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 was through an optimizer, specifically W3 Total Cache, but there are many you can use as well. I cover why I did this and some other reasons why I changed the design.
Lady Gaga vs Lady Thatcher, and Landing Page Optimization
October 3, 2010 By 2 Comments
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 customers. Let your customers vote, albeit unconsciously but seamlessly, on your site pages by testing two or more versions of the same webpage and see which one converts the best. This is called Landing Page Optimization and will lead to steady improvements in your online sales.
Two Very Different Wine Retailer eCommerce Websites
May 10, 2010 By 3 Comments
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 off-the-shelf software and the question really is what are your requirements before deciding which software or service provider to go with. In this post I set out what those requirements are in an “eCommerce Requirements Document”.
I was caught up in a frenzy of techno love
January 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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 not. The technology is very sexy, it can automate the most simple of things extremely well. But if the customer doesn’t want it, or it’s too expensive then don’t use it.
How your Wine eCommerce website works Made Simple
January 15, 2010 By 1 Comment
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 (or logic) e.g. software that says take this tasting note, use this font and send it to the internet browser (explorer or firefox etc)
mywinesdirect website design
January 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Right then left column design structure. Super interesting navigation and search system, its by wine style rather than region and varietal. The website is deceptively simple, I wonder whether they have done extensive A/B tests of their webpages to see which design converts the best. Respect. I’d love to see their playbook.
snooth wine web design
January 7, 2010 By 5 Comments
Essentially a 3 column design website. Easy search, rating and recommendation. They focused on doing these things really well. Also have excellent SEO, often appear at the top of the organic listings. I do think there is too much going on with the wine consumer pulled in too many ways with ads and boxes, if they’ve having trouble converting sales they should look at the amount of distracting noise on the site.
Wine Web Design Basics
January 3, 2010 By 2 Comments
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 components: the header, the body, and the footer.
Wine Ecommerce: What to do with Vintage, a real Quandry
December 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment
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 I have the best resolution to this issue). Unlike most products, wine stock keeping units (SKUs) are not often identified by vintage (or year). Yet wine drinkers and Google want to know this.
Wine Internet Marketing: Why Web Design Must Die
December 23, 2009 By 1 Comment
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 Design Must Die’. In short he says no one really knows what design will work well. Good designers and clients can take the best guess and hope that it’s the right one. But the better way is to constantly test different components of design, copy and headlines to see which combination best leads to conversion.
