Vin65 Blog

The boring old newsletter signup - what's the point?

These days it is all about the social media. You need to be getting your facebook page up, your Twitter account going, and blogging...don't forget to blog at least two or three times a week. Oh and just to up the bar a little are you getting every one you know to rate and comment on your wines on Snooth.com? It is no wonder the email newsletter list is getting completely neglected. Let me just say that you should start with the email list and then move onto the other stuff.

Social media is about building connections and trust with potential and existing customers, not about making hard sales. On the other hand the email list if built correctly is made up of individuals who have given you permission to send them some information and some solid sales pitches. A list of 1000 qualified customers on your email list is way more valuable than 1000 twitter followers. The fact is that well crafted email campaigns give better ROI than social media (http://directmag.com/email/1014-email-roi-dma/). It is just more intimate, and therefore a more powerful tool to reach out to your customers and convert to sales. When your wine fans say to you..."Send me information when you have a special or release new product", then your should be doing that. They want to buy from you - right now!

There are a lot of reasons why email list building has started to slide recently. Focus on social media, spam blockers, lack luster response all add up to email list abandonment. Email marketing is the holy grail though. It would be unwise not to concentrate on building your email list and consistently delivering good emails targeting your customers desires and concerns. That list if built over years could number in the thousands and become a large source of immediate sales, and even a large segment of your sales. It is so important to work on building your list and sending email to your customers. Once you have that dialed then move onto the social media scene.

If you want to know more about email list building and how to get the most out of your website send us an email.

For another good article on email marketing copyblogger.com put up a great article.

Jul 24, 2009 at 4:50 PM

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5 Signs that Your Web Developer "Gets" Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing can be a full time profession.  If you want to do it well you have to be concerned with link building, good content, and a lot of technology.  While search engine marketing is typically not your web developers primary responsibility, your web developer will affect your search engine ranking.

Here are 5 signs that suggest your web developer "gets" search engine marketing.

1) Your site uses title tags.

The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search rankings. A great title tag should contain your company name and a specific keyword phrase (ideally 4-7 words long).  For example the current title tag at Twisted Oak is "Twisted Oak Winery - Rhone Spanish Tempranillo Viognier Petite Sirah".

Here is how to tell if you have a title tag: In your browser title bar (on a PC this is the bar (typically blue) at the very top of the browser) - you should see the title. If it only says "Internet Explorer" or "Firefox" your title tag is missing. On this particular page the title is: "Vin 65 - Blog - 5 Signs that Your Web Developer "Gets" Search Engine Marketing".

A good developer will ensure that your site starts out with some decent title tags.  (If you engage a search engine expert, they will want to massage these title tags).

Learn more about title tags here.

2) Your site has a robot.txt file.

Visit www.________.com/robots.txt and see what happens.  On our site, this would be www.vin65.com/robots.txt.

A robot.txt file is a file that tells search engines what content they can and cannot index on your website. Search engines generally follow the rules set in this file (Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing all read the robots.txt file).  This robots.txt file is also a key way to send an XML site map to the search engines. 

Read more about robots.txt files here.

3) Your site has a XML Site Map

What is a sitemap? According to sitemaps.org, it's "an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their site that are available for crawling". A site map lists the URLs on your site along with some metadata (last update, page importance, etc).  All three big search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing) look for this file.

Using an XML sitemap will get your content on Google faster. 

Read more about sitemaps here or click here to see our XML sitemap.

4) Your site uses marketing URLs.

A marketing URL looks like this www.vin65.com/About-Us while a dynamic URL of the same pages looks like this www.vin65.com/index.cfm?method=pages.showPage&PageID=84a00363-029c-a4e3-efba-273908d6e131

There are a number of reasons to use marketing URLs instead of dynamic URLs:

• Having keywords in your URL is a moderate factor in ranking on search engines.
• Having duplicate contact (typically because of dynamic URL structures) is a negative factor with search engines.
• Readability, copy/pasting links, statistics, etc are all easier with a marketing URL.
• Dynamic URLs are ugly.

Your developer has a lot of control over the URL structure on your site, and your URL structure can assist and/or penalize your ability to come up on search engines.

5) Your site has an analytical package

Technically an analytical package won't assist your performance on search engines, but it will sure let you know what's going on. 

Google Analytics is free and very easy to setup. There are dozens of other great free web analytical packages.

An analytical package is the best way to tell what people are searching for, how much traffic is coming to your site from search engines, keywords they are using, etc.

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I'd like to say that we at Vin|65 always "get" it, but sometimes we miss the mark.  We are working hard to improve (and our platform is doing more of this work automatically for us).  If you see a site we have where we break our own rules, make sure you send me an email.

Jul 22, 2009 at 9:00 AM

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New promotional tools on the Vin 65 platform

This week we enhanced our List Builder® tool to include two new features that we think are very cool. These were features requested by clients and we liked their thinking.

Feature 1: is NOT
What is this??? This feature allow clients to create a more powerful and targeted lists by excluding groups. Here is an example of where you might use this. What if you wanted to find everyone who has bought from your store, but isn't a newsletter subscriber, now you can.

Feature 2: Location specific parameter
Now you can search for members in a specific area by entering a zip code or postal code and then specifying a distance from that zip code. This is a great tool if you are hosting an event and want to invite everyone from that area. Another great way to use this tool is if your wine has been picked up in a restaurant or wine store, you can then email your members in that area and let them know that a local store or restaurant now carries your wines.

If you have any questions about our winery ecommerce platform, or would like to see a demo give us a call at 604-852-8140 or send Brent an email.

Jul 7, 2009 at 1:00 AM

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Improving Customer Experience Part 2: The Checkout

The customer experience in the checkout process will make a difference in whether a customer completes the transaction or abandons their cart. 

Here are five points to consider in your checkout process:  

1) Make it easy for customers to get to the checkout area. Once items have been added to the cart, the "checkout" button should be clearly marked and visible to the customer. This button should be the largest button on the cart page. (Also ensure that when a customer clicks the checkout button, they are taken to the checkout page.)

2) Keep the customer focused. Once inside the checkout area, don't lead the customer away to other sales or promotions. The checkout process should be fully enclosed and devoid of almost all navigational elements. (Have you noticed that most large ecommerce stores switch their navigation or remove their navigation in the checkout area.)

3) Only capture the information required. This seems obvious, but how many times in the checkout process have you been asked for buying preferences, newsletter signups, or even to select a username and password. Gathering extraneous information can easily be done after the customer checks out. (Use contact points such as the confirmation page and order confirmation emails to request the user signup for your newsletter, create an account, etc)

4) Assure the customer about the trustworthiness and security of the checkout process. Trustworthiness can be communicated through a security assurance message and having an SSL certificate. Trustworthiness is also communicated by posting contact information, delivery charges and by having a smooth checkout process.

5) Use Customer Friendly Forms. There are a large number eye tracking studies with regards to forms and labels. It's accepted that the form fields should fit the information that is to be entered and should be clearly labelled. Studies also show clear advantages when the label is placed directly above the form field.  Form fields are not a great place to show off creativity.

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Is customer experience costing you sales? Visit the recent store we launched for Cuvaison and tell us what you think of the customer experience. We would love to hear your opinion.

Jul 5, 2009 at 11:00 AM

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