Wine Technology Blog @ WineWeb.com

The 6th Grape

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:07:00 -0600

I had a flash of brilliance last night (at least that's what I'm claiming). We were readying the release of our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for wineries, and I had been writing that this component "rounds out our service offerings". Then I glanced up at the WineWeb logo and started counting our services: websites, e-commerce, point-of-sale, wine clubs, email campaigns, and now CRM. That makes six, the same number as the number of grapes in our logo. Wow! Without realizing it, we had filled in our grape cluster. We had created the "6th grape".

Was our graphic designer psychic when he created the logo some ten years ago? Maybe, but I digress. We've reached a milestone. Our cluster is full.

The press release is at www.wineweb.com/pr/press_release_20091120.html.

100 Wineries and Counting

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0600

We were planning to make a big announcement when the 100th winery client signed up for our services, possibly even balloons and confetti. Well, that momentous event happened a week ago last Friday, and then last Monday a record three clients registered in a single day. We've just been "heads down, elbows out" busy with our new clients that we haven't had time to boast about these things. Not that we tend to brag about these things anyway -- we let our clients do the talking.

Wines of Another Glass Tasting Party this Sunday

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:02:00 -0600

We're busy preparing for the 2nd annual "Wines of Another Glass" tasting party this Sunday. We started this last year at the end of the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta to showcase some wines that weren't (and can't be) included in the Fiesta, as the liquor wholesalers don't stock them and therefore are not in the 3 tier (winery, wholesaler, retailer) distribution system. We'll have video conferences with the winemakers and a chance to order the wines direct from the winery. We plan to do real-time online user reviews and tweets so others can follow the fun we're having. We'll also have a wide assortment of food prepared by a bunch of amateur wine-loving cooks.

This is a private, invitation-only event, but if you are in Santa Fe this Sunday, contact me for an invite. Or if you're at the Wine & Chile grand tasting tomorrow, hit me up for an invitation -- I'll be wearing a WineWeb shirt.

Shoppers do return to abandoned carts

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:49:00 -0600

In a just-published study by McAfee, they found that 65% of abandoned online shopping carts are merely shoppers delaying the purchase, and that they soon return to purchase. That's good news, as we continually talk to our winery clients about abandonment rates. Our remarketing email that automatically goes out to people that abandon their carts provides an easy way to return to their in-process order.

The study also found an 11% higher conversion rate if the shopper is given a security cue. Another validation of our decision to use an extended validation security certificate that not only displays a security seal on each page of the shopping cart, but also turns the user's address bar green in their browser.

Are wine gold medals awarded by chance?

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:30:00 -0600

An interesting paper entitled "An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions" just published in the Journal of Wine Economics makes the following conclusion:

"An examination of the results of 13 U.S. wine competitions shows that (1) there is almost no consensus among the 13 wine competitions regarding wine quality, (2) for wines receiving a Gold medal in one or more competitions, it is very likely that the same wine received no award at another, (3) the likelihood of receiving a Gold medal can be statistically explained by chance alone."

Another reason to taste wine often and buy what YOU like.

Mobile Applications are Indispensible

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:33:00 -0600

Yesterday we distributed a press release entitled "WineWeb Releases iPhone Web App for Winery Websites", and today the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "Smartphone Apps Fuel Business" that contained the following quote: "... if companies are not finding ways to provide these tools [they] will soon see drop-off from their customers". Good timing or dumb luck? You be the judge.

The WSJ article goes on to say that a typical iPhone app costs $6,000-$8,000 to develop. Hmmm, so I'm guessing we won't be accused of overpricing our app at $250 setup and $20/month. One reason that we can charge these low rates is due to the architecture we have built over the years. We chose early on to build an information system for wineries, not to create one-off winery websites. As any good information technology professional understands, a system should separate data from the presentation from the business logic.

What frustrates me (and I don't mean to go into a rant) is that people don't yet understand that having their brother-in-law create and host a website is not even close to what they'd receive with our website services. Maybe we should call it a "Winery Information Management System for the Direct Sales Channel, including Websites, e-Commerce, Wine Clubs, POS and Customer Management", but that would likely be as confusing (and a bit harder to roll off the tongue).

So, back to the point. We were able to price our iPhone web app service at this price point as we only needed to develop a new presentation layer for these mobile devices. The content that is entered in our system remains the same, it's just presented a bit differently on mobile devices. The business logic, such as allowing a visitor to tweet about an upcoming event, is the same, it's just presented in a way that is optimized for the mobile device. That doesn't mean that the development was easy, as we created over 50 programs to support the uniqueness of the iPhone display and screen flow.

The next time you see your web guy, tell him that you need an iPhone app for your winery, and you want to maintain one set of content for both the website and the iPhone app. As he's running away, take out your iPhone and see what we've done with our Test Vineyards site at m.testvineyards.com.

Integrating Social Media into Winery Websites

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:23:00 -0600

We've been working for the past several weeks to integrate social media into the services we provide for winery websites. We believe that it's important for wineries to publicize their social media groups throughout their website, and we wanted to make it easy for our clients to do that.

Phase 1 of the project brought out the ability to display fan and "follow us" icons throughout the website, including in a page pod (those areas typically to the right of the web page) and a social media web page. While our clients seemed happy with this, we knew that this was just the first step.

Phase 2 approached the integration from the social media-savvy visitor perspective. For example, a visitor is looking at an upcoming event at the winery and decides to tell his/her friends about it. They could login to their Twitter account, start a post, then login to another service that shortens the long website URL to include in that post. Or, as we've just implemented, they could click on the "Tweet" icon on the winery's event page and compose their post. The system creates the short URL and routes the tweet to their Twitter account.

Given that approach, we extended it to other pages on the website, included multiple social media services, and added expanded functionality on the user review pages. We knew our clients would be willing to pay for this enhancement, but we included it at no additional cost to our Enhanced Website Hosting and Premier Bundle clients.

We then added this functionality to the WineWeb.com portal site, including a page pod of our social media sites, a "Post to Social Media" menu option, and social media posting pop-up windows. You can see an example of this by clicking on the Tweet or Ping.fm links below this blog post.

Phase 3? We're not done yet. Let's just say that Phase 3 will involve an iPhone.

Are you PCI compliant with your POS?

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:51:00 -0600

Further review of the POS software review article in Wine Business Monthly shows that almost all POS vendors say that they are PCI compliant. Great, but what does the winery need to do to be PCI compliant using that software, as ultimately PCI compliance is required of the merchant? The article missed this point as they were comparing web-based solutions to PC-based solutions. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, if the service provider stores the credit card information on their servers (typically web-based solutions), then the winery can complete the short form PCI assessment to certify their compliance. However, if credit card information is stored locally, then the winery must complete the much longer, more stringent long form to be compliant, even if the vendor's software is compliant.

POS Software review

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:19:00 -0600

The latest issue of Wine Business Monthly (July 2009) featured a well-written, in-depth review of point-of-sale software for wineries. WineWeb is included in the list of vendors that were reviewed. I know I'm not the only person that will read the article and conclude that based on the pricing and feature set, our services will need to be included on most wineries' short list of potential vendors. In the section on buying advice, the article included WineWeb along with two more expensive vendors when they stated "Be advised that only a few vendors offer a truly complete out-of-the-box solution that integrates POS, wine club, e-commerce and email marketing." Nice.

Another benefit of product reviews like this is that you get to see vendors' pricing, even those that are normally tight-lipped about that. We publish pricing for all our services online, so there's no surprises there to our competitors. The list included pricing of $10,000, $15,000 and $20,000. Maybe these companies need to get that kind of money to make a reasonable profit. I've learned in over 25 years of information technology experience that a technology company must leverage technology so that their services are affordable and still be able to make a profit.

The standard sales line from a vendor with a more expensive product/service is "you get what you pay for", and I'm sure that's being said about us. But all a winery needs to do is compare, and I'm happy that this article provides a good start for that.

Remarketing to Visitors Who Abandon Their Shopping Cart

Mon, 18 May 2009 11:36:00 -0600

I read an interesting article in the New York Times this morning on remarketing, a term that I wasn't familar with, but a concept that we have been using for over two years. "Remarketing", in the online world, is communicating with a potential customer after they have abandoned a shopping cart in your e-commerce system. The statistic used in this article, and I've seen the same number used elsewhere, is that 70% of shopping carts are abandoned. Remarketing is the attempt to entice those shoppers back to their cart on your website. We allow our clients to setup an email that is sent to the shopper shortly after the system senses that a cart has been abandoned (and where the customer has started the checkout process and has left their email address). The article suggests that a major reason for abandonment is comparison shopping, but our experience in the wine industry suggests that shipping costs are the major factor. We've seen that a well-worded email can be successful in remarketing and getting the customer's order completed.

Direct-to-Consumer Electronic Tools Needed in Smaller Wineries, Says New Report

Mon, 04 May 2009 09:05:00 -0600

Two statements from the recently released "State of the Wine Industry" report by Silicon Valley Bank caught my attention:

"Distribution has all but ended as a viable sales channel for small wineries."
"For most small brands, the best opportunities are in direct-to-consumer marketing strategies. Finding the right strategy may become absolutely critical to a winery’s success, if not its outright survival during the next several years."

So what's a small winery to do? Here's one of the report's recommendations: "If you have been using an in-house Web platform, consider upgrading to use an e-commerce company that specializes in wine and can help direct your progress in the channel." And as I mentioned in a previous blog post, you don't need to go into debt to invest in this technology.

Announcing the WineWeb Ambassador Program

Fri, 01 May 2009 13:34:15 -0600

We just launched a new program called "WineWeb Ambassador". If you are a website designer, web developer, webmaster, wine industry marketing professional, or you supply products/services to the wine industry, you can become a WineWeb Ambassador and leverage our services to help your business grow.

WineWeb Ambassadors recommend or help their winery or wine merchant clients use our services. WineWeb provides tools and services to assist wineries and wine merchants develop and grow their direct sales channel. Our value-based pricing is suitable for wineries of all sizes, however many of our clients do not have dedicated resources on their staff to support the direct sales initiatives, which is where our ambassadors are needed.

WineWeb Ambassadors gain access to information and training to enable them to recommend our services, and to assist clients in deploying these services. Plus, if your efforts enable us to reduce the time and effort we spend in setting up a client with our services, we compensate you for that.

For more information and to sign-up to our Ambassador mailing list, go to www.wineweb.com/ambassador. It's free to join.

Beware When Researching Domain Names

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:04:00 -0600

I just received an email from Network Solutions stating that the domain names I recently searched for are still available and offering me a discount to buy them. I don't remember being logged in when I did those WhoIs searches (even more scary), but maybe I was. Anyway, the point is that Network Solutions (and maybe other domain name registrars) are tracking your WhoIs searches. In case you're not aware, all domain name registrars (Network Solutions, Godaddy, Register.com, etc.) provide a "WhoIs" function for you to see the details of who registered a domain name. It's a fast way to check on a domain name, but if you're looking for new domain names for your business, I'd advise against using that function. I've also heard of people who used WhoIs to look for domain names, only to come back an hour later and find that those domain names were just registered by a reseller.

What to do? If you want to research new domain names, login to your domain name account and use their search function, then be prepared to immediately purchase any domain names that you find.

WineWeb's Servers Are CO2 Neutral

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:03:00 -0600

To support Earth Day, we have purchased carbon offsets equivalent to the carbon dioxide generated by the electricity used to power our web and email servers. You'll notice the "CO2 Neutral" seals that appear throughout the website. Visitors will also see the seal on the shopping cart pages of all wineries and wine merchants that use our e-commerce system.

Purchasing the carbon offsets was easy to do, relatively inexpensive, and we encourage other Internet services companies to explore similar ways to offset their carbon footprint.

Go into debt to buy wine technology?

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:17:00 -0600

I've seen a couple of press releases recently touting the great financing rates available to purchase winery technology solutions. Wow, that stuff must be way overpriced if you have to go into debt to get it! Maybe the technology salesperson has convinced the winery that they need a data center and all the associated hardware and software (cha-ching goes the sales commissions on that).I guessing that most winery owners would much prefer to finance barrels than they would technology. Oh, and the financing is just on the initial fees, not the ongoing operation and maintenance costs.

I should state that WineWeb does have a payment plan. We break up the setup costs: half billable when a winery registers, the other half billable when setup is complete. And if a winery is really strapped for funds, they can charge it to their credit card and pay it off over a couple of months. But we're talking hundreds of dollars, not tens of thousands. I really enjoy when a prospective client gets that "ah ha" moment and says "all this for only this amount of money!" We tell them they can pay more, but no one has done that yet.