Vin65 Blog

Demystifying Search Engines for Winery Websites

There is an excellent post at 4 the Grapes about Demystifying Search Engines for Winery Websites.  Very good explaination of keywords, metatags, alt tags, and other factors that affect your search engine ranking.  Read the full post here.

Apr 22, 2009 at 7:42 AM

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Are you inward or outward?

I was recently travelling with one of our sales reps and was intrique by the line of question that wineries asked us. A number of people fell into one of two camps:

Inward Facing: This type of person asked operational type questions about how the website could make their operations easier. Questions like: Does our platform integrate with their POS system? How can they get UPS shipping labels out of our platform? Almost all of the questions centered around the operations at the winery and how we could make it easier.

Outward Facing: This type of person asked sales type questions about how the website could sell more, how customers interact with it, and how they could go to market better or more efficiently with a website.

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I'm not arguing against either of these camps. There is a need for both.  I was just really intrigued by how some people really tended to lean one way.  For myself, when I look at personality types, I typically like to know where I fit in so I can realize that other people think different than me.

So are you inward or outward?

Apr 19, 2009 at 8:52 PM

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What's wrong with wine on the web?

There is a very interesting article in the WSJ titled 'What's wrong With Wine on the Web'.  (Found via Tom Merle on OWC).  The WSJ article is mainly focused around wine stores and less about wineries.

I agree with most of the suggestions in the article. Over the last few months we have been asked similar questions about what makes a website successful. If you asked for my personal top 5 recommendations for a wine store wanting to do ecommerce on the web...

1. The most important factor online is user experience. How your website feels and operates will directly affect how much you sell.
2. Provide a true e-commerce experience using a platform dedicated to wine sales (our platform, Inertia Beverage, Beverage Media, etc).
3. Have a well defined information architecture, intuitive navigation, and clearly labeled categories and products.
4. Focus attention on your products by keeping distractions to a minimum.
5. Build trust and credibility. Providing highly visible support options, shipping policies, privacy policies, and phone numbers will also build trust.

If you are looking for more resources to improve your wine based website, try this series on '7 Habits of Highly Effective Winery Websites'

Apr 10, 2009 at 10:19 PM

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Listening to Customers

I was impressed this weekend when I took my wife shoe shopping at John Fluevog. Not because they are a cool Canadian shoe company, but because they really listen to customers.

Here are three specific examples of how they listen:

1. Inside the store on a wall near the counter you can see some "proposed" designs of some upcoming shoes and you can write feedback on the designs. (There was lots of good feedback from customers on there, and I'm sure they take it to heart).
2. The shoes that we ended up buying were inspired by a customer, and then the shoe was named after that customer. How cool is that!
3. On Saturday morning when I 'twitted' that I was going to be visiting Fluevog, I immediately received a a follow. (Anyone on twitter will probably know what that means)

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So how does this relate to you? At Vin|65, I want to model the company around a "customer engaging" experience. It's not always easy (we have local customers, and we have customers on the other side of both oceans) but it's always right.

I personally have a google doc with features and changes that customers have recommended. Some of the best features are coming from clients who who use our products every day.  We are constantly look to our customers for ways we can improve their website and ultimately improve our product... so keep the requests coming.  If you have a great idea, send it to me (or your account rep).

Thanks

Apr 5, 2009 at 10:56 PM

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