Wine on the web

Wines & Vines, March, 1998 by Larry Walker

We share your pain. Wines & Vines sent questionnaires to a number of wineries quizzing them on web sites. We got a pretty good response and found that, on the whole, people were happy with the sites and planned to expand them. (More details below.)

If you do not have a site now, does that mean you should have one? Probably. But first, you should take stock of what you expect to accomplish with a web site, according to David Topper, the owner of Goosecross Winery in Napa. Topper is well-qualified to speak on the subject, since he spent a good many years in high-tech sales and marketing and software development. (Topper recently spoke on the subject at the Wine Industry Public Relations Seminar.)

"The usefulness of a web site is only as good as the goals you set for it," Topper said during a recent interview. "My goal for Goosecross," he added, "is to increase my label recognition and I measure my success by how many accesses I get each day."

Topper pointed out that it was important to distinguish between "hits" and "page access." "When you set up a web page you have blocks of text, graphics and photos. Let's assume two photos, one graphic and one block of text. That would be four 'hits' but only one access. Hits are an unrealistic measure of success, so I measure page access."

Topper said goals other than label recognition might be selling wine on line and increasing business-to-business communications, an area he believes is being overlooked.

"In general, people put up a web page because they believe it is the thing to do. They don't want to be considered out-of-step with what is going on, so they hire a graphic artist, write some material and toss it up on the web. They don't consider what is useful for them. If you don't have a purpose, it's just a waste of time, money and energy. You absolutely need goals and you need to be in a position to evolve or change the goal as the needs of the business change," he said.

Gaspar Magisa, a partner in The Parlor, a web design company in San Francisco, strongly agreed with Topper. "If a winery owner walked in and told me he wanted to have a web site, the first question I would ask is, 'What do you want to do with it?'"

Touching on the question of cost, Magisa said that was all over the board. "Let's compare the cost of the web site to a traditional media advertising campaign. Now that could cost you millions of dollars, right? Yet I hear people talking about doing a web site for a few hundred dollars. They say, 'Well, I know a high school student who will do my web site.' You sure don't hear Budweiser or Coca-Cola talk about hiring somebody's teenage nephew to do an ad campaign."

Magisa said if all the winery wanted was a "brochure type" site, using existing art, it could be done inexpensively, but if they got into selling product by electronic orders and keeping a data base, it could get considerably more expensive fast.

"Selling is something that should be considered," he said. "People are starting to feel more comfortable about buying merchandise on the internet. You are seeing a lot more virtual stores."

Topper agreed that the cost of a site was open. "Realistically it could cost anywhere from about $1,500 to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It all depends on how wild you get with the technology, but for a winery a website doesn't have to be an expensive endeavor. For example, the average winery shouldn't bring the server technology in-house but rent space from a server company. The technology changes and outdates itself so quickly that a winery would have a hard time keeping up."

Topper said such services start at about $300 a month. "You would pay more for a small print advertisement," he pointed out. "The servicing then would cost you about $4,000 a year, plus $1,500 to $2,000 to set up."

Topper was clearly talking about a barebones operation. Net Marketing, a web site dealing with site cost and production, gave the cost of a small web site in San Francisco as $96,500, which was the most expensive of all cities surveyed. Atlanta was the least expensive at $14,500. A large site in San Francisco would cost $465,980 and $170,000 in London. Clearly, any winery getting into a web site needs to be very clear about goals.

"The web site should be only one part of the whole business plan," Topper said. At Goosecross, that plan includes reaching out to the general public, an educational effort. "I feel that many people are intimidated about wine but are too embarrassed to ask. By putting information on the web site, consumers can learn about wine without putting themselves on the spot," Topper said.

"I use the site to inform people about things that affect them as wine consumers information about state laws, that sort of thing," he added.

"I didn't originally plan to sell wine but when I started, wine sales covered the cost of adding the sales area to the site and were showing a net profit after all expenses within 15 days," Topper said. "One of my goals is to get existing case buyers to buy from the web. It's less expensive for me to manage than using an 800 number. What I,m working on is a way to do that while maintaining the personal touch through contacts like e-mail."