Wine Technology Blog @ WineWeb.com

Recently, when potential clients come to me with questions about our company and services, I can sense that the economic conditions are putting more of an emphasis on business stability in their potential business partners. In addition to the typical questions about how long we've been in business and how many clients we serve, I'm getting questions on how we intend to survive any economic downturn. 

I'm thankful for these questions, as gone are the days when being larger gave you an advantage in business survival. If I were to put on my CPA hat (actually dusty green visor from what seems like a lifetime ago), I could think of some questions that companies should be asking potential vendors.

1. Do you have a positive cash flow each month?
2. Could you still make a profit on 20% less revenue each month?
3. Is there any outside debt on your balance sheet?
4. Have you had positive growth for the past 3, 6 and 12 months?
5. Do you have venture capital funding or investors that you need to repay in the next 2 years. If so, can your monthly profit cover the payments?
6. Will you need additional funding to meet operating costs in the next year?
7. Do you have a line of credit? If so, have you borrowed against more than half of that amount?
8. Have you had to layoff any employees in the past year?
9. Have you had to reduce the scope of any service enhancements or growth plans in the past year?

Getting answers to questions like these should give a company a better comfort level (or lack of comfort) with a potential vendor. For the record, my answers are: 1.Yes, 2.Yes, 3.No, 4.Yes, 5.No, 6.No, 7.No, 8.No, 9.No.

We just finished our annual PCI Data Security Standards asssessment and have made sure that we are still in compliance for accepting and storing credit card data. Luckily, having done over 70 computer control audits in what feels like another lifetime, this process was relatively easy, although the 200 questions did take some time to answer and verify with our policies and procedures.

While previously there was an exemption for small companies, now every merchant that accepts credit cards must complete an annual assessment in order to be compliant with this requirement (www.pcisecuritystandards.org for more info). If you use an e-commerce service like ours (WineWeb), then the process is simpler with about 30 questions in the assessment. However, if your company has it's own shopping cart software running on a web server and you store credit card data electronically, then you're into the long questionnaire, which requires things like an "Encryption Key Custodian Acknowledgement" and an "Incident Response Plan". You've got those, right?

Just as wine direct shipment laws vary between states, so do the laws regarding expiration of gift certificates. Recent laws have lengthened the minimum expiration period to 5 years or more in some places. As a business owner, most of us would like to set an expiration date for gift certificates that we issue, to more easily allow any liability to be adjusted off our books.

Our experience has shown that most wine gift certificates are redeemed within 3 months of receipt, with another spike around the one year anniversary (likely due to the gift giver asking the recipient about last year's gift).

If you choose to sell wine gift certificates online using WineWeb's e-commerce service, you can set the expiration days, or choose that the certificates never expire. The system displays appropriate wording on the certificate so you're in compliance will all laws. You, as an administrator of the service, can redeem any gift certificate, regardless of the expiration date, which is useful if the gift recipient phones or walks into your tasting room.

Wine gift certificates are a great way to increase your business' cash flow around the holiday season. WineWeb makes it easy to sell, redeem and administer your gift certificates.

Wine clubs make great gifts, especially at this time of year. How easy is it for your winery or wine shop to accept gift wine club subscriptions? Do your current wine club members realize that it's an option for them to give a gift subscription? Your club members should be talking about your club and wanting to share their experience with their friends.

We've just added some enhancements to the WineWeb's wine club system to make wine club gift subscriptions easier. When a club member logs into their account, we prominently display a link for them to click to give a gift subscription. Once they are aware of giving a gift and decide to start the gift process, we pre-fill all appropriate data so they don't have to type much. If the wine club offers prepaid 3, 6 or 12 month subscriptions, that makes the gift setup easy. But what if the wine club is a variable cost per shipment, where you don't want to setup any prepaid amounts (or if it's even more complex, like Club WineWeb, where a different winery processes the credit card each month for a different amount)? Again it's easy for the customer to specify an end date for the gift, and we charge the credit card for each shipment that happens before that date. Once the gift is confirmed, we even provide the customer with a gift card that they can print -- ready to write a personal note and place under the tree.

I mentioned "customer". So who is the customer, the person who gets the gift or who gives the gift? We think they are both customers and give them both access to login to the club member's area. While they can both login to the member's area, they don't have the same level of access, for security reasons. "Simple for the customer, robust under-the-hood" -- hmm... maybe that could be our new motto.

WineWeb has just launched an application on the Facebook social networking site. The application integrates our winery search, wine search, user reviews and wish list functions to Facebook users. Check it out at apps.facebook.com/wineweb.

Now any Facebook user can install our application and then can find and buy wines. The wines we list are those from wineries and wine merchants that use our e-commerce service or that pay a per-click rate for their listings. So if you are a winery or a wine merchant that wants a larger audience to see your wines, this may be your ticket into a great demographic. We think the potential with Facebook is huge, and we'll continue to enhance this and promote it wildly.

The lastest feature to our shopping cart just went live a few moments ago.  We now offer a Gift Registry service where visitors can create a Wish List that others can display and buy them gifts. You'll notice on the wine and merchandise pages that there is an "Add to Wish List / Gift Registry" link next to the "Add to Cart" button. There is also a gift box icon on our Wine Search pages where visitors can add to their wish list.

The gift registry feature makes use of our myWineWeb component, which allows visitors to store shipping information, billing information and personal preferences. Once logged into their myWineWeb account, the person can update their wish list and email the wish list link to their friends and family. The gift registry pages can be accessed from the WineWeb portal site, and if the winery / wine merchant uses our website hosting services, they can have these pages appear on their website, complete with their web page design elements.

You can view the WineWeb Gift Registry pages at www.wineweb.com/scripts/wishListMenu.cfm or see how they appear within our Test Vineyards website.

Now when purchasing a WineWeb gift certificate online, you can choose your certificate theme to match the occasion.  The themes include Birthday, Celebrate, Holiday, Romantic, and Formal.  The themes are also available to participating wineries and wine merchants who offer online gift certificates. Buy a wine gift certificate for someone special today.

We wanted to mention that the WineWeb e-Commerce service complies with the Data Security Standards published by the PCI Security Standards Council. This organization was established by the major credit card companies to set a common standard regarding the safety of credit card information. So if you are evaluating order processing services for your winery or wine company, that should be one of the items on your evaluation checklist.

We've just upgraded our blog software to the latest version of BlogCFC, and any winery or wine merchant that subscribes to our Enhanced Website Hosting service can use this to have their own blog. This blogging system has the features you'd expect, such as customizable stylesheets, the ability to allow comments to your posts, trackbacks, RSS feeds, and allowing visitors to subscribe to your blog.  It also has a nice administrator area and the ability to require CAPTCHA text (those images of a string of characters that automated programs can't read).