Wine Technology Blog @ WineWeb.com

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.