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September 18, 2008 | Peter Andres

How can the Wine 2.0 trend fit into your winery? Let's look at Blogging.

One of the growing trends in the industry is blogging. But a lot of wineries don't understand how a blog can work within the framework of their organization, and what kind of positive effects it can have if done properly.

Selling wine through the wine store is great for large wineries who produce massive amounts of wine a year. The wine store takes their cut and the winery ends up with their 50%.

For smaller wineries where this isn't a great fit, and even for bigger wineries connecting with customers and creating a direct to consumer sales channel is way more lucrative, and a better way to make a living. Connecting with customers, and then building a long term relationship with them is more rewarding and edifying. But how do you do that practically. Well connecting with customers in your tasting room is an obvious way, and then getting them to join a wine club keeps you intouch with them.

Connecting with fans and potential customers online with a blog is another way, and also gives you a forum to talk about and express your passion and love for the product you produce in way that a tasting room or a formal sales web site just doesn't offer.

Use a blog as a connection point to build relationships, tell your story. You will have a chance to convince marginal customers that your wine is worth buying over and over again, and you will give your winery fans something to stay connected with even if they are far away or can't make it in every month.

"Every winery, and every winemaker, has a story and a personality that appeals to people on a much more profound level than just what someone enjoys drinking. Tell your story with pride!"

-- blog.americanwinery.com

Sep 18, 2008 at 10:13 AM

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September 18, 2008 | Brent Johnson

Internet Marketing Conference (IMC) Vancouver 2008

Last week Friday I went to the Internet Marketing Conference (IMC) held in Vancouver, BC. The topics ranged from SEO, visitor intent tracking, A/B testing, Google Website Optimizer, Social Media, website monetization, CMS systems, web 2.0, community engagement, mobile marketing, conversion optimization, website analytics, email tracking, copywriting and online advertising. The conference has previously been held in New York City, Las Vegas, Montreal, Stockholm, Berlin, and Copenhagen.

There were over 50 speakers from Europe, the United States and Canada coming together to speak at this sold out conference held at the Coast Plaza Hotel. The speakers were from companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Victoria Secret, VanCity, and Aeroplan.

I was having lunch with one of the past presidents from the International Internet Marketing Association (IIMA) and after talking about different CMS option and he asked if I would speak on a panel about CMS for them. I’m looking forward to meeting with IIMA and the other panel members.

I feel there were three main topics that seemed to seep through each topic, SEO, testing and social media. (I’ll put these topics into short bullet points to recap for you).

SEO

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) and LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis) are now more important than they ever used to be!
Go after long term results not the quick fix ranking jump (Don’t use “Black Hat” tactics like link buying and link sculpting)
Content is King

Testing

If you're not testing your website (A/B testing, conversion optimization, landing pages, etc.) then you’re behind the game already.
Test for visitor intent on your site
Use your analytics to conquer the “big-dog, little-dog syndrome” (the boss going with his hunch)

Social Media

Use relevant media to correctly seek out your target market
Go where your market is, get down on their level
Be authentic, they will be able to sniff you out if you’re faking it
Use it for the long term, social media might not pay off short term

Sep 18, 2008 at 6:00 AM

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September 15, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

When to ask for a shipping state?

At what time during the e-commerce shopping process are you going to ask for a shipping state? Are you going to ask early on if the person is shipping to a prohibited state and then warn them? At what point are you going to run a full compliance check?

Another question is: are you going to show your wine to visitors who are shipping to a prohibited state? If you show them the wine, are you going to let them know up front that they can't purchase wine due to the state they are shipping to?

At wine.com, before you enter the site they ask for your shipping state. If you choose a prohibited state like Alabama, they don't even show you wine on the site, instead they message you and show you other gifts.

Most of the e-commerce sites developed by eWinery Solutions ask you for your shipping state when you place your first item in your cart. If you pick a prohibited state like Alabama, they message you and then in most cases limit the products you can see unless you change your shipping state. (We were previously the developers of the eWinery system and we know that this question went round a few times over the years).

At Inertia Beverage most of their e-commerce sites allow you to add wines to your cart, checkout, and then during the checkout they tell you that they can't ship to your state if you've choosen a prohibited state.

(If you’re reading this and I misrepresented your company in any way, feel free to correct me in the comments).

There are definitely pros and cons to each of the above methods.

At Vin | 65 we have handled this a few ways. On our recent site launch of Burgundy and Beyond we allow you to pick your shipping state at anytime in the order. So you can pick it while you are shopping (and if you pick a prohibited state, we show you product but we don't allow you to purchase, instead we message you at the top of the screen). We also allow you to select your shipping state in the cart (here again if you pick a prohibited state we message you, if you pick a compliant state we are showing the shipping and taxes up front). We also allow users to proceed right to the checkout before telling us their state if they like. During checkout if you pick a prohibited state we do stop them from completing the order.

So when do you feel it’s appropriate to start gathering a shipping state? Is Wine.com’s method to upfront? Do you want to ask in the cart? Do you wait till the checkout? And how about people who are from prohibited states, do they get lead down a path and not told till the checkout? Or do you think they know they can’t buy wine online?

Sep 15, 2008 at 5:11 PM

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September 8, 2008 | Brent Johnson

Able Grape a Wine Search Engine

Able Grape is a wine industry specific search engine. Currently it is in a beta version but Able Grape’s database is currently over 14 million pages. This is a great set forward for Wine 2.0 but will anyone use it?

I’m not sure that the ability to search for ‘Spain’ instead of ‘Wines from Spain’ will be a big enough time saver for me to switch from Google or Yahoo to Able Grape. All of Able Grapes searches are within the wine industry so all wine specific terms don’t needed to be added. A search for Mission Hill Winery could be entered as ‘Mission Hill.’

I’d make the move if Google couldn’t find what I was looking for because it’s my default search engine.

Sep 8, 2008 at 2:00 PM

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September 4, 2008 | Brent Johnson

Social Media... good for business or wasting time?

Social Media defined is “the use of electronic and internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings.

The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.” (Thanks to Wikipedia).

Social media is unlike conventional media such as newspapers, television, books, and radio; conventional media is a one-way dialogue where as social media is an interactive two-way discussion. The video below clearly explains social media in a creative, down to earth way filmed by Common Craft.

Realizing that it is a two-way discussion, companies have the opportunity with social media to communicate with their target market. You can get feedback from consumers, companies, and employees that you wouldn’t have received before. I like to generalize social media into four different types, blogs, feeds, networking and… other.

What is a Blog?

A blog is fundamentally a website that is regularly updated with posts. Blog posts can be comments, observations, description, events, pictures, videos and any combinations of those. Most blogs have the ability for readers to write comments on posts. (You’re reading my blog post so you probably have a good idea what one is). Click here for another great video on Blogs.

What is a Feed?

A web feed (or news feed) is a form of data used to provide users with frequently updated content. For example you can use feeds to keep yourself updated in the blogging world using Google Reader. By having a feed on your site you can keep others updated with your recent news.

Wikipedia defines it as “a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an Internet aggregator. A web feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated feed.”

What is a Social Network?

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as comment boxes, blogs, and instant messaging services.

Social networking has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information with one another in today's society. Various social networking websites are being used by millions of people every day on a regular basis and it now seems that social networking is a part of everyday life. Have you heard of Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn? These are perfect examples of social networks.

Personally I use facebook for almost all of my emails, instant messenger, photos, videos because most of my friends have facebook accounts (few are still to “cave into facebook”).

What is Other?

The “other” category is where I lump all the types that don’t fit nicely into blogs, feeds and social networking sites. Flickr is a photography based social media that allows to upload and share your photos and videos. Last.fm is a personal music social media. Last.fm will identify what music you play on your computer and make recommendation for new music you should listen to based on the genre, artist, etc. You can share music you’ve found with other users as well. There are many more types of “other” social media sites on the web.

Are you Applying it to Business?

Blogging, feeds and social networking sites are now option for your business to further promote itself. Establishing your company's presence on social media sites allow you to communicate your messages to consumers and industry and for them to talk back to you. It is a great way to share news and point people to the company website for more info.

Are you using a social media as a part of your business? Do you feel like it is building your brand image or are you spending hours wasting time? Which social media are you using, audio, video, words, pictures or combinations?

Sep 4, 2008 at 6:00 AM

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September 1, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

Comparing Site Traffic in Google Analytics

How do you make the most out of Google Analytics in a short amount of time? Please note: this is a post directed at clients who don't spend a lot of time in Google Analytics.

First, make Google Analytics a habit. Login once a week, or once every two weeks. The web stats icon in our admin panel takes you directly into your analytics so you don't have to login at Google.

Second, learn how to compare. Here is a screen shot of the visitor traffic on our parent site (k1technology.com) over the month of August. In and of itself, it doesn't tell you very much. Traffic goes up during the weekdays, and down on the weekends.

Inside Google Analytics, on the top right hand side of any page, you can click the "Compare", and now you can compare two sets of date range. So we can compare this month's traffic to last month's traffic (see picture below).

The green line represents July and the blue line represents August. Unfortunately the peaks and valleys don't line up, because we are comparing July to August and July started on a Tuesday and August started on a Friday.

Change the compare date so that the start date is the same day of the week on both sets of date ranges. In the case below I compared Friday August 3rd 2007 thru September 3rd 2007 to Friday August 1st, 2008 thru August 31st, 2008. (Basically this past month and compared it to a year ago).

The green line represents 2007 and the blue line represents 2008. Now that we have this years data plotted against last years data, I can see that our traffic is up by about forty percent.

Being able to setup a comparison over time can really tell you if your site is improving, staying stagnate, or declining.

Finally, Google analytics has a lot of data, and some of it will be useless to you. Unless you want to spend hours reviewing data, you will want to find a few key performance indicators that you can quickly reference and see how well your website is doing.

I would suggest looking at the overall traffic on your site (which comes up in the dashboard), and I would also suggest looking at your 'Goals' (on the left hand side of the Analytics there is a Goal menu item). If there are no Goals setup, you can ask our team to set some up for you. Typically we suggest measuring the number of new subscribers, number of orders, number of clubs signed up, etc. We can easily customize this for your website.

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If your a client of ours, and would like assistance feel free to call or email. We can easily do a screen share and walk you through it.

Sep 1, 2008 at 10:00 PM