Wine Technology Blog @ WineWeb.com

Flavor Profiles Now on WineWeb

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:55:00 -0600

We just released flavor profiles on WineWeb.com. After several months in development, we are so happy to get this live. We think this will be HUGE!

WineWeb's wine flavor profiles are a way to quantify the flavors (aromas & tastes) in a wine, to allow consumers to find wines by flavor and to find wines matching the flavors of another wine. We've identified over 240 flavors through considerable research from numerous wine tasting authorities and references. We've grouped these flavors into 16 wine flavor groups to make it easy to search and select them.

We did all of this so consumers can find wines they like. We focused on flavors, as at the end of the day, that's what really matters in determining if you like a wine. We're focused on making this an intuitive way to find wines that suit your palate. You can view the wine flavor profiles of your favorite wines and find new wines to try that match or are similar to a wine's flavor profile. You can save flavor profiles to your myWineWeb account or add the wines to your wish list..

You can search by wine flavor alone or combine it with all our other wine search functions. So if you are relatively new to wine, you can find wines with blackberry and spice flavors to match a wonderful wine you had at a restaurant. If you've been around wine longer, you can find a Syrah from the Sierra Foothills area of California matching flavors of blackberry, black cherry and toasted oak.

Much more to be said about this. See our wine flavor profiles in action.

Future-Proofing QR Codes

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0600

We released this enhancement in July. I just saw a blog post that made it on one of the wine industry news feeds, suggesting a portion of this as a great idea. Glad to see that we are ahead of the curve again.

WineWeb understands that QR Codes are about more than printing a code, and has integrated the generation and management of QR Codes into its service offerings. As QR Codes can have a long life, especially if printed on a wine bottle label, a winery needs to have a strategy to ensure that the code is readable throughout its life. WineWeb's integration of QR Codes into its services sought to satisfy three goals:

The ability to easily generate QR Codes for any wine item, non-wine item and event.
The underlying URL pointed to by the QR Code must provide the ability to display different web pages over its lifetime to allow for promotions and other winery-specific needs.
The page that is displayed must be suitable to the device that it is displayed upon.

The ability for a winery to generate a QR Code for a product or event was the easy part of this development effort. Simply clicking on a link for any item displays a QR Code, which can then be copied into printed promotional materials.

When a person scans a QR Code with a mobile device, the website URL is typically displayed before the user is routed to the web page. WineWeb's implementation of QR Codes that is abstracted up a level from the normal product page on the winery's website. This allows a clean, readable URL to be displayed to the user, and more importantly allows for the winery to point that URL to various web pages, even external websites, over the lifetime of the QR Code. This can be very effective in promoting an award or a new video.

We then went a step further by allowing that webpage to be overridden based on the visitor's location or device type. So for example, if you have an upcoming winemaker dinner in Chicago, you could route all Illinois visitors to a page promoting the dinner.

Finally, the specific web page is displayed in a format suitable to the device that the person is using. In addition to various brands of mobile phones, tablet devices are being used to scan QR Codes, and the resulting web page must allow for these devices, as well as future devices.

The QR Code management functions are available in the mobile website service offering, which is an add-on component to WineWeb's enhanced website service.

QR Codes for all our Clients

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:54:00 -0600

One of our clients a long time ago remarked that our enhancements were like gifts each month. Well then, here's a big package.

All of our winery clients who use our website, e-commerce or POS services can now generate QR Codes for each of their wines. As I've said in a previous blog post on URL shortening, the underlying URL for the QR Code should be short to allow for easy scanning, so we shorten it using our own short domain (ww8.co). And finally, what good is a QR Code if it doesn't display correctly on a mobile device? We've also included a mobile version of your wine detail pages and the ability to auto-sense the device type to display the correct version.

Now, think about the practical applications of this enhancement. You can print QR Codes for each of your wines in your tasting room or at a festival. When visitors scan the code, they can view more information about that wine, they can watch videos, and they can also see the flavor profile (more about this in a later post). If you have our e-commerce service, the visitor can quickly become your customer by buying online through the mobile version of our shopping cart service.

So is the gift just QR Codes or is it mobile e-commerce? Cheers!

Mobile App or Mobile Website: Which is Right for Your Winery?

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:56:00 -0600

Many wineries are looking at how best to present their company and wines to the increasing number of people accessing content through their smartphones. Now, with the increased use of QR Codes for wines, it becomes more important to have a mobile strategy for your winery. So the question we get asked frequently is whether to create a mobile app or a mobile website.

First, the similarities. Both a mobile app and a mobile website display content formatted to the small screen of a mobile device, both can have a similar look & feel, and both can have an icon on the visitor's phone.

The main difference is that a mobile app is developed, packaged, then uploaded to the iTunes and/or Android app stores. People find them, purchase them (if they're not free) and download them to their phone. I searched the iTunes iPhone app store for "winery" and saw about 10 wineries that had apps. Most of the app content is static (at least from the basic app builder tools), so if you have a new event that you post to the app, the people must download a new version of the app to see it. More advanced app builder tools may be able to access content over the Internet. Apps can also access other components of the phone, like the camera or GPS.

A mobile website, which can also be called a web app, does not appear on the app stores, so people searching there will not find your winery. Apple does have a web app store, so your web app could be listed there. To access your mobile website (web app), people use their phone's browser to view mobile-formatted pages that you create (of have created). Some of the pages may be cached locally on the phone, so the person could return to it if they don't have an Internet connection, but many of the pages typically require the person to have 3G or WiFi coverage. Mobile websites can also be viewed on a wider number of mobile devices outside of an iPhone or Android device. Also if a winery is wanting to use QR Codes, a mobile website is a plus as each QR Code can point to a specific page on your mobile website.

So which is better for the average winery? I'd vote for a mobile website. If the added exposure in the app stores is important to the winery, there are tools to convert a mobile website into an app.

Now a blurb about what WineWeb does in the mobile space. We have a mobile website component as an add-on to our enhanced website plan. The mobile website has its own navigation menu structure and looks and feels like a mobile app. The big plus with our mobile website is that you manage all the content from a single place, so when you add a new wine it appears on your website and also the mobile version. Browse to testvineyards.com using your mobile phone or scan this QR Code to see an example. The system automatically senses the mobile device and displays the mobile website. Note the toolbar at the bottom of the pages, which give the website visitor easy clicks to your important information.

The other thing that now comes with our mobile website service is our QR Code management tool. This allows you to generate QR Codes and have them point to a specific page on your mobile website, then you can manage where that points to over the life of the code.

QR Codes: Why You Want to Shorten the URL

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:46:00 -0600

There's been a lot of chatter of late about whether to use a URL shortener service to reduce the length of the URL (web page address) that is used in a QR Code. Opponents of shortening usually say that the shortened URLs aren't friendly enough. Here's my take.

Many QR Code scanning apps for your mobile device automatically translate the shortened URL into the friendly version, so the visitor can see where they are going before launching their web browser.

QR Codes can handle up to a 256 character URL, which can be very friendly. The issue is that the QR Code becomes more complex as the length of the URL increases. Here's an example of three QR Codes. The images are about 0.8 inches, which is about the maximum size for placing on a wine bottle label, and still be scannable due the curvature of the bottle.

http://bit.ly/opjs4C -- a shortened URL of #2, using the bit.ly service -- 20 characters long
http://www.testvineyards.com/qr/2/2008_Valley_Vineyard_Pinot_Noir -- a friendly version that is 65 characters long
The same as #2, but with extra text to make is 256 characters in length.

Now imagine holding a wine bottle in one hand, your smartphone in the other hand, and holding both still long enough for your scan app to focus and read the QR Code. As the goal of QR Codes is to get a visitor to scan it, anything we can do, like shortening the URL, is a good thing.

Anatomy of a WineWeb Enhancement

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:00:00 -0600

Here's an example of how changes are made to the WineWeb services, and why I love what I do. Sunday morning I get an email from Steve L., one of our winery clients, asking some questions about how members can customize their wine shipments. One of the questions was why the system would let a club member customize their shipment with less expensive wines that totaled to less than the minimum price of the wine club. When I responded that the club price range was used only for display purposes on the website, his reply was "Bummer...". Then after understanding his business need for this, I decided that it was a good idea that needed to be part of our wine club software, as other winery clients could also benefit from this.

After spending time on the analysis and design of this enhancement request yesterday, I discovered that the enhancement was more complex than originally thought ("shucks" says the part of my brain concerned with time management), but doing this would also enable another benefit ("cool" says the techy part of my brain). So scheduled for development and testing today is this enhancement to allow a winery to specify whether customized wine club shipments must meet the min. and/or max. pricing for the wine club, and then the logic to do the edit checks against the customized club shipment/order. The more complex part is that we need to re-price the club order at the time the club member customizes it to determine if they are over or under the price range (we had been doing that later when the batch shipment was run). The extra benefit is that by re-pricing the order earlier, the club member can see the new price of their customized order.

Maybe that's more than you wanted to know about this enhancement, but hopefully it provides some insight on how new features make it into the WineWeb system.

New Mexico Direct Wine Shipments: A Good Law?

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:28:30 -0600

On July 1st, New Mexico became a permit state for direct wine shipments to consumers. It was the last state to change from the reciprocity law, which was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 (Granholm v. Heald). While most other states moved to a permit system within a couple of years after that decision, it took our (I live in NM) legislature over 5 years to get a law in place. So with that extra time, did we get a good law?

First, some background. Before the legislative session began this year, I researched all direct wine shipping bills that had been introduced into the state legislature over the past 10 years. I then drafted a proposed bill that would satisfy the new administration's goals of reducing bureaucracy and increasing revenues. My proposal eliminated the permit requirement as there was no need to discourage wineries from collecting sales tax (the major revenue source). It also included wine retailers as well as wineries. I then sent the proposed bill and accompanying notes to all legislators who had sponsored similar bills in the past and to my representative and senator. I didn't contribute to any of their campaigns or hire a lobbyist to get the bill noticed, as one shouldn't have to resort to that. No communication was received from any of those legislators.

The new law that was passed states that out-of-state wineries wanting to ship wine directly to consumers pay $50 annually for a permit and setup with the state to monthly report/remit gross receipts (sales) tax and annually report/remit excise tax. The fiscal impact report on this legislation estimated that 400 permits would be issued, netting $20,000 per year. The cost to "administer" the permit program was estimated at $57,000 per year. The program will likely be "administered" (collecting the permit applications, issuing a permit, responding to questions), not "regulated" (providing a benefit for the safety of the citizens of NM) as the regulation agency (RLD) can't/doesn't communicate with the tax collecting agency (TRD). So strike 1 against this law, unless you are the state employee administering this and now have more job security.

The fiscal impact report raised several issues, not the least of is the ability for the state to enforce gross receipts tax collection from out-of-state wineries with no nexus in the state. Also, the law imposes a monthly gross receipts tax reporting requirement on wineries, even if no sales occur in that month. The current CRS reporting system is graduated, with low volume sellers having a semi-annual reporting requirement, but that's not an option now. It looks like two more strikes against the law.

The bottom line question is whether wineries will obtain a permit and report on taxes collected, given that the cost of doing this may be more than the income they derive from selling to a small population state. My guess is that a minority of wineries selling in the state will get a permit, and the majority will continue doing business as usual.

So, is this a good law? I'd say "No", as it likely won't pay for itself with increased revenues, but I wouldn't call it a bad law, as consumers will likely still be able to purchase wine from smaller producers that aren't in the distribution channel, just like happens today.

Taxing Wine Shipments to Maryland

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:08:00 -0600

When Maryland becomes a direct shipping permit state tomorrow, it comes with a twist on sales tax calculations. My understanding is that to get the wine shipping law passed, the legislators raised the sales tax on wine shipments to 9%. All well and good, but if a winery ships a bottle of wine, a corkscrew and a bottle of olive oil to a Maryland consumer, their e-commerce software must calculate sales tax at three levels: 9% on the wine, 6% on the merchandise and 0% on the food item. As a software services provider, WineWeb watches for these software coding challenges (er, opportunities) and incorporates them into the product. We're just happy they decided to keep a flat rate state-wide, as opposed to states like Washington with variable tax rates at the ZIP+4 level. This is another example why a generic shopping cart system doesn't work well for wineries.

Trends in Direct Wine Shipments

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:49:00 -0600

In case you missed the ShipCompliant conference earlier this week, Wines & Vines published an article with links to the presentation and slides. Some interesting items from the presentation on the trends in direct wine shipments were:

Direct-to-Consumer (DtC) shipments (amount and value) were up over 11% this year over last year, more than double the pace of retail wine sales.
DtC sales by the largest wineries were up big time, while DtC sales by <1,000 case wineries were down over 40%.
The average bottle price for DtC shipments remained steady at about $37.

Boarding the Mcommerce Train

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:52:00 -0600

According to research published in an article entitled Why Merchants Need to Board the Mcommerce Train, a majority of customers are more likely to buy from retailers with a mobile specific site. It also quotes a survey stating that 2/3 of customers perfer shopping on the mobile web versus through apps.

Does your winery have a mobile version of its website? Is the mobile site easy to maintain, or better yet, use the same content as your main website? Does your regular and mobile shopping cart use a common set of shipping, payment processing and compliance parameters, and is the order, customer and club member data in a common database? Expect to see even more mobile enhancements from WineWeb in the coming months.

Abandoned Shopping Cart Emails

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:23:00 -0600

The Retail Bulletin posted a good article on the effects of sending an email to a potential customer after they abandon their online shopping cart. Their research shows a 12% conversion rate on these emails. That's good to hear as WineWeb has been offering this feature as part of the e-commerce service since 2006. The article states that only 13% of online retailers are using this technique to get people back to their abandoned carts.

Notes from Direct-to-Consumer Symposium

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:22:00 -0600

We attended the Direct-to-Consumer Symposium in Santa Rosa on Wednesday and had a booth in the trade show. I attended most of the sessions and came away with a lot of information and some good ideas on where to focus our technology enhancements in the coming months. The conference was well-attended, but in case you weren't able to attend, here are some of the notes I took.

From the keynote with Marc Andre Roy from American Express, their analysis of consumer spending found that the average spend on 3-tier wine purchases was $128, while it averaged $170 for direct-to-consumer. A comparision of the last 2 years showed a 25% overall growth in the market, with a 53% growth in spend amount.

Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing talked about the luxury market and selling wines to affulent wine consumers during her keynote address. She advised to go after the top 20% of the population, those making over $100K, as the middle class was hit especially hard in this recession and have little discresionary spend.The 35-44 year age group spends 4.5 times more on luxury purchases than the 45-54 age group. She advised building your brand with the 25-34 age group in this decade, remembering to focus on value. She suggested giving a choice to consumers of good, better and best, and possibly creating a new "best" wine and then increasing the price of the "better" wines. Personal "thank you" notes were suggested by her and other speakers as a valuable use of time. She closed with a recommendation to integrate (understand customers), innovate (transform consumer's lives) and inspire (with new experiences).

The legistative update session focused on what to expect in the "son of HR5034" and how wineries can support efforts to defeat this legislation by enlisting their customers to oppose this bill. It was reported that Free the Grapes facilitated the distribution of over 53,000 letters to Congress during the past session.

The CRM session discussed that Customer Relationship Management is a three-fold concept of philosophy, process, then technology. An informal poll of the audience showed that about half of the wineries collect email addresses in their tasting rooms. The ability to capture data on tasting room traffic and then have that available in a CRM system for future communications with those customers was a key concept. The use of Social CRM was also discussed with a case study of using Twitter to get additional tasting room traffic.

The last session I attended was entitled "How Can We Help You?" and discussed needs of wineries to better support direct-to-consumer sales. Much of the discussion revolved around integration of various systems, including social media. I took copious notes during this session, and you'll see many of these items addressed in our technology solutions over the coming months.

Overall, the conference was informative and a good experience. See you there next year.

POS Version 3 Released -- Offline Store-and-Forward

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:54:00 -0600

We just released a new beta version of the POS service. The major new benefit of this version is the ability to store transactions locally, if your Internet connection is lost, then synchronize the transactions once the connection has been restored. This version also further improves performance by caching many of the pages locally on the user's computer, and it leverages the component-based environment used in the website e-commerce, mobile e-commerce and Facebook e-commerce services.

Our POS service is Internet-based, which makes it portable to anywhere there is an Internet connection. While that is great, and has advantages over stand-alone POS systems, we've heard from some wineries that their Internet connection is not dependable. While we can't fix Internet connectivity, we can, and just did something to allow these wineries to be more comfortable in using our POS.

This was a huge development effort, entailing more effort than versions 1 and 2 combined. We are excited to release this as it has been several months in the works, with our team working literally around-the-clock the past two weeks to get it done ahead of the trade shows. Whew!

More info: www.wineweb.com/services/pos.cfm

WineWeb Releases Facebook e-Commerce App

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:32:00 -0600

Our Facebook e-Commerce app can be used by our winery clients to take orders for wine, merchandise and events directly in Facebook. This app uses all the components of our website e-commerce service, so payment gateways, discounting, compliance checks, shipping carrier, and fulfillment center integration are all built-in. The Facebook app is integrated with the winery's products, inventory, event reservations, customers and wine club members.

The winery's Facebook page can link to our application as a "Shop" page tab, and links can also be made directly to a specific item or event from other pages within Facebook.

More information, examples and pricing is at apps.facebook.com/WineWebOrder.

Getting Visitors to Complete Transactions

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:59:00 -0600

I was catching up on my reading over the weekend and found an article in the current issue of Website Magazine entitled "Want a Completed Form? Get Out of Your Visitors' Way". It had some very good points about effective web forms, and I'm happy to say that WineWeb's shopping cart service does over 90% of them. I recall a 2006 blog post where I tried to make the case for not requiring a visitor to register before completing the order form. A competitor at the time replied (offline) and implied that I was wrong and stupid for thinking that way. Well, we're still here, and it's nice to see that other professionals concur with not forcing visitor registration.