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July 22, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

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.

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.
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?
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.

Jul 22, 2008 at 9:44 PM

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July 13, 2008 | Brent Johnson

Does Your E-commerce Site Add Value or Headaches?

You’d think by now someone trying to sell something on the internet would remember while setting up their ecommerce site, how frustrating some shopping carts and forms can be.

I host a group on Facebook called Okanagan Wines, each Friday three other guys and myself taste a one varietal from two different Okanagan wineries. We realized we needed to order wine directly from the wineries because of the selection, or lack thereof, in the liquor stores. I started out by visiting wineries websites to order wine and I ended up with a headache.

I was looking to buy only one bottle but the minimums were either 6 or 12, so that they could put it in a case. Is this convenient for me or the winery? Why can’t you allow me to buy whatever quantity the customer wants?! If it’s not a full case just charge the same shipping amount as a full case. I went through more than 20 different websites trying to buy wine and after a while of searching I found two sites that would let me buy one bottle. (Is it me or this strange? I’m trying to buy one bottle of wine but because of their e-commerce sites I can’t).

The second website that we ordered one bottle from had an error during the check out both times I tried to order it.

The forms were a huge part of why the user experience was so terrible. Most of the forms were lengthy and asking for more information necessary for sale. On several site I needed to sign up for an account in order to purchase the wine only to find out later that the minimum as a case of six. This should be clearly outlined before I have to sign up.

Are Okanagan Wineries serious about e-commerce on their websites? If you have an e-commerce site here are a few tips:

Easy navigation
Logical product categories
Clear pricing
Appropriate functionality – you might want a:
- Search box
- Minimal Clicks to Order
- Optional Registration
Simple checkout process
Error-proof payment system

What do you want to see out of your e-commerce site? Have any horror stories from websites you’ve bought from, or tried to buy from?

Jul 13, 2008 at 9:00 AM

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July 9, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

Out Of Office / Wine Tasting Trip

It's staff road trip time. We will be out of the office Thursday July 9 / Friday July 10th. We are headed to the Shuswap (in British Columbia / Canada) - the long way through the Okanagan Valley, stopping at a number of wineries, with a final destination at Waterway Houseboats for a weekend of Houseboating.

I'm sure we will be putting winery reviews (and maybe some pictures) up on the Okanagan Wines facebook group.

If you need to get a hold of us - it's best to send us an email - but if it's an emergency try one of the numbers below:

Brent - 778.240.4155 - brent@vin65.com
Jason - 778.241.7806 - jason@vin65.com
Peter - 604.615.5494 - peter@vin65.com
Andrew - 604.613.5343 - andrew@vin65.com

Jul 9, 2008 at 10:25 PM

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July 4, 2008 | Peter Andres

Are you breaking up with your website?

Have you lost the passion? Do you feel like you have lost touch with your website, and somehow it just isn’t living up to its potential. Could it be selling more wine, signing up more wine club members? Are you disappointed that things just haven’t worked out the way you thought they would. Everyone said your website would be a huge contributor, but what happened?

Typically the web sites we work on have a pretty familiar live cycle, and it goes something like this:

Winery builds momentum to launch site or redesign current site.
New site launches with contemporary design and fan fare.
For a while the site is seen as an “integrated team player”, some wine club members sign up and some bottles are sold
Over time as staff move on and key personnel switch positions the web site gets taken for granted and is seen as a liability to the winery.
Winery recognizes that something is wrong and starts to plan and build momentum to launch a new site or redesign current site.

I think there are alot things that happen to cause a winery to lose touch with their website, and granted sometimes a site does need a visual refresh. If you have a web site only to find that it isn’t all it is cracked up to be...here are some tips to making the relationship last for the long term.

Clearly define what measurable tasks your web site is going to do like sell wine or sign up members
Understand how much those completed tasks are worth to your winery. Does the web site save your staff time and money, is there real money being made on your site. Give the web site credit where it is due and include that in the reporting.
Calculate your return on investment. If you spent $5000 on your web site you should be able to measure how much your web site has returned on that investment based on the measurable tasks. If your web site only makes $100 a month then how much should you spend? If it makes $50,000 then how much should you spend?
Measure and tweak - the part hardly anyone does. If your web site is making a monetary contribution to the bottom line of your winery you will want to increase that over time. You want your potential customers to be successful when they come to your site to buy wine or sign up to the wine club. The only way you are going to get more successful at converting your website visitors is to continually refine your site. Understanding how visitors navigate your site and where they leave and why they do what they do isn’t magic, it is just hard work and continuously measuring. Equipped with that knowledge your website will make your winery more money.

Like all successful relationships, the one with your web site will only be realized if you put in the work and make it a priority. A web site is different from a brochure or mailer in that it is a dynamic media piece that can be changed and refined continually to do its job better.

Jul 4, 2008 at 3:40 PM

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June 24, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

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.

Jun 24, 2008 at 9:00 AM

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June 22, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

What's Your Pain?

What are the biggest problems you face with your website? What keeps you for getting more out of your website? What features/tools/or solutions would make you switch website vendors?

This past week in our office, we were putting together a brochure and we've been having a discussion about what clients really want out of their website, and what the hinderances are, what our competitive advantage is, and where we should be driving the platform.

We know that some clients are looking for more connectedness between their in-house systems and their websites (and we do have some great ways to move data between accounting systems and the web, and these are getting better all the time).

We know that some clients are requesting faster ways to edit data (this past week we added a number of editing enhancements, and we feel we have some great tools here).

We know that clients need marketing assistance. (There is no magic bullet here, but lots of hard work).

So what is your pain? What are the features that you would like to see improved? What tools/solutions/features would enable you to get more out of your website? (Feel free to add your comments, or send an email to andrew@vin65.com)

Jun 22, 2008 at 7:15 PM

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June 15, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

Key To Success #5: Monitor & Analyze

It’s the final episode in our mini-series on ‘Keys To Success’ for your website.

I believe that in order to have successful marketing efforts, you have to be able to measure results. Tools like Google Analytics provide you with the ability to monitor how many users are coming to your website, where they are coming from, how they found your site, and what pages they are looking at.

It’s not so much about having the above information, as much as it is about analyzing this information, and then using your analysis to improve your website.

It’s relatively easy to developing ‘key performance indicators’ such as conversion rates, funnels, etc, but very few people actually develop these indicators for their website. Once you have these measurements in place, you can use tools like Google’s ‘A/B’ testing tools to try different copy, buttons, etc to performance tune and optimize your site.

Measuring and Analyzing is an ongoing process. Test, measure, analyze, tweak, and then repeat.

The difference between an underperforming website, and an optimal performing website, is often that the website isn’t going through this process.

Jun 15, 2008 at 4:00 PM

Click here to check it out.

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June 6, 2008 | Peter Andres

4 guys in a basement head-to-head wine tasting series

So today at Vin | 65 we started a new series we pitted two wines head-to-head. Naked Grape Unoaked Merlot vs Mission Hill SLC Merlot 2003. Because we are 4 simple guys who claim no credentials at all our reviews are going to pretty informal and will be posted on our Okanagan Wines facebook group.

Here is the first match up:

Naked Grape: Naked Grape wines reveal themselves as they really are, without being hidden by the flavour of oak.

2003 Mission Hill Merlot: Aromas of dark spicy plum, fig and nuttmeg introduce this wine.

Jun 6, 2008 at 3:50 PM

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June 3, 2008 | Andrew Kamphuis

Is the Fade-In/Fade-Out Flash Image Converting Sales?

Are the cycling images and messages on your homepage a killer app? or killing your sales?

In this mornings 'Web Marketing Today', there is an interesting piece titled 'Are Distracting Cycling Images and Messages Hurting Profits?' Although there is no hard facts listed in the article, they did list some negative from their useability study:

1) Distraction: A large percentage of the people they tested found cycling images incredibly distracting.

2) Disappearing Message: Some sites cycle images a few times and then stop, and it's impossible for the visitor to go back to a previous image.

3) Ineffectiveness: Flash doesn't seem to increase the effectiveness of messaging, however these displays take upwards of 30% of the homepage real estate.

4) Transitoriness: In their tests, when images remained for 8-10 seconds before a transition, users rarely remembered the content from the previous image.

5) Trained Avoidance: In their testing, they found that flash is becoming like banner ads and people have trained themselves to ignore them.

Cycling images on the homepage are quite common on wine websites, and we have definately built our fair share of them. (We even have a component that makes it easy for people to change out photos, etc). In my opinion the right cycling image definitely increase the overall aesthetics of the site and homepage.

We look at messages like this one on this none wine website at Currency Marketing homepage for example and I find it very effective. (We programmed this site, but the design and content was done by Currency Marketing)

So maybe it's not a hard written rule, but definately something you should think about. Are the cycling images adding to your overall message? Are they conveying your message at all? Or are you using valuable space and it's just distracting visitors?

Jun 3, 2008 at 7:51 AM