Want to sell more wine on the internet? Here’s how I can help….

Your web developer built you this great website with a shopping cart but you’re just not selling any wine on the internet. In fact you’re not even getting much traffic. And the traffic you do get is not converting to sales.

Frustrating huh? There are some key reasons for this. I’ll cover each of these in turn. Then I’ll show you a system to sell more wine online.

Let’s look at what the search engines want

The search engines (Google and Yahoo/Bing) are in a fierce competitive battle. The better their search engine results, the more people use them, the more advertising they sell, and the higher their profits.

People, or “users”, want the most relevant results for their search query. They want to type in a keyword phrase and see the solution to their search problem straight away.

So if someone types in Stags’ Leap Napa Valley Merlot 2007 they may want to (a) buy it or (b) get information about it.

It’s difficult to work out what a user wants from a simple phrase. So the search engines provide a list of possible answers feeling reasonably confident that one of them will solve the searcher’s problem.

When I searched Google for the merlot product above (in the US in 2010), Stags’ Leap winery headed the list, then there were shopping results after that, some shopping comparison sites, some wine stores, and lastly wikipedia. A nice set of possible answers to an unclear query – and the reason why so many people use Google!

Google knows users wants a list of different answers – not a list of the same results from different websites.

Which brings me to my first point.

1. Having the same standard product description is not good enough to do well with search engines

This is what Google’s top search engineer, Matt Cutts says,

“do I want to make the Ecommerce site if I don’t have a lot of original content?”

And what you should be asking yourself is… do I want to make the Ecommerce site if I don’t have a lot of original content or value add or if I have a lot of duplicate content … And so I’d ask yourself, do you really want to jump into that and start optimizing that, or do you want to look for something a little more original or something more compelling … And so my advice is … think about how you can move more towards that high value add, unique sort of site, not just … a page that looks just like 500 other pages that they’ve just seen on the web.

Top ranking websites have unique content.

The search engines also want Credibility and Relevance

I think it’s commonly known that search engines want to show the most relevant results. If I search for Stags’ Leap Napa Merlot I don’t want Sonoma Zinfadel.

What’s not terribly well understood is how the search engines rate your site for a particular search phrase – they are looking for credibility and relevance. Credibility is from high authority websites linking to you. Relevance is having descriptive link text (usually blue and underlined) that is about your subject.

So if the Wine Spectator’s Blog wrote about a great Napa Merlot tasting event at your wine store, with the phrase Napa Merlot as a hyperlink to your Napa Merlot page, then you have a high authority link with great descriptive text. You would find that you get more traffic from Google for the search phrase napa merlot.

Which brings me to my second point.

2. You need other (wine) websites to give you high quality links to your website.

This is known as off site optimization and is the most important element in your ranking. The best way to do this is to have great content that people want to link to. More about this below.

Internet Noise in your Neighborhood (Image Credit: Poster Web 2.0)

Relevance and your website

Search engines also want to assess your site for subject matter expertise. It’s pretty easy to show them you sell wine.

It’s much harder to show them that you are a subject matter expert on Napa Merlot, it’s even harder to show them you have more information about Stags’ Leap Napa Merlot than your competitors.

But it’s harder still to tell them that you are a subject matter expert for

• wine buyers
• who live near your store
• who want to buy Stags Leap Napa Merlot 2007.

If you think about it there are hundreds of wine websites that sell Stags’ Leap Napa Merlot. They all have respectable eCommerce websites with a Merlot category. Scores of them are in your town.

How do you show you are a better search result than any of them?

Which brings me to my third point

3. Clearly show Google that you are a subject matter expert for wine categories.

In this case the category, or what I call a “theme”, would be merlot. With a sub theme of Napa merlot, and the product Stags’ Leap Napa Merlot (2007).

You clearly flag to Google your subject matter expertise by keeping your products in strict themes. You write unique content about each theme and sub theme, and carefully delineate themes through internal links.

Now when Google looks at your site it sees that

• the major theme is wine store and there are clearly some other (sub) themes
• one of them is merlot and there is some interesting unique content about your Merlot range that Google’s users may find very useful
• there is clearly another sub theme in the merlot theme about Napa merlot with some more interesting content
• you can buy Napa merlot products
• and if the user is near the store then it flags that as well.

Here’s my fourth point

4. It’s not just the left hand side of the Google result page, it’s also the right hand side or Adwords.

Adwords are also known as “sponsored links”, Pay Per Click (PPC) or Paid Search.

So if you can’t get on the left hand side buy your way onto the right hand side. This is less about great content and links and more about straight out Direct Marketing.

That great content you’ve written for those themes comes into play here too. You create an adwords campaign for each (sub) theme with the ad clickers landing on your theme web page.

So here’s my fifth point

5. Use social media to spread your word, your “content”

Not all our time is spent searching for things. We also like to interact with others about things that we are passionate about. And oh boy is wine one of those things!

The Internet Retail World

We talk about wine to our friends on facebook, tweet to our followers on twitter, and present videos on youtube. This interaction can drive lots of traffic to our websites by diplomatically including our website address and, guess what, it’s all your interesting unique content.

Social media also includes blogs and forums. The classic example is Gary Vaynerchuk. He creates content on video and interacts with his fans on his winelibrary.tv forum.

There are other examples such as Must Love Wine, Wine 2.0 as well as 100s of wine bloggers.

But first and foremost there is your blog. More about that soon. First let’s talk about what your web browsers want.

Which leads us to point six

6. Make it easy to buy

So you’ve got them to your website. Congratulations! That was hard work so let’s not let them down.

You’ve got all this great information about wines they want to know about. It’s carefully organized so it’s easy to find due to your careful content categorization and theming.

They wanted a Napa merlot. You’ve convinced them that you can offer them the perfect wine on its own wine page. They now want to buy. This is where you have a clear call to action saying BUY NOW. Then you make it as easy as possible to buy.

If this is through eCommerce then ensure no registration is required, checkout is one page, payment is secure, and shipping costs are clear. If it’s by phone then the phone number is obvious. Or you may just be driving people into the store in which case your address should be clear and present.

Sure its great to have eCommerce software but MyLocalWineStore is not so much about software, it’s about a system or process of boosting sales.

Lastly point seven

7. One purchase is nice, but a customer for life is better. Time to use professional email marketing software.

The real aim is not to sell one customer one bottle, but many customers many bottles. This is where your email marketing comes in. All that time and effort you spent creating theme based content is used many times to make many sales.

And this is one reason why an email service that can easily broadcast your content to an interested list is important.

Creating Content is a Real Pain

By now you’ve probably seen where I’m heading. First let’s review.

• Search engines want to list the most relevant sites for a user query.
• They do this by looking for unique content that is linked to by other high authority websites.
• Social media sites are awash with potential customers but you need to provide them with a reason to visit your website.
• Once they get to your website you want to make it easy to buy.
• After they’ve made a purchase you want to keep them buying.

You need to start creating content. Not just cut and past winery reviews but create good content for search terms that are important to your business.

Here’s the solution – it’s the MyLocalWineStore System

Rather than start with writing descriptions for 100s of products, do something that is much more natural and is being done by more than 14 million people – start a blog.

This is a natural, stress free way of creating useful and unique content. Every day or two you write a blog entry about whatever you want. I’d suggest that is firstly about varietals but we want to make this easy so just write whatever takes your fancy if that’s the way it suits you.

It’s like writing in a diary, or writing in your wine tasting notebook. Just a few notes regularly about wine. If you have a particularly good sales conversation with a customer in-store then use it by doing a quick blog. No need to worry too much about spelling and grammer, everyone knows that it’s just your thoughts not War & Peace!

Struggle to write – try video blogging (with a good written description). Struggling for content – then ask your staff, your friends and even your wine expert customers to write some blog entries.

I’ll provide the process and a well structured blog website

MyLocalWineStore will provide you with a simple way to “post” (i.e. write and publish on the internet) your thoughts on wine. It can be to your existing website or I’ll provide a fully functional one for you.

You can post in any order you’d like, with as many paragraphs as you’d like. But I suggest you cover all the themes eventually because these themes are based on popular search queries.

The “sub themes”

• merlot
• pinot noir
• cabernet sauvignon
• syrah/shiraz
• zinfadel
• sauvignon blanc
• chardonnay
• sparkling
• and others depending on your sales mix.

Note the top theme is wine store.

The “sub-sub themes”

In any order, for each of the above varietals by region.

So for Merlot you may stock Californian, French, Australian, Spanish and New Zealand wines. Each of these regions becomes a sub theme of Merlot targeting the keyword phrases: californian merlot, french merlot, australian merlot, spanish merlot and new zealand merlot.

Products – choose wines you wish to promote

Probably medium-margin high-volume wines. Write descriptions, reviews or other content like the winery’s history and personalities.

Each time you create some content consider doing the following,

• Shall I tweet about the headline and link to my followers?
• Is it time to combine the latest posts into an email newsletter, perhaps with some promo offer?
• Shall I create an adwords ad for the specific search term that drives traffic to this specific page?
• Shall I take a snippet of this review and post it in facebook or wine forums?

Re using your unique content

About a year later you will be driving sales online and in-store because now you have a system that has created and promoted 200 pieces of unique content i.e. 8 varietal theme pages * 5 regional sub themes * five product pages = 200 pages.

There’s other things we’ll do as well especially around local search and shopping comparison sites. But the hard part is creating the content, and that’s the major part of this system. The website blog I provide (or set up on your existing eCommerce website) is structured to show your expertise to the search engines and attract visitors from social media sites and your customer base.

The MyLocalWIneStore Selling Wine Online System

I can either coach you through the System, or do it for you

Here’s the good news. Most of what I offer is available for free. You can do it yourself or ask your web developer to follow the process I outline in my blog. Heck I’ll even provide some free advice when I have the time (directly by email or in various forums).

Here’s some bad news. Although I’ll build you a website, I’d prefer not to install eCommerce software. There are experts who are much better at doing this than myself. My expertise is boosting your revenue. The system relies on a carefully structured website which can be connected to eCommerce software at any stage. I can even use another company’s website if it can meet various technical requirements.

Here’s some great news. I can run your eCommerce project if you like, I’m not shirking the responsibility of the website project, just sticking to what I do best. So I can help you source an eCommerce web development company and then ensure that the website is set up as outlined above.

The website software

I prefer to use the most popular blog software in the world – WordPress. I use this because

• it’s simple for you to use
• it was originally made for naturally publishing content
• it’s well set up for search engine optimization
• there are inexpensive design options (like a design for free or even less than $100)
• it is very flexible with lots of options
• it can integrate with other eCommerce systems
• it’s open source, which means the software is free!

I customize the software for the MyLocalWineStore System and integrate it with a professional email service.

It then needs to be loaded on to a server (called web hosting where you rent server space) or your current eCommerce company can upload the files  to your existing website (refer them to these technical details).

Do I even need the eCommerce part?

No, not really. I help small bricks and mortar wine retailers. So your website could aim to drive people into your store or call you on the phone rather than order online. If you choose to not have eCommerce software then you’ll miss out on sales but still drive lots of traffic in-store.

In fact I think the best way is to start with the blog. Then once you have enough unique content attach an eCommerce system to it.

What do I do next and what’s the price?

• If you haven’t already, subscribe to “5 things you must know about wine” and read through my information packed website (it’s all free)
• If you want me to comment on your website then send me an email (I’m very happy to give simple feedback for free)
• If you want me to personally work on your website to improve it’s profitability, or learn how you can apply the MyLocalWineStore system, then send me an email to discuss your situation.

Indicative Prices

• Simple “coaching” or advice if you DIY (2 hours per month) US$299 per month.
  • Can also include setting up a part of the System to get you started, see “A Good Approach” below
• Set up the full MyLocalWineStore System or project manage your new website from design, to construction and system implementation US$1000-$20,000 depending on third parties such as eCommerce companies.

A Good Approach to start with

1. Set up the wine retail blog.
2. Then start a cycle of Plan-Do-Analyze.

Each cycle goes like this,

• Start blogging for themes you are interested in
• Implement local search optimization i.e. Google Places, yelp etc,  internet yellow pages,
• Implement a local adwords campaign
• Refine web pages to boost conversions especially through testing headlines and content
• Build repeat business through a regular email marketing program.
• You choose to also dip your toe into social media you feel comfortable with e.g.
  • comment on other people’s blogs
  • engage in discussions on other people’s forums,
  • start tweeting
  • start a facebook fan page and update regularly

It uses only part of the System that is highlighted in the yellow boxes below:

A Good Start to Implementing the System

It includes organic and paid search from Google, Yahoo and Bing; blogging, email marketing and twitter; and local search especially with yelp and Google Places. It may also include commenting on third party blogs and forums.

Each plan-do-analyze cycle lasts a month or two depending on factors such as content written, advertising budget, and your enthusiasm. But it starts with a set up fee of US$299 with a further $299 paid every month for management. It includes the WordPress setup (and hosting if required).

Next Step? Send me an email to discuss your situation.