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NEW BOOK: How to Get the Internet to Turn your Wine Store into a Flourishing Success
Have You Noticed 'Big Retail' Hungrily Eroding Wine Sales? Are Your Customers Being Covertly Targeted by Shrewd Internet Wine Retailers? &nb…
Wine Search Engine Optimization
This page is the hub for all things about Wine SEO. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Forum Login or Register
Join the MyLocalWineStore Forums to: get answers  to your wine internet marketing questions discuss wine internet marketing topics meet other wine…
How to Sell Wine Online
Here's the process: Traffic - generate traffic to your site Conversion - convert this traffic into sales through good content, user shopping experience,…
The Wine Retailer
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Retailer. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine Internet Marketing and Measuring your Results
This page is the hub for all things about Measuring the Results of Wine Internet Marketing also known as Web Analytics. On the left are the blog posts done on…
Forums & Support
MyLocalWineStore is four things: a Blog, a Book, Service and the Forums. The pages below are the hub of blog posts and forums that can help you find out more…
Wine and Location Based Services
This page is the hub for all things about Wine and Location Based Services. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum…
Wine eCommerce
This page is the hub for all things about Wine eCommerce. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine Mobile and Social Commerce
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Mobile and Social Commerce. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for…
Wine Landing Page Optimization
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Landing Page Optimization (LPO). On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the…
Wine Email Marketing
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Email Marketing. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions…
Wine Consumers and Market Research
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Consumers and Market Research. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum…
Wine Retailer Competitors
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Competitors. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine Local SEO
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Local SEO. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine Internet Advertising
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Internet Advertising. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for…
Wine Comparison Shopping Engines
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Comparison Shopping Engines. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum…
Wine Social Media
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Social Media. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine Blogging
This page is the hub for all things about Wine Blogging. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine and Facebook
This page is the hub for all things about Wine and Facebook. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine and Twitter
This page is the hub for all things about Wine and Twitter. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
Wine and Mobiles
This page is the hub for all things about Wine and Mobiles. On the left are the blog posts done on this topic, and on the right is the forum for questions and…
How a Small Wine Retailer can turn a quiet Main St Wine Store into a Flourishing Internet Success
HOW TO SELL WINE ONLINE: How a Small Wine Retailer Can Turn a Quiet Main St Wine Store Into a Flourishing Internet Success In this book you'll…
New Service
New Service to be announced on book launch!
Helping you turn your Wine Store into a Flourishing 'Clicks & Mortar' Success
1. Read the Blog & Use the Forums | 2. Buy the Book | 3. Apply for a Mastermind Group I'm sick of seeing big chain discounters destroy their next door…
Wine Retailer Mastermind Application Form
A good Mastermind group is where the business people are of similar ability, know that whatever is said in the group stays in the group, are not competitors,…
Wine Retailer Mastermind Groups
Difficult Wine Retailer Decisions? No one qualified or experienced to offer suggestions and advice. Need New Ideas? Gone a bit flat and need to brainstorm…
Sample Chapter
Two sample DRAFT chapters can be downloaded here. The first one is Chapter 1: Introduction and the second on is Chapter 2: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). …
Book Notification - tell me when it's released
Pre-Orders will be taken shortly. In the meantime please complete the form below to be notified when the book is released. HOW TO SELL WINE…
SEO Service
===== 2011 Update ===== This service page has been updated. The new service is here and is the result of massive changes in the internet world due to…
Interesting Websites
Some Interesting Wine Industry Related Links I have no affiliation with any of these companies, nor do I endorse them just because I list them below.…
Creative Commons License
The most liberal of licenses. See the Creative Commons link for details. In essence you can use my text your own purposes, you just need to attribute it to…
Helping Wine Retailers Sell Wine Online
Some Blog Highlights & Recent Blog Posts... Selling Wine Online Wine eCommerce Wine Social Media Wine Marketing Comparison…
How to Sell Wine Online
1. Read the Blog | 2. Buy the Book | 3. Get the Service Find out more about the Book ... HOW TO SELL WINE ONLINE: How a Small Wine…
Specialist Wine Digital Marketing Agency
MyLocalWineStore uses internet marketing and mobile technology to drive wine sales in-store as well as online. With the explosion in Social Media, Mobile…
About Me
Hi, I'm Bruce Bruce McGechan (pronounced mc-gec-kin). I'm an expert on selling wine on the internet and author of the book How to Sell Wine Online. I am a…
Contact Me
Bruce McGechan Managing Director MyLocalWineStore.com Other Services and Support Blog Forums The Book, "How to Sell Wine Online" Ma…
Disclosure | Privacy | Legal
Disclosure If I have any commercial relationships with anyone I mention on this site I'll clearly disclose and identify them. Please note this is not an…
- Winery Marketing Work in Progress Page
  If you've been redirected to this page it means I am still proof reading the Winery Marketing blog post. My apologies it will be published within two weeks. …
- Terms of Use and Legal Statements
  PLEASE REVIEW THIS DOCUMENT CAREFULLY BECAUSE IT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS Welcome to MyLocalWineStore.com, home of the web’s best wine retail internet…
Site Map
This page contains the site table of contents. Use it to quickly find content on this website.

Blog Posts

Category: Wine eCommerce
In this category I help you assess what wine retail eCommerce solution is best for you. I also point out that wine eCommerce is just one part of the process…
- What wine eCommerce site is right for a medium size retailer?
  I look at two more types of wine retailers' eCommerce requirements: small-medium, and medium-large. I then showed how the two different size wine retailers…
- Two Very Different Wine Retailer eCommerce Websites
  I've talked about whether you should have a custom built wine eCommerce website or one "Off-the-Shelf". In short I said pretty much everyone actually uses…
- Wine eCommerce website: Custom Built or Off-the-Shelf?
  Will an "off-the-shelf" eCommerce website be right for me? Or should I get a custom built eCommerce website? Here's what you consider.
- Conversion analysis of the shopping cart leads to 34% increase in sales
  Fairfield undertook some conversion analysis of the shopping cart page (not the following checkout process). This indicated a number of obstacles to checkout:…
- The Profit of an Online Wine Store: some Financials
  But here's the problem, many websites look fantastic and fail to make a return on investment. The frustrated wine retailer then writes off the internet as…
- An affliction known as eCommerce "featuritis"
  I'll admit it, I love Apple products. I was forced for so long to use Microsoft products and "wintel" laptops that when I went out on my own account the first…
- This will make you cry - shopping cart abandonment
  I've always found shopping cart abandonment dispiriting! But don't worry it's not just you, it's every other merchant as well. Charles Nicholls of SeeWhy says…
- There's a well known story of two naked rowers
  It's going to take a while for me to get to my point in this post, but I promise I will get there. Anyhow - it's great story! In fact it's such a great story…
- I was caught up in a frenzy of techno love
  My learning from this experience was that you focus on the 20% of things that your customers really demonstrably value. That might be technology or it might…
- What's the Best Wine eCommerce store?
  I try to help out on various networks I'm involved with for free. Not all to do with wine retail, marketing and the internet - here's my response to do with…
- Wine eCommerce: what should I do with wine descriptions?
  I like wine, I really do but when I get a rush of new releases from wineries I get real bored of writing the last few descriptions. Now I'm trying to find a…
- Wine Ecommerce: What to do with Vintage, a real Quandry
  I've avoided mentioning how to handle vintage in my posts. Its quite a difficult issue which I will cover here (hopefully with your input as I'm not convinced…
- Wine eCommerce: WSJ.com on Buying Wine Online
  In essense the WSJ says that wine drinkers have awful website experiences especially with Phantom inventory, Slow delivery, Cluttered sites, Tedious “drill-do…
- Wine eCommerce Solutions Ranking
  Here's my analysis, I've done it by finding a representative sample of eCommerce and internet marketing solutions, rating them based on a criteria outlined in…
- wine eCommerce and SEM: Ranking and Review Criteria
  In this post I'm going to nominate a weighting to put to the criteria. The idea is you can make up your own mind what the eCommerce options are, what the…
- The Cost of Wine eCommerce and Marketing Solutions
  I've shown that most attention is given to only one part - the design - yet there are many other parts that need to be done well to make a profitable online…
Category: Wine Internet Marketing
This category covers some social media related posts as well as diverse topics from your customers browsing online and buying in-store.
- New Book Interview on VinVillage's Wine and Dine radio show
  Lynn Krielow Chamberlain interviews Bruce on VinVillage's Wine and Dine radio show. You can listen to the interview care of VinVillage or read the transcript…
- My New Book Shows you How to Make More Money, with Fewer Customers, Without Discounting
  I describe how a hypothetical wine store stops discounting, refocuses on very profitable customers, by sharing the store owner's passion for wine. The store…
- Wine and Technology - vintank's 12 predictions
  Vintank has just produced a new wine marketing technology report that includes predictions about wine ecommerce, social media, social commerce, mobile apps and…
- Are you on a "Burning Platform"?
  Rather than being a wine store, a retailer, a wine expert, a marketing expert, a capable tech user, a good sharer of info and knowledge: in wine forums, wine…
- Google 2010: end of empire, hail the new order
  Since the mid 2000s you could expect to make a reasonable return on Google SEO and Adwords marketing expenditure. With the increase in competition, and the…
- Robert Parker and his wine retailer page
  eRobertParker.com has the superb creditability of a brand name critic with a searchable database. Importantly this is matched with the 150,000 actual Wine…
- A Selling Wine Online Financial Model
  I've done a number of financial models looking at the ROI of a online wine store. Here's my top level calculations for you to put in your own spreadsheet. Wine…
- "The Big Five Fundamentals of Ecommerce Strategy"
  Mathew at FastPivot wrote a post similar to what I have been saying in my posts on the process of selling win online: Traffic - Conversion - Administration -…
- Wine Internet Marketing: Why use social media, it's not that obvious
  I'm a keen supporter of social media because it gives you 'reach'. I'm yet to be convinced that social media will give you sales. Which for a direct response…
- A wine retail eCommerce store in 2019, end of an industry?
  I'm reading lot's of predictions about the end 2010 so I thought I'd make some predictions for the end of this decade. Google will: ask how much you want to…
- Wine Internet Marketing: Five Wine Store Sub Markets
  There are a number of submarkets within wine online stores: 1. Wine Gifts, 2. Wine Clubs, 3. Single Wine purchase by individuals, 4. Corporate beverage…
- The next Sideway's wine film?
  Maynard Keenan of Tool will release his new film about making wine in Arizona, Blood into Wine next month, which means two things for the wine industry.
- The Wine Retailer's Internet Dream
  "So I'm going to be a multi-millionaire - with my own gleaming white super yacht - surrounded by gorgeous bikini clad women - right!?" Well, you might... But…
- Wine Internet Marketing: How to Use Twitter
  Ken McCarthy is one of the few people I seriously follow. He seems to be able to absorb all that's going on in the internet world, sift through it and find the…
- Wine Internet Marketing: WSJ.com on Great Wine Stores
  A few weeks back I wrote posts on possible points of difference and potential opportunities for a local wine retailer. The WSJ wine writers* also have an…
- Wine Internet Marketing: Why Web Design Must Die
  Just as I had completed the first draft of an earlier blog 'Wed Design: the Traditional Model' I saw him commit designer heresy in his blog post, 'Why Web…
- Wine Internet Marketing: “every dollar spent online influences .70 spent in the store”
  Wine Internet Marketing - Cannibalization of instore sales? I think the evidence is that once you start doing it yourself, selling wine online is about…
Category: Selling Wine Online
Here I cover the general principles of selling wine on the internet. I would step through these: Traffic, Conversion, eCommerce admin, Repeat Sales. If you…
- Christchurch Earthquake - pic of a lucky escape for a Premier Cru
  A wine store near the epicenter of the 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch New Zealand last week, sent this email and photo to his subscriber list,
- "Pimp Up" your Wine Retail Website: A New Service!
  I've been showing small wine retailers how they can sell wine online and obliquely referring to my service. The service was essentially something like taking…
- What the wine internet shopper sees in CA 90210
  Ever wondered why a customer who lived round the corner bought wine off an online competitor rather than yourself? If so here is a simple way to find out, just…
- The Local Wine Store's Advantage vs Pure Play Internet Retailers
  In previous posts A Plan to Launch a Long Tail Store Selling Wine Online and The Long Tail Wine Website I outlined a wine drinker type, called the…
- The Long Tail Wine New Venture
  In a previous post about my Long Tail Wine Marketing Plan I wrote about a particular market segment called the Experimenter. This keen group of wine drinkers…
- Plan to start a long tail online wine store?
  I had this great idea. I’d create a website that appealed to all those wine connoisseurs who loved niche wines. I’d work with wine retailers around the…
- Selling Wine Online: Your Point of Difference
  This post is about possible points of difference for an online wine retailer. First what most of the good online wine retailers offer, the "price of entry"…
- Selling Wine Online: The Long Tail of Wine- an opportunity?
  Chris Anderson, wrote a book called "The Long Tail". It was a best seller, and is all about the millions of niches in the world and the successful businesses…
- Selling Wine Online: The Local Wine Retailer's Market Opportunity
  If you've read my post about the Online Wine Competition you may feel a little stunned at just how competitive the online market is. This post is about finding…
- Selling Wine Online: Wine Online Competitors - The Market
  The online wine market has many competitors. I've taken a representative sample and created an Online Wine Market Model for illustrative purposes. The larger…
- Selling Wine Online Process 4: Repeat Business
  Regularly emailing interesting and valued information to a list of customers ensures that the sale becomes a or 0 customer. It also means you might…
- Selling Wine Online Process 3: eCommerce Administration
  In the two previous posts I covered how wine retailers can generate traffic and convert it to sales. In this post I'll cover ecommerce administration. In a…
- Selling Wine Online Process 2: Conversion
  This post will look at converting traffic. The Landing Page. As mentioned in the last post you should build you SEO and PPC campaigns so that people land on an…
- Selling Wine Online Process 1: Traffic
  This post is about generating traffic to your wine retailer website. As you will see they are reasonably simple - the obstacle isn't understanding them so much…
- Selling Wine Online, a Criteria: Marketing to eCommerce Process
  In order to sell wine online you need to generate traffic, convert the traffic into sales and nurture repeat business. You also need support for any technical…
- Selling Wine Online: Taking a Local Wine Store Online - the Basics
  Put simply you need:* Traffic - generate traffic to your site, * Conversion * eCommerce * Repeat Customers
Category: Blog
- Breaking News: Australia invades New Zealand
  A bit of humor on NZ care of our Aussie cousins...
Category: Wine Email Marketing
In this category of posts I outline the best practices for running a wine email marketing campaign: Your list Double Opt In Unsubscribes Personalization Content…
- Wine Email Marketing: Content is King (again), some Suggested Topics
  The content of your wine retail email marketing. There are two types of emails: 1. Information type emails, 2. Promotional emails. Information emails keep…
- Wine Email Marketing: Personalize, Everything
  Have a customized Thank You / Subscription Confirmed page. Always personalize your emails - both ways. Have a text format 'Plan B'. Regularly send out emails.…
- Wine Email Marketing: Paranoid ISPs
  How to handle email unsubscribes and paranoid ISPs. Use a professional email marketing service (e.g. aweber or mailchimp) to automatically handle the regular…
- Wine Email Marketing: Double Check with Double Opt-In
  The Double Opt-in Process is where a subscriber is sent an email asking them to click on a link to confirm that they have subscribed. When they do this the…
- Wine Email Marketing: Responsive Lists are Better
  Let's do some math. It's real simple math: List size * Delivery rate % * Open rate % * Click through rate % * Conversion rate % * Order value $ = Value of one…
Category: Wine SEO
Wine SEO can be split into many sub themes: Local Search (starting with this post) Search engine optimisation (start with this post) The biggest challenge for…
- Local SEO and Wine Stores in 2011: an Update of the Top 10 tasks
  Google is putting more focus on local businesses and location services. In this post I go through all the things you can do to make sure your local store is at…
- Local Wine Stores on Local Search: the Top 10 Things You Can Do
  A survey is done each year to see what Local SEO experts think the most important factors are. I go through the top 10 here from a local wine store perspective.…
- Wine SEO in 3 words - High Quality Links
  Wine SEO is about four things: Trust/Authority of the Host Domain (i.e. "www.the-domain.com") Link Popularity of the Specific Page (i.e. "www.the-domain…
- The Internet Emperor says faster, so I turn to the Optimizer
  I redesigned MyLocalWineStore to make it faster. I replaced the theme and logo, and made the content easier to find. The key way I improved performance though…
- The Top 5 Online Wine Stores in the US
  The top 5 by SEO factors only. Not by any usability tests, sales, content, wine range or other consumer factors - just industry SEO analysis for the broad term…
- How a Cheese Store did better than a Wine Store in Google
  Showing how to do better on Google by analyzing the search engine results for local wine stores in CA 90210. The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills is ranked in the…
- The SEO Problem with Normal Wine Retail eCommerce site Set Up
  The problem is around categorization and I get a little technical on ya, so please bear with me. I first outline how to categorize your wine eCommerce website…
- Are you using Wineries' Wine Descriptions? If so, you have a Problem.
  Copying wine descriptions isn't really an issue with wineries given that they are usually very happy with wine retailers using their "poetry" (note there are…
- How to Rank Higher than your Competitors in a Local Search on Google
  Local Search is more important for the local wine retailer selling wine online than the normal SEO guidelines you may read about
- Local Retailers Selling Wine Online have a Seriously Big Advantage
  The advantage of being a local wine retailer close to a customer's location - the Location War between Google, Yelp, Foursquare etc
- Your local retail advantage will get even bigger: twitter
  I've said elsewhere that facebook may take over your google advertising by 2012. That your local advantage is significant. But the more I look at what goes on…
- Wine SEO: Local Search and Review Services like yelp
  This continues my latest series of posts on local internet marketing for a wine retailer. There are a number of local search and review services such as…
- Wine SEO: Google's Local Business Center
  Other great features on the Local Business Center: Statistics, Coupons, Photos and Video, and Reviews. Adwords as per normal but also along with your local…
- Wine SEO: 80% of What Your Customers Buy is Within 15 Miles of their House
  80% of what a person buys is within 5, 15 or 20 miles of their residence - you have a natural advantage as the local wine retailer. So despite how competitive…
- How To Leverage your Local Wine Retail Business Advantage
  This is the start of a series on a local wine retailer's local business advantage. The US (and UK) internet wine markets are super-competitive however I still…
- Wine SEO: Increase Web Traffic with Great Content
  Useful and compelling content. If you draw people to your site through great content then Google will start to notice and rank your site higher. Which means…
- Wine SEO: Increase Web Traffic via Navigation and Sitemap
  In this post we look at how a wine retail website's navigation can boost search engine rankings. Your navigation should: make it easy to go from general to…
- Wine SEO: Increase Web Traffic via the URL
  In this post we look at how a wine retail website can improve the structure of their URLs to boost search engine rankings. A URL is what you type into a web…
- Wine SEO: Increase Web Traffic via meta description
  This is where the meta tag description is. If you're looking at a Google search result then you may see this as the description of what this page is all about…
- Wine SEO: Increase Web Traffic via title tag
  The title tag tells search engines what the topic of the particular page is about. Many businesses don't bother doing this, they use a default title (e.g.…
Category: Wine Adwords
New to Adwords? Then check out how to best set up your wine adwords campaign with the five posts: Your First Campaign Choose your Keywords the Ad Copy Increase…
- How to Find Local Wine Customers: Local PPC
  If you're a Wine Store in Chicago, you don't want to spend money on ads being showed to Miami residents. On the other hand if a Miami resident wants to buy a…
- Wine Adwords: Carefully Add Some More Keywords
  We're going to start adding some keywords to our keyword list. Go to Google's Keyword Tool and type in Napa Valley Merlot. Which shows the following fascinating…
- Wine Adwords: Increase Click Through Rate
  Let's do some testing to increase our click through rate. We'll create a second ad that tests which headline drives more clicks and sales conversions. That ad…
- Wine Adwords: the Ad Copy
  Writing your wine retail adwords ad copy. Headline: I would always recommend you have your keyword in the headline as per above. Description needs: A call to…
- Wine Adwords: Choose your Keywords
  In this post we'll go through keywords for beginner wine retailer adwords advertisers. In particular the difference between broad match, phrase match and exact…
- Wine Adwords: Your First Campaign
  At some stage you're going to see so many of the other local businesses start Google Adwords campaigns you're going to want to try it out yourself. As long as…
- Wine Adwords: "new wine" an opportunity or trap for a wine industry advertiser?
  I got real excited about this the keyword phrase new wine. I saw 1000s of searches. New Wine!? That must be what may people call a new vintage or a new…
- Wine Adwords: Red red wine, a great song but a Wine Adwords Problem
  UB40 was a great band when I grew up and I loved Reddd reeeeddd wiiiiiiine. It looks like many people still do because when you use the keyword 'red wine' many…
- Wine Adwords: The Most Important Wine Tip you'll ever get
  If you search google for 'wine', guess what will be the top search you get? As at January 2010 nothing to do with the beverage 'wine' ... but rather 'Wine…
Category: Wine Web Design
This category of posts covers how wine retail websites are designed and goes through some well known US wine retailer sites. I suggest you start with Wine…
- How your Wine eCommerce website works Made Simple
  Wine eCommerce websites have three elements: 1. the content e.g. a tasting note or a photo; 2. the presentation e.g. colours, fonts, and columns; 3. the code…
- mywinesdirect website design
  Right then left column design structure. Super interesting navigation and search system, its by wine style rather than region and varietal. The website is…
- snooth wine web design
  Essentially a 3 column design website. Easy search, rating and recommendation. They focused on doing these things really well. Also have excellent SEO, often…
- BevMo wine web design
  A design with a left column home page and a 3 column products page structure. Simple and easy. This could be a top website if they just updated the look and…
- K&L Wines website design
  Left column design, clean, with an easy filterable navigation. Real time inventory is a biggie, a lot of hard work has gone into this one.
- Wine.com web design
  Uses a left column structure across the site. An expanding menu over all the ways people search for wine, wine.com use to have a more simpler design so I'm…
- Wine Web Design Basics
  Although the graphic design of wine websites can be as artistic or as functional as you so desire the overall structure really comes down to a few simple…
- Wine Web Wesign - the Traditional Development Model
  I've hired web designers all my business life. Until I started working with small businesses with small budgets. Then the bills that a corporate would sign off…
Category: Wine Marketing
This category is all about the different wine consumers in the marketplace and how to approach each segment differently. It takes many angles from formal…
- How many Premium Wine Drinkers are in your Area?
  I'm going to design some local market research. This will allow me to estimate the most important and sensitive elements of opening this particular wine store.…
- People drink other People's Wines: the influence of others' advice
  Tony Spawton on why consumers buy wine. He says, 'the expectations of the consumer varies with the occasion for which the wine is purchased. The wine consumer…
- What is most important to wine consumers? Is it selection or price or both?
  We don’t make the purchasing experience easy for consumers. There is an overwhelming number of SKUs to choose from, many labels look the same, the classificat…
- Wine Marketing: How many women are you getting in your wine store?
  I've just been speaking to a senior wine industry figure and he has pointed out the issues that a traditional wine specialty store has with women. Many wines…
- Wine Marketing: Different Wine Consumers (4)
  I stumbled across this 18-month study commissioned by Constellation Wines US on Wine and Vines. Ties in nicely with the other studies I've seen in the wine and…
- Wine Marketing: Different Wine Drinkers (3) - Risk and Confusion
  Wine Drinkers are often confused about wine. They need to make a decision about what wine to purchase and yet often the quality and taste profile is uncertain…
- Wine Marketing: Different Wine Consumers (2)
  The best academic research on wine drinkers is an Australian study that I believe is also very applicable to the US, UK and New Zealand. The Segments are: 1.…
- Wine Marketing: Different Wine Consumers (1)
  If we can understand why people buy and consume wine then we can create better ad copy, website content and emails. So I'm doing some of posts on different…
Category: Comparison Shopping Engines
I cover all the intricacies of selling wine via comparison shopping engines such as Google Shopping/Merchant Center/Base/Product Search, wine specialist…
- Snooth, Darwin and the Internet Jungle
  One of the recent accusations was that Snooth was a shopping comparison site not a social media site which has left me wondering what a "social media" website…
- Wine-Searcher, a Price Comparison Shopping Site Review
  Wine-Searcher is a large search engine of wine stores, winery, and wine auction, price lists and catalogues. According to wine-searcher it has almost 4mn…
- Google Goggles - that customer may not just be sending an SMS
  Say your customer is at your competitor's wine store browsing the aisles. They see a wine they like so they use their mobile phone to take a picture of the…
- Snooth Review - a specialist wine shopping comparison engine
  A review of snooth.com - a very interesting wine comparison shopping engine. How big it is, how to sign up, easy ways to upload products and maintain them and…
- Google Base Feeds and Wine
  This part of the internet ecosystem has it’s own peculiarities and optimization techniques. Your first port of call is the Google Merchant Center. You’ll…
- Why are Comparison Shopping Engines so Important?
  Wine shopping comparison websites is a seemingly dry topic but as you dig into it you see just what an opportunity and threat it is. You could now have a…
- The Most Important Source for Online Wine Sales: this will surprise you
  I've been doing some research into wine comparison shopping engines and have come across some eye opening changes in getting more traffic to your wine retail…
Category: Wine Social Media
Wine and Social Media are naturally linked. At the heart of most occasions of drinking wine is socializing – in the case of wine social media it’s…
- Wine Stores and Local Social Media
  Much of this blog is about wine and social media. It goes through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, social media monitoring, and various strategies. However there is…
- Passion, Champagne and, er, Supermarkets
  NetBase social media research on 1. Champagne and 2. Supermarket Sentiment. Surprisingly Piper-Heidsieck does much better than Dom Perignon! Supermarkets are…
- America’s Most Popular Wine Store? Social Research suggests it may be BevMo
  It's all about wine store range. And BevMo has it and, crucially, has the numbers according to some social research I've just seen from NetBase. NetBase…
- Avatar Hybrid Bodies and Wine Social Media Market Research
  Looking for that wine store idea that sets you apart from your competitors? The best way is to ask your customers. Another way is to gather customer insights…
- Does the market love you or hate you? One way to find out Sentiment
  I provide an overview of a social media research tool called ConsumerBase product. I'll be using it to review some big US wine stores and will do a post on…
- Measuring Social Media Success: 3 NY Wine Stores and Social Mention
  Can SocialMention act as a robust measurement tool of social media strategy effectiveness? Can it help measure the success of your blog, twitter, forum posts,…
- Monitoring Three New York Wine Stores: the quiet one, the promising one, and the over achiever
  Is a local competitor dominating your digital neighborhood? That is local blogs, twitter, facebook, blogs, video and/or wine forums? Here's how to monitor…
- Social media monitoring software and PR agencies - expensive meets expenses
  I've been trialling some social media monitoring tools over the last few weeks, and I've just caught myself falling into techno-love. Or as Gollum kept saying…
- Wine Retailers and Local Wine Bloggers - an opportunity for both
  I believe a local wine retailer has a huge local advantage over large and online wine retailers in the internet world. There are many ways a wine retailer can…
- How to Rank Wine Blogs - a DIY rough and ready approach
  1. Choose a blog you want to rank yourself against - perhaps it's one of the top blogs, or just another local wine blogger 2. Go to compete and enter your…
- The Wine Drinker Engagement Pyramid and Socialgraphics
  One of the best ways I've seen of deciding how to utilize social media in the wine world is the Engagement Pyramid. Watchers are at the bottom with increasing…
- A Wine Retailer's Perspective on Social Media: why bother?
  Let's look at why you could be interested in wine social media, from a business objective perspective, not because it's the latest marketing buzz word. Here's…
- No one knows you? Wine blogs a wine retailer could advertise on
  Wine blog advertising is one way to boost awareness, if that's your objective. Using Google's advertising tools the only ones (from my list) are vinography.com…
- Social Media Objectives and Wine Blogs
  I've created a diagram of the interplay between social media objectives, success metrics, the Paid/Owned/Earned continuum, types of media, and the marketing…
- Wine Blog Traffic - some big differences between blogs
  Estimating traffic volume using Compete. Compete has a 2,000,000 member panel but it's not completely accurate so I've used their ranking system to come up…
- Wine Blog Engagement Scores - a surprising result
  PostRank analyzes the "5 Cs" of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting, and clicking. Using this method each wine blog is given a score for…
- Websites votes for wine blogs
  What I'm looking to do is replicate Google's successful ranking process to rank wine blogs. SEOmoz offer a free tool called the Open Site Explorer which…
- Using DoubleClick to find the best Wine Blogs
  One way to track down what websites the target audience is reading is to use DoubleClick. This has some excellent tools that show demographics of readers for…
- Tapping into the Long Tail of Wine Bloggers
  One of the things I'm doing is trying to work out the long tail of bloggers in order to find good writers and audiences for wine retailers. Rand Fish from this…
- Wine Blogger Audience and Blog Quality Factors
  The Social Media Brief, some initial thoughts but only partly completed. By writing a brief I'm forcing myself to set some objectives and specific measures of…
- The Top 28 Free Wine Blogs - an initial list based off Blog Search Engines
  An initial list of the top 28 wine blogs for a US wine retailer to be associated with. Used Google Blog Search, PostRank and Yahoo Directory plus some medium…
- Wine Social Media Types - a Diagram
  What are the types of wine social media and what is a wine blogger exactly?! Before I went any further with my wine blogger list I thought I'd try to define…
- A first, but failed ;), attempt at making a list of the best wine bloggers (for a wine retailer)
  The first step in coming up with the top wine bloggers is to compile an initial list. I want this to be objective and transparent, not subjective or using…
- Does a wine blogger's audience overlap with a wine retailer's shopper base?
  I’ve been looking into what wine blogs would be best for a wine retailer to be associated with. “Associated with” could mean anything from advertising in…
- What do you think are the best wine blogs?
  I've been looking into what blogs would be best for a wine retailer to be associated with. "Associated with" could mean anything from advertising, commenting,…
Category: Wine and Twitter
Twitter is remarkably helpful in selling wine on the internet. Sure it may be the first contact a potential customer has with your store rather than leading to…
- How to use Twitter to Market Wine
  The wine twitter community is huge. Here's how to market to them, ideas on what to tweet, and various principles on how to market wine with twitter.
- Twitter, BirdBrain, Mavens and wine - tech fermenting
  We look at how to identify great wine tweeters in your local area. I’ll show you an interesting tool that might work called BirdBrain, then move onto some…
- The Top Wine Tweeters - hello @SommelierSara!
  SommelierSara was a surprise top 5 entry. Less of a surprise was garyvee, nectarwine, lenndevours, nytimesdining (think The Pour), and thirstforwine. All of…
Category: Facebook and Wine
More than 500 million active users 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day Average user has 130 friends People spend over 700 billion minutes…
- 2 Facebook eCommerce Recommendations, and 15 Others
  I outline how different size wine retailers' requirements are different depending on their size, budgets and motivation. Then I outline the Must Have Requiremen…
- Social Commerce - the marriage of social networking and eCommerce
  A 1 page review of a 1 hour Social Commerce (Facebook) webinar by Practical eCommerce. New things for me were the personalization of the store based on the…
- 9 Pragmatic Recommendations for a Wine Facebook Page
  How serious should a small business get with it's Facebook Page? I cover why having one is important and how much effort is enough given scare time and money.…
- The Wine Facebook Page Rankings - How a Small Winery took on a Colossus
  First thing to notice – this is a Quality not a Quantity measure. Wine-Searcher still tops the ratings with its 84,000 odd fans, though Robert Mondavi Winery…
- Wine Searcher proves to be the Wine Facebook Fan Collosus
  In this post we look at fan numbers, in other posts we look at quality. I choose these wine related Facebook Pages because I wanted to put: - the top wine…
- Facebook Conquers the Universe ... and a little bit of the wine world
  I think the case for being at least interested in Facebook seems obvious. There's lots of consumers, they spend lots of time on Facebook, and their recommendat…
Category: Wine Landing Pages
Landing Page Optimization is all about offering two or more versions of the same webpage and see which one converts the best. Then doing it again. And…
- The Last 3 Steps in Wine Landing Page Optimization
  This post looks at the last steps of how to go about testing. Step 4 Set up Google Website Optimizer Step 5 "Beat the control" Step 6 The Plan It has a…
- The First 3 Steps in Wine Landing Page Optimization
  This post looks at the first steps of how to go about testing. Step 1 Set up Google Analytics, with the eCommerce option turned on Step 2 Set a Benchmark,…
- Lady Gaga vs Lady Thatcher, and Landing Page Optimization
  You are unlikely to ever find out why your visitors aren't buying, even if you're a Internet Marketing expert, so if no one knows then leave it up to the…
Category: Wine Industry
I appreciate that not everything is about wine retailers and the internet ;). So sometimes I go off topic and talk about industry issues. This category covers…
- New Website, New Support, New Book
  MyLocalWineStore.com has been updated! It is all to do with the book that is about to be released, How to Sell Wine Online. Each chapter is packed with tips…
- Lies, lies and Snooth: I investigate
  Investigating vintank's accusations of Snooth misrepresentation, hidden objectives, poor user experience, so-called success stories and legal breach.
- Wine Industry Fascination: a demanding mistress
  I've been mulling over why I'm fascinated by the wine industry. It's like a demanding mistress, you'd like to just ignore her sometimes but you're somehow…
- A Wine Retailer Business Plan: avoiding Ready-Fire-Aim
  An outline of a wine retailer business plan including the Company, Customers, and Competitors; Service, Product, Price, Place and Promotion; Staff, It and…
- Thought of Opening another Wine Store? Here's a Financial Model that may help
  Thought of opening another wine store? Here's a spreadsheet which I'm using to evaluate volume by segment, margin, revenue, costs and profit. It also evaluates…
- Wine Industry Arguments - beyond natural dissension?
  Who supports the current three tier system? Was a seemingly simple question in the Wine and Spirits Group forum in LinkedIn. And a raging discussion took place…
Category: Mobiles and Wine
Mobile phones have location advantages that no other technology offers. A wine drinker can use their mobile in-store, nearby, commuting to work, waiting at…
- Wine Store mCommerce App: your wine store in their hands
  Firstly I outline the ideal features of a wine retailer's mobile app with a bit of commentary. Then I list those features that I think are Must-Have vs…
- Mobile Advertising: a wine prompt at the right place at the right time
  Mobile advertising is worth talking about on its own because, like other mobile marketing, it has the advantage of being in the right place at the right time -…
- 9 Ways a Wine Retailer can use Mobiles to Sell More Wine In-Store
  This post is about customers using their mobiles in-store. We’ll cover the burgeoning area of mobile QR codes, how retailers are using them, and glimpse into…
- Find Me, Find You, Find Wine: location based services in wine stores
  Groupon, foursquare, SCVNGR, Yelp, Facebook Places are just a few of the Location Based Services available from a mobile app. LBS apps can tell your friends…
- The Best Wine Apps: a retailer's perspective
  So what are the good wine apps out there? I'll review some research done by one think tank and then outline my own. I'll take a wine retailer's perspective and…
- What's the difference between a mobile website and an app?
  Here's a list of the key differences: mobile websites don't need to be downloaded, are available to all, easier to build, and do not need approval. Apps take…
- Ways a Wine Retailer can use Mobile Marketing
  Introduction to all the ways a wine retailer can use mobile marketing. Firstly looks at marketing objectives and customer segments before suggesting ways that…
Category: Winery Marketing
Wine Marketing Success through Premium Wine Marketing and Brand Management Success This category shows you how to use professional wine marketing to become as…
- 10. Review your Wine Marketing Plan
  Review your Wine Marketing Plan but in the short term stay the course! Consistency is more important for brand management given how long changing the perception…
- 9. Illustrative Marketing Plan for Inspiring Businessman Segment
  Bringing together all the work from the other wine marketing steps into an illustrative marketing plan tailored for a particular winery for the wine segment…
- 8. The Wine Marketing Plan - an Action Plan
  All your insights from analysing your customers, competitors and your company need to be put into an action plan - the Wine Marketing Plan
- 7. The Wine Marketing Mix - Product, Price, Place, People, Promotion - The 5Ps
  A customer’s image of a wine brand is prompted by some key drivers (the 5Ps or the marketing mix). Together they form a good basis for writing your marketing…
- 6. Creating, Describing and Defining your Premium Wine Brand
  Communicate to wine drinkers in ways that are important to them as wine drinkers make brand decisions based off superficial criteria as well as the smell and…
- 5. Choose your Wine Niche
  Choosing a wine niche is the way for a small vineyard or winery to be financially successful. A niche which you market consistently well to, and has no strong…
- 4. Telling your Wine Business, Vineyard or Winery Story
  What wine business story will appeal to your target consumers? If you've analyzed your customers and wine industry competitors, look internally to your company…
- 3. Overwhelmed by Wine Industry Competitors?
  Is your great wine being overwhelmed by stronger wine industry brands perhaps with a more comprehensive wine marketing programme? Most wine industry competitors…
- 2. Customer Wine Research, Insights into Premium Wine Consumers
  Wine Research tells us that great wine product is a start but not enough. It needs to appeal to customers in other non sensory ways, including some not well…
- 1. Marketing Wine in Order to Make Premium Wine Brands Profitable
  An Overview of the Process of Marketing Wine with the end game being Greater Profits. In a nutshell this category of the mylocalwinestore.com provides…

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