Hit me with your best shot.

[jas0441]

Hi Everyone: I own a boutique winery with all my sales coming primarily from my retail tasting room; but moving into the Fastlane requires an increase in online sales.

To increase traffic to my website, I am partnering with Groupon in a few weeks and offering a "$10 for $20" groupon. In advance of this offer going out, I want to make sure my online store is up to snuff and appealing to potential customers so I am soliciting feedback from the Fastlane Forum and hope you can help if you have experience with online sales.

Please pop onto my store at (wineshop.hardrow.com), browse around and give me constructive feedback on it. Would you buy from it? If not, why not? Any feedback on this store would be welcome. Thanks in advance for your time

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Hi Everyone: I own a boutique winery with all my sales coming primarily from my retail tasting room; but moving into the Fastlane requires an increase in online sales.

To increase traffic to my website, I am partnering with Groupon in a few weeks and offering a "$10 for $20" groupon. In advance of this offer going out, I want to make sure my online store is up to snuff and appealing to potential customers so I am soliciting feedback from the Fastlane Forum and hope you can help if you have experience with online sales.

Please pop onto my store at (wineshop.hardrow.com), browse around and give me constructive feedback on it. Would you buy from it? If not, why not? Any feedback on this store would be welcome. Thanks in advance for your time

Get rid of flash in the background. Picture like that is enough but the flash hurts SEO and loads slower. Give more details on the wines themselves, write a review along the price etc.

 

[DeletedUser394]

I only have a second, but right off the top I find the background (especially when it moves) to be very distracting, and it makes your listings kind of unpleasent to read.

 

[Flatlander]

I like the background.

 

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[2 Shoes]

1) I didn't find the background too distracting, but it did make the page load slowly. This is not good for people that you want to keep on the page and/or people with slower connections.

2) Once I went away from the storefront, I couldn't find my way back. I clicked on "Wines" and it took me to the homepage, but I couldn't find the store. All I could find was a lot of information about you, but that doesn't really tell me how good your wine is, which is all I really want to know (no offense, but I can't come visit you...yet).

3) I would have an opt-in box to be on your mailing list on as many pages as possible, not just the homepage. Also, give people a reason to sign up. That way you can send out special promotions and tell people to "Like" your page or a certain wine on Facebook or Twitter and that is free word-of-mouth advertising. Social media can do wonders these days if you just tell people what to do aka hit a button to "like" you.

4) On the storefront under each brand I would give a 1-2 sentence description, such as "Juicy and voluptuous red wine, with a hint of cherries and blackberries and a silky finish. Sure to compliment your next Italian meal," rather than "Wahluke Slope". I'm not from your area, so I'm not sure what that means, and you don't have to be in your area to use the Groupon for that area.

The site is beautiful, and it seems to have the same theme as your actual vineyard. I hope the Groupon partnership brings you lots of business.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I think you need to get it more focused to your goal ... and that goal is to sell wine (and win customers or tastings).

What is your objective in the site? The question "Are you a Hard Roe or Shameless Hussy" was confusing to me ... are these wines? Are you insulting me? You have a few seconds to entice a web user to "investigate" and if it takes a lot of mental exercises, the site will bleed users and conversions.

It took me awhile to figure out this site was about wine ... at first glance, I can't tell this is a wine boutique. That *pause* will hurt you.

Here is what I'd do ...

#1) Get the site to "show" that your offer is wine -- at first glance without the mental gymnastics. It's like looking at another person -- within microseconds, you know that you are looking at either a female or a male ... within 1/2 second, people should know "This is a site about wine" -- at current display, it doesn't appear that way to me. (Is it a picture store?)

#2) Figure out your primary goal and design around that goal. Is it tastings? Selling wine? Building a list? Isolate the goal and design a page designed to convert around that goal.

While leading with questions is a great tactic, "Are you a hussy?" isn't a strong lead nor does it foster any particular goal. I suggest modifying it to something more leading and subliminal ...

I'd also work on enforcing the brand -- for example, you have a wine club -- and that is all it says. How about BRANDING this wine club like a club ... for example, "Become a Hard Rower!" -- your loyal customers can be branded with some type of name. (Hard Rower? Rowers? Rowbies?) -- I'd also give away free t-shirts too for being in the club -- t-shirts are supercheap and it's free advertising.

These are just some prelim thoughts.

With Groupon, you're going to have 100's of users coming in -- you want to make sure that you take advantage of this opportunity.

 

[Anon3587x]

Thanks MJ, I'm going to utilize some of that information for my own site lol.

In my opinion any flash is bad flash for a retail site. If shit starts zipping around & I'm trying to buy something it'll annoy me. Especially if it's slowing down my computer.

If I was a new customer who was trying to buy wine I would click away from your site immediately. Hard row to ho and Shameless hussy sound like gibberish to me.

Just trying to help

 

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[jas0441]

Thank you all for the very helpful feedback. Much appreciated, going to work on it now.

 

[rocksolid]

When I click on the link it did take a while to load. Then when it did it gave me 2 options, Wine or Merchandise. Why even offer that option. You sell wine so make it about wine. You can have a merchandise tab at the top of the screen if people want to buy that. I also think you should offer a more indepth search. Also it might be nice to offer a " which wine is for me " Where it asks questions about your likes and dislikes and then selects a wine for me. I know nothing about wines and would need some help buying. Why does the wine page start so low? MAybe only on my computer but I have to scroll up to see your wines. That background is very dark also. Here is a site I found about winery websites. Maybe you can get some pointers from them.

Winery Website Design

 

[jas0441]

Thanks rocksolid....I will take a look at the link.
Actually, after getting feedback from this post, thinking about re-designing the majority of the site anyway. I appreciate you pointing out the problems. Will get to work on fixing them.

 

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[Robert Francis]

First, I would appreciate it if you would work with the state of Pennsylvania to make it non illegal for me to order wine via the web. That would be nice.

Secondly, I'm sure you are familiar with the whole Gary Vaynerchuk phenomena? I'd read every word he's ever written if I was in your business.

Lastly, in most businesses, there are a few products that are going to generate 90% of the revenue. So, I'd re-structure the site to focus/exploit that fact.

Although you may want to have everything available in the cart, you probably want to drive most of the traffic to those wines that are most popular and highlight those even more with videos and posts and education about them.