always right
• Enjoy the lifestyle

As a web service provider we also like to add some, because if you have a web site you should also be doing these things:

• SEO - Search Engine Optimization
• Key word optimization
• Managing organic search results
• Managing paid search engine campaigns
• Optimize your site for different visitor profiles
• Run effective google ad campaigns and measure results
• Measure conversion
• Tweak your customers e-commerce experience
• Know everything about Google Analytics
• Create funnels to measure your sites effectiveness
• Know some HTML and CSS
• Keep up on product reviews and ratings
• Put all your content into snooth.com and corkd.com
• Get your facebook group going
• Blog - What was that again?
• vBlog - huh?
• Twitter - come again?

My guess is that all the things that go into making the most of your web site and making your web site great fall between the cracks. Unless you are a larger winery who can afford to have a dedicated staff or multiple staff in the web department most of those web tasks simply don't get thought about, much less accomplished.

At Vin | 65 we are passionate about the web and making your sure your customers have a great experience buying your wine. We also bring a lot of experience and a great tool set to our customers so that they don't have to stress out about a lot of this stuff because it is built right in. We know our winery and wine retail customers are busy enough already. Let us be the web experts in your corner, so that you can focus on making amazing wine.

Want to know more about what we offer, how we can make your life easier, what the heck a blog is...contact us.

Does your website have a New Year’s resolution?

This is the first time I've publicly stated a new year’s resolution for our platform.

1. Enhanced User Experience. Increase the user experience in both our admin panel and clients front end websites. This involves both visual experience, and the way different components work.
2. Simplify. Make it easier for website administrators to enter data. Make it easier for end users to checkout, sign up for a wine club, etc.
3.  Smarter. Make our systems smarter. We have tons of data on hand, and we want to put more intelligence in the system to utilize this data better.

Truthfully, we have all been thinking about these three ideas for awhile. Our new platform launches in January and we are really excited about some of the new features. (If you want a private demo, email me and we can show you some of the new features).

In 2009 we have some giant plans.  We've shared a few of these plans with some of our partners. 2009 is going to be a great year and you should see some amazing work by everyone one. (Hopefully that statement doesn't sound to arrogant)

If you have a new year’s resolution around your website I would love to hear about it.
 

New Website Launch: Burgundy & Beyond

We've just launched a new winery website, Burgundy & Beyond powered on Vin | 65’s platform. We’ve worked hard on this site and are excited for it to finally be live. Check out the site and send us feedback on the design, navigation, functionality, and e-commerce experience.

 

 

Burgundy and Beyond is a wine boutique specialized in domain-direct French wines from Burgundy, Champagne, Bordeaux, the Loire and the Rhône. They offer an extensive selection from the Louis Latour portfoilio, including the wines of Maison Louis Latour, Simonnet Febvre and Henry Fessy, as well as a handful of other rare jewels that complement our Burgundy-rich palette.

Below is a screenshot of the old version of Burgundy & Beyond.

 

Triathlons And Websites

This weekend my wife Julia placed 13th (out of 146) in a triathlon in North Vancouver. Last year she had a second place finish in a local triathlon, so this year she opted for a triathlon a little further out of town and with more competition (which meant a 5:00am day for me).

Julia will tell you that she isn't competitive, but her twice a day religious training style might tell you a different story.

Competing in a triathlon is a lot of work, and it also requires the right equipment. A few years ago when Julia and I were dating, I watched her compete in a triathlon here in Abbotsford. She placed 15th. However when I was looking at her split times, she had a top 3 finish in the swim and a top 3 finish in run, and was 67th in the bike.

At the time she was riding a fairly old road bike that would be typical of what you would by in the $100-$200 price range at a big box retailer. (This bike suited her budget as she works at a local church). Shortly after the race we went out and bought a triathlon bike for $1500. Let me tell you, the difference between a $200 bike and a $1500 triathlon bike is amazing. The triathlon bike has clipped in pedals, arrow handlebars, completely arrow dynamic frame, racing gears/sprockets, etc.

While there are racers with $5000 bikes, the difference between a $200 generic bike and a $1500 triathlon bike is probably greater than the difference between a $1500 bike and a $5000 bike. (The $5000 bikes are just marginally lighter).

So what does this all have to do with websites?

If you want to compete, it requires both the right equipment, and it requires a lot of work. I see companies trying to boot strap it, they setup a free GeoCities website, or they buy Dreamweaver and find a cheap hosting solution, and they attempt to build their own website in an effort to save a few dollars.

I commend you for trying to build your own site. It's a lot of work, especially if you start doing your own HTML and your own scripting. It's like riding the $200 bike in a triathlon. You are peddling harder than you need to be, and probably not going as fast.

While technically you can ride pretty much any bike in a triathlon, the right equipment makes a huge difference.

If you're a winery or a wine retailer, there is plenty of "right equipment", including our platform, Inertia, eWinerySolutions, and others.

Having the right equipment won't guarantee you a win, but if you want to compete you need the right equipment, and it is well worth the money spent.

How to create a raving fan

Is having a great wine enough? I don't think it is. I know lots of wineries with great wine, but I'm not a raving fan. 

When there are so many brands, how do you create a raving fan for your brand? How do you reach through the clutter and show your passion and convey your story?

I've been thinking of wineries where I'm a raving fan and why do I like them more than anyone else.

1. Obviously you have to have great wine.  However I have tasted great wine and never joined the club or become a raving fan, so a great product is only part of the equation. 
2. You have to create a great experience. At a winery, often times the tasting room staff make all the difference for user experience. Did the staff really connect with me? Can I feel their passion? Do I know the brand story? 
3. You have to deliver well. Recently I've seen some pretty creative packaging when ordering wine online. From simple additions like a branch from a vine (to help me connect with the vineyard), to having a small jar of jam included in our shipment. Some wineries are really starting to share the story of who they are with me through their packaging.

Too often companies execute well in a few areas (such as making a great product), and then settle for mediocrity in the little things like packaging, delivery, websites, etc, and in my opinion, that’s when the customer remains a customer rather than a raving fan. 

Every touchpoint with the customer either builds or takes away from them becoming this fan.

Tonite I started to look inwards at Vin|65 and when it comes to our own customers how do we create raving fans? We have a great product (which I'm very passionate about) however I'm not sure if we are always delivering the greatest experiences, or if we are settling for mediocrity on the little things. Do we need to improve our sales, our training, our marketing material. Where are all the touch points, and how do we ensure a first class experience at each of those? How can we communicate our passion more with our customers? We don't want to deliver a mediocre experience... we want to develop raving fans. We also want the same for you.

What makes a good URL?

There are several factors that make up a great URL.  Yesterday clients on our current platform received an email from Brent talking about good URLs.  I thought I would copy some of the content here in a blog post for the general public.

What makes a good URL?

First, they should be readable and informative. This means that the URL should suggest the page you’re about to land on. For example, the URL for a Vin65's blog is http://www.vin65.com/blog so you know simply from looking at the URL it's going to take you to the Vin | 65 Blog page.

Second, your URLs should be harmonious. This means that visitor should be able to guess what a page on your website might be from seeing other pages. For example, if you were searching on the site Pine Wines site for different wines, you should be able to guess from this Red Wine URL, http://www.pinewines.com/Wine/Red-Wines, that the White Wine page would have “White-Wines” instead of “Red-Wines.”

Finally, don’t keep changing your URLs. It’s possible that websites, visitors and search engines have recorded and indexed your link or have pages linking to you site. You don’t want to have potential clients wanting to search your site have an error message because the link is no longer active.

Why a good URL matters?

There are a number of reasons why a good URL matters.  Some of them are aluded to above.

First a good URL creates a better user experience. Just read through the examples above, and you can see how a URL of www.pinewines.com/Wines/Red-Wines is a better URL than www.pinewines.com/index.cfm?method=pages.showpage&pageid=e56d3f37-1e0b-4e34-f02f-9956542aff8d (both URLs point to the exact same page).  Users bookmark URLs, they link URLs, they email URLs to friends, etc.

Second, URLs do matter to Search Engines.  The URL is one of the 10 ten factors Google uses in determining your search engine rank.  You can 'stuff' keywords, (such as Wine, Red Wine, etc) into your URL and affect your search engine rank.

Finally, a good URL makes your statistics readable.  If you are monitoring your traffic on Google Analytics or another statistics program (and you should be monitoring your traffic), it's way easier to tell which pages visitors are looking if you have a nice marketing URL (such as /Wines/Red-Wines/) rather than looking at a database driven URL (such as /index.cfm?method=pages.showpage&pageid=e56d3f37-1e0b-4e34-f02f-9956542aff8d)

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Clients using our current platform got an upgrade this past weekend.  If they leave the 'marketing URL' field blank, our admin panel automatically suggests a URL for them. Brent also put together a nice video on how to edit URLs.  (If your on our current platform, it's in the help documentation). 

If you would like to talk to us further about your URL structure, or would like us to assist you in improving your URLs, feel free to contact Brent or myself.