More exciting news about the VinSuite Platform!

eWinery Solutions Adds Vinx2 Winemaking Software to VinSuite Platform

May 9, 2013 (Napa, California) – eWinery Solutions, architect of VinSuite, the wine industry's first comprehensive and fully integrated cloud-based business solution, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to become the exclusive North American sales agent for VINx2 Winery Software, which provides a comprehensive software solution for managing the winemaking process from grape sampling through distribution.

“VINx2 is the best in the business,” says Richard Kline, founder and CEO of eWinery Solutions.
“They have done a great job of developing a cloud-based wine production software package that manages the day-to-day operations of wine production and takes the hassle out of the complicated record keeping of our industry. It not only provides seamless information management for complex wine production processes – it also provides all the information you need for compliance and generates a wealth of management reports, charts and trends analysis. We are really excited about what they bring to the wine business and believe that it’s a critical component of our VinSuite product line.” 

eWinery Solutions Adds Vinx2 Winemaking Software to VinSuite Platform

winebusiness.com

Join eWinery Solutions, Napa Valley POS, and ShipCompliant at Sonoma State University for a discussion on the state of the wine industry today.  Focusing on the Direct to Consumer Sales segment of the industry tailored for Sonoma County, Ron Scharman President of eWinery Solutions will shine a spotlight on current trends in ecommerce technology as well as what is on the horizon for this rapidly growing arena of Direct to Consumer Wine sales.

REGISTER TODAY!

May 30^th 2013 8:30a-10a

Sonoma State University; Darwin 107

Coffee and pastries included

FREE to attend

Here is what ShipCompliant will be talking about:

• Observations from the 2013 Direct Shipping Report; a collaboration between ShipCompliant and Wines & Vines

• Recent legislation and state law changes from across the country

• The movement towards winery business intelligence (BI)

eWinery Solutions is committed to being the industry leader and providing access to the latest tools and features to streamline day-to-day activities in the wine industry.  ttp://www.ewinerysolutions.com/Careers

SALES CONSULTANT, WINEMAKING SOFTWARE
Do you have extensive knowledge of the wine making process? Have exceptional sales skills? Then join eWinery Solutions & Napa Valley POS!

eWinery Solutions and Napa Valley POS recently merge operations into a powerful new entity that can offer a full spectrum of Direct to Consumer services to the wine industry. eWinery Solutions provides a complete wine-industry specific software solution to help wineries around the world manage their DTC business from the first point of contact to extended customer interaction. Napa Valley POS has been a pioneer in POS software and its application throughout the wine industry. More than 70% of the $600M direct to consumer wine business in the USA in 2012 was with clients of eWinery Solutions or Napa Valley POS.

We attribute our success to hard work, essential insight into the global wine industry, creative development and marketing techniques, and an adherence to the core values of innovation, passion, excellence, and mutual effort. Our focus is on combining essential wine industry knowledge with leading technology to provide software solutions designed specifically for the wine industry. We believe in building strong relationships with our clients in order to further their business goals.

We are seeking an enthusiastic and self-motivated Sales Consultant who has a unique combination of skills: a winemaking background and excellent sales skills. eWinery has created a dynamic portfolio and are looking to continue our phenomenal growth by adding a cloud based winemaking software product to the line-up. The right candidate will have intimate knowledge of all parts of the wine making process as well as possesses a high standard of ethics and professionalism, and has a proven track record of making an impact on sales.

Position Responsibilities

• Develop new leads using a variety of methods including in-person winery visits, phone, soliciting referrals from existing customers & trade shows

• Give polished and comprehensive presentations and demos to customers both on-site and via online demo

• Effectively communicate the full range of available products and services offered

• Prepare and present sales proposals, negotiate contracts and close business

• Learn and understand the system feature and how it can be used in different environments acting in a consulting role to prospective customers

• Accurately enter, update, and maintain communication activity with customers and prospects in Salesforce database, including comprehensive and up-to-date client information

• Attend industry trade events and company-sponsored customer events

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience

• 5+ years of wine industry/making experience; experience direct to consumer a plus

• Customer-facing experience in sales, customer service, or professional services

• Excellent verbal and written communications skills in person, via phone and email; ability to present ideas in small and large forums

• An ability to hunt and uncover new business opportunities within your region

• A flexible self-starter who can work independently with minimal oversight

• Strong organization and prioritization skills with the ability to manage several projects simultaneously

• Ability to perform in a very dynamic environment with a high degree of initiative and motivation

• Comfortable with technology and discussing solutions to customers

• Attention to detail and focused on quality

• Proven competency using MS Office applications; Word, Excel, PowerPoint & Outlook

• Position requires travel throughout the Sonoma region and travel to headquarters in Napa, CA

 eWinery Solutions and Napa Valley POS recently merge operations into a powerful new entity that can offer a full spectrum of Direct to Consumer services to the wine industry.

SALES CONSULTANT, HEALDSBURG

• Position requires travel throughout the region and occasional travel to headquarters in Napa, CA

 We are seeking an enthusiastic and self-motivated Sales Consultant who has excellent sales skills, possesses a high standard of ethics and professionalism, and has a proven track record of making an impact. We have created a dynamic portfolio and are looking to continue our phenomenal growth into central California. This position must be a regional candidate but specific location within the central valley can vary.

Read the full job description on our website>>

Today we announce a major step forward in building a company dedicated to the future of the wine industry - the development of VinSuite - a fully-integrated winery business solution on the NetSuite software platform. NetSuite is the #1 cloud-based ERP software suite, combining accounting, CRM, inventory, and ecommerce into one system. Along with the recent merger of eWinery Solutions with Napa Valley POS, we're building a service that combines the talents and resources of two market leading companies with over 500 winery clients into one platform that will collectively drive more DTC volume than any other solutions provider in the wine industry. Why is this relevant?

Read the full blog post on our website.

We've got our "MoJoe" working!  February 2013 Newsletter is here. 

Whew! Exciting times at eWinery-NVPOS. Martin Olsen has jumped head first into his new role directing our Customer Care group. You will really start to see the fruits of his labor in the next couple of weeks, with more LIVE support, faster response times and interactive issue tracking. We are implementing a new phone system that will put all of our technical resources on the same grid, enhancing the customer experience.

Our first collaborative project, MoJoe POS, combines the tasting room expertise of Napa Valley POS with the mobility of the cloud. This is a very exciting new product that can serve as a compliment to your existing eWinery-NVPOS integration, and also a standalone POS for your tasting room or off-premise events. Stay tuned for all the details and release date.

The Digital Marketer's Guide to Selling Wine Online

Download this 38-page ebook featuring all kinds of great strategies to improve your online marketing efforts.

• Learn how to optimize your product pages
• Create more attractive newsletter signups
• Attract local tourists with local search marketing
• Use analytics to pull insight into sales activity and track website goals
• Target hungry networks of wine lovers online
• and much more!

Get your copy here

eWinery Solutions & Napa Valley POS Newsletter - January 2013

Letter from the CEO

Greetings and Happy New Year! 

 We have brought back our company newsletter and have included insights from industry experts in response to questions and suggestions many of our customers have had this past year.   I hope you will find the monthly newsletter to be informative and interesting.  2013 has started out with a rush of excitement and activity at eWinery Solutions, highlighted by our recent merger with Napa Valley POS.

I am thrilled to join forces with Martin Olsen and the NVPOS team to offer a total solution to our more than 500 combined clients, who account for over 80% of all the wine produced and sold in the U.S. If you missed the announcement about the eWinery Solutions-Napa Valley POS merger, you can read the press release here. I am particularly pleased that Martin will be managing the technology group and customer-care teams for the combined companies.

This Thursday, will be offering a glimpse of our first new product together, Mobile POS, at the Direct to Consumer show at the South San Francisco Convention Center. Leveraging Martin’s 15 years of tasting room POS experience, the Mobile POS is a serious POS device and will be fully integrated with both the eWinery and NVPOS platforms. We can now work collaboratively as one team to create the tools our customers have been asking for!

>>Continue reading

eWinery Solutions has a big year planned in 2013 and will be exhibiting at 10 tradeshows nationally.  Every year we participate as an exhibitor at industry trade show conferences and events. These venues give us an opportunity to demonstrate our latest software enhancements and innovative solutions developed exclusively for the wine industry. 

The eWinery team will be showcasing best practices in Direct to Consumer sales using our ecommerce, Wine Club Management, Mobility, Reporting and SEO solutions.  We invite our current and prospective clients to attend these events to learn more about the latest trends in the industry and meet with us personally.  www.ewinerysolutions.com/Roadshow

http://www.ewinerysolutions.com/3-hidden-traffic-sources-for-your-winery-website

Most businesses have a Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profile by now. If that's where your brand's presence ends, you're ignoring some untapped resources for traffic and exposure. The good news is that most of these require very little ongoing maintenance and will likely drive traffic to your site for years to come.

#1 - Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing site, and allows you to upload 200 pictures for free. Create a profile here, and add as many photos of your wines, vineyards, properties, and workers as you can.

Strategic tips:

• Join groups like this one for "Vines and Vineyards" and participate in the discussion. These sorts of groups provide direct access to highly targeted users.
• Tag your photos with keywords and add unique descriptions to help people and search engines find them more easily.
• Search for your brand, and leave comments on good pictures that have lots of views. You can drop a link to your website and encourage other viewers to stop by the winery.

#2 - Wineberserkers

If you work in the wine industry and have anything to do with selling or marketing wine, you need to be on this forum. If you aren't, you're missing out on the most active discussion board surrounding wine. With a ton of millenial users, its user base continues to grow, and this site is a great outlet to get free exposure and participate in relevant discussions about wine.

Strategic tips:

• Create a unique profile for your business and include as much information in the "About" section. Add links to your website and latest releases.
• Encourage your employees to create profiles and add links to your website in their signature.
• Don't be spammy. Contribute to discussions, share your experiences at other wineries, or tasting notes you might have. 

#3 - Foursquare

Foursquare is the most popular app for "check ins" and allows users to share their location with their social networks. Businesses can create profile pages and offer special deals and incentives for visitors who use the app to check in. Previously, businesses could not create a profile page, but just recently they announced a change to that. Sign up for your business profile here.

Strategic tips:

• Offer a special "2-for-1" tasting for users who check in using the app, or some other incentive to get visitors through your door.
• Add event notifications to the app, which can help extend your reach and gain more impressions for promotions.
• Add a link to your website in your profile for SEO benefits

Free eBook: "Selling wine online"  

If you are interested in learning more about these strategies, check out  this free 39-page ebook, "The Digital Marketers Guide to Selling Wine Online," written by our SEO and Analytics expert, Michael Meisner.

New blog post http://www.ewinerysolutions.com/smart-ways-redesigning-winery-website offers tips and insight into redesigning or refreshing your winery website to attract more engaged visitors. 

Almost every week, we release a new website or a redesign of an existing customer. All too often, I see the same mistakes made, usually in the name of preserving some sort of "brand identity". However, content and design are not mutually exclusive. If you want a website that's going to attract engaged visitors, and rank well in search engines, you need solid content on every page.

Here are the main reasons why people redesign their websites:

1. "We want to freshen the look/feel."
2. "We need to update our content, to be more relevant for where we are today."
3. "We have too much information on our website...we need to clean house and provide a slimmed down version."

It’s typically not until launch is around the corner that folks start asking about SEO. “Sometimes” they have serious discussions about usability.

As you’ve undoubtedly read in recent years, Google cares about the “quality” of a website. “Good looking” doesn’t have to be tossed out the window in order to incorporate SEO. You can find that perfect balance of “good looking”, “usable,” and “search engine friendly” without sacrificing your brand image.

Top mistakes on winery websites

1. No content on homepage. Instead, they have only an image slideshow, sometimes built in Flash. Since search engines can't "read" Flash content, this is effectively seen as a blank page.
2. Lacking regional focus. From the Finger Lakes in New York to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina to the Monterey region, people are always looking for general information on wine regions. Your site should capture these searches by providing useful information on things to do, sites to see, places to stay, maps, and general info.
3. Poor navigation. Use keywords as navigation labels, and to link to other pages on your site. Link text passes relevant signals to search engines; so having "2008 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon" as the clickable text is much better than just "Cabernet" when linking to a product page.
4. No blog. Every site should have a blog that's updated once each week. This provides a great outlet to build your site content, and write about a wide variety of topics to target more keywords.

Page titles and meta data

Each page on your site needs to have a unique title and description tag. These are crucial for telling users and search engines what your site is about. It's a good practice to put your brand at the end of the title, and not the beginning. Instead, 

Keyword research

When revising content on your site, start by focusing on quality keyword research and competitive analysis. Many tools (both free and paid) are available for keyword research, including Google's AdWords Tool. For more on keyword research, check out these posts:

• End Dirty SEO Keyword Research Now!
• A 6 Step Process for Keyword Research
• How to Find Profitable Keywords For Your Website

Competitive analysis

Once you know which keywords you want to target, you need to determine what it will take to compete (or if it's even feasible to try). If you determine that "travel" would be a great keyword, make sure have loads of content and links already, or have the patience to ride out the long process of building up this kind of authority.

You may want to re-think this keyword, unless your brand is already a household name. If you’d like to know how much content you – or your competitor – has around a specific topic/keyword, you can perform a “allintext:keyword site:www.example.com” search in Google to see what’s indexed.

Opensiteexplorer.org has a useful feature to compare multiple websites. I also have some great Google Drive documents that you can use. Just open them, click "make a copy" and enter your credentials (you need to sign up for a free membership at SEOmoz.org) and website information/keywords.

Multiple site authority comparison - Compare your site metrics against a few competitors.

SERP saturation comparison - shows how your site metrics compare with the top 10 ranking sites for any keyword.

Review analytics

Your Google Analytics data provides the best indication of how engaged your visitors are and bottom line data. The expression, "you don't know what you've got until it's gone," is so true for many redesign projects. There's such a rush to get the new website with the new “look/feel” live that you fail to review your analytics to see where you've been getting your traffic. This is crucial data; you need to compare your new site traffic metrics against your old one.

• Perhaps you'd want to run a ranking report for keywords before your site launch, and one a month after your new site launch?
• Perhaps you had rankings and traffic for a page that was about to disappear from your website, with the new launch?  You may want to reconsider dumping that page.
• Are your bounce rates higher or lower with the new site? What about time on site, pages per visit, and per visit values?
• Are you tracking site goals like newsletter signups, store entrances, and purchases? Did the goal URLs change? If so, you should reconcile them so you can make accurate comparisons.

Need some help?

If you have an upcoming site redesign planned, or want to refresh your existing site, get in touch with Michael Meisner. He can consult with you to create a site that moves your company in the right direction.

Email: mmeisner@ewinerysolutions.com

Phone: (707) 260-0302

If you are interested in learning more about these strategies, check out this free 39-page ebook, "The Digital Marketers Guide to Selling Wine Online," written by our SEO and Analytics expert, Michael Meisner.

You'll get secret tips, ideas, and instructions on how to improve your site. He outlines many of the strategies used in our own SEO packages and provides excellent tips and tricks that you can use to boost your website traffic. 

Download your free copy

By now you may have probably heard about Amazon getting into the wine business. Your winery can take advantage of this opportunity and have your brand available for sale with Amazon Seller Central. With ShipCompliant and eWinery Solutions you can seamlessly connect your winery to this powerful sales channel.

Below you will find details about program services and how to get started.

For a description and presentation on this new service, please email amazon@shipcompliant.com or call 303-996-2356.

ShipCompliant set up:

This service takes only minutes to setup, and will automatically connect to your Amazon Seller Central account to do the following tasks:

1. Synchronize your products with Amazon and ShipCompliant
2. Pull new sales automatically into ShipCompliant from Amazon
3. Check each order for compliance (including special 3rd party marketing rules) against your ShipCompliant account
4. Route orders to your preferred fulfillment location (in-house or 3rd party warehouse)
5. Push tracking numbers back to Amazon Seller Central to complete sales and notify consumer of shipment
6. Reconcile completed orders with your accounting and eWinery Solutions.
7. Completed orders are pulled into the eWinery Solutions admin panel via the eWinery MarketPlace integration.
8. Quarantine non-compliant orders for a period of time, then automatically cancel if unresolved

Notes about the eWinery MarketPlace Integration:

This service requires initial setup by eWinery Solutions and can be used for all ShipCompliant MarketPlace programs including Amazon, Lot 18 and Facebook Gifts. The configuration below is specifically for Amazon Wine.

1. A new member profile will be created using a unique Amazon Customer ID. All future Amazon orders will match this Customer ID and flow into this member record. At this time, orders will not match to existing customer records within eWinery Solutions.
2. Order data does not include the customer email. This is retained by Amazon.
3. Amazon Customers will be marked as Member Type = MarketPlace
4. Order Number is assigned a prefix of "AMZ" to prevent duplicate order numbers.
5. Order Type for Amazon orders will be “MarketPlaceSC”
6. Order Source for Amazon orders will be “Amazon”
7. Tender Type for Amazon orders will be “MarketPlaceSC”
8. Amazon orders cannot be refunded in eWinery Solutions. These orders must be managed in Amazon Seller Central.

Getting started

The cost of this service for eWinery Solutions customers is $350 for initial setup, plus $50/month to maintain the service. If you are interested in learning more, please contact eWinery Solutions via email at info@ewinerysolutions.com, or call (707) 260-0305.

We're proud to announce the release of our new marketing ebook, "Sell wine online: The digital marketer's guide." In this 38 page ebook, Michael Meisner shares some of his best kept secrets for promoting websites and tapping into new online audiences with - for free! 

Discover a wealth of tips to help grow your online wine business!  Get this FREE ebook with insider tips to expand your consumer-direct sales.  You’ll get a PDF with 38 pages of useful tips and strategies to help boost your sales and grow your brand awareness.

http://www.bluedogsolutions.com/sell-wine-online-ebook

Exporting wine to China via the direct-to-consumer channel is the subject of an upcoming seminar sponsored by eWinery Solutions. As wine consumption among Chinese consumers rises, so does their demand for imports of fine wine. "The China Opportunity" seminar brings panelists together to offer new ideas, insights, and solutions in how to market wines to and also educate a rapidly growing market of Chinese consumers.

The seminar includes topics led by panelists from several key players in the market. “My Wine Card” is the first-ever international CUP (China UnionPay) wine-themed gift card, focusing on high-end Chinese customers. The East West Bank will be there to explain how to facilitate financial transactions between East and West. The California Place aims to develop a multi-channel retail solution, offering ways for Chinese customers to interact with, locate, and educate themselves about California lifestyles. They also hope to promote more tourism from China into California’s wine country.

"The wine market in China has enormous potential for growth, and we’re just beginning to see the possibilities opening up." Ron Scharman, President of eWinery Solutions, noted. “We’re excited to be part of this event, and want to bring together the best organizations to develop strategic partnerships and opportunities that will benefit everyone from the consumers to the producers.”

In a two-year study of wine drinking habits in China, market analyst Wine Intelligence says over 60% of wine purchases are made by the high-spending one-third of the wine-drinking population. Much of those are considered business obligations, meaning the consumer buys wine for a special occasion based on its prestige. However, a growing number of younger Chinese consumers purchase varietals from around the world, at lower price points.

The seminar will be held at the Meadowood Resort in St. Helena on September 6, 2012 from 4-6 PM. Please feel free to bring a bottle of wine to share with fellow attendees after the seminar is finished. To learn more or sign up for the seminar, email info@thecaliforniaplace.com or call (415) 286-0522.

Create QR Codes to Streamline Mobile Wine Shopping Experience

Are you familiar with QR codes? People use their smartphone to scan them, and businesses can then point that person to a promotion page or a certain product. As mobile commerce rapidly grows and reaches a tipping point, businesses need to streamline the shopping experience for mobile devices. Our friend Rick Bakas wrote a great how-to article explaining how you can create QR codes, and use them to drive traffic to your mobile shopping cart.

Learn how to create QR codes for your mobile shopping cart

Attract More Tourists to Your Winery with Local Search Optimization

Google puts increased focus on localized search results - meaning when you search for "winery" from your computer or smartphone, a separate list appears, showing you wineries near your location. But in order to appear on that list, you need a well-optimized Google+ Local page, and uniform citations for your business address at other local websites. Our SEO and Web Analytics Specialist, Mike Meisner, wrote a great article explaining how you can take advantage of this strategy to help people find your winery.

Learn how to attract more visits to your winery with local search optimization

Simple Ways to Connect with Local Customers via Twitter

What if you could find potential customers who are near your winery in real time? You could connect with people in the area looking for winery recommendations, and other relevant information that might lead them to your business. With these tips and free resources, plus a little creativity, you'll have a fully-booked tasting room every day of the week!

Learn how to use Twitter to drive tourists to your wine tasting room

FREE: Request a complementary analysis of your site, with personal review of how to improve your SEO and boost traffic.

Request your free site audit report today

Sell more direct!  in the tasting room and beyond

Presented by eWinery Solutions and Napa Valley POS

Customers find your winery in many ways, are you targeting them effectively?

Learn to manage the direct-to-consumer relationship across all points of contact.

Seminar Details

Date:           Thursday, July 26, 2012

Location:   Justin Winery
                    11680 Chimney Rock Road
                    Paso Robles, CA 93446

Schedule:    9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
                    Coffee & Pastries included

Fee: FREE!
Seating is limited - first come first served

RSVP:  REGISTER NOW

or email: daniel@ewinerysolutions.com

How does your customer perceive your brand:

• On your website?
• In your tasting room?
• In social media?
• Through marketing?

Do you have the proper resources to engage your customers in the tasting room and beyond?  We have the tools you need to build long lasting relationships and drive sales.

Join us for a top-level overview of eWinery Solutions and Napa Valley POS software.  Experience the powerful integration and extensive features that will improve your DTC sales.

Come join us, be sure and register today!

We look forward to seeing you there.

Use these reports to make smarter marketing decisions and increase consumer direct online sales.

Do you need highly actionable insights into where your strongest online sales channels come from? eWinery Solutions integrates with Google Analytics to track eCommerce activity on your website; take advantage of this information to grow your online sales, understand customer behavior, and measure your marketing campaigns. With consumer direct sales rapidly climbing, your website serves as an increasingly important marketing tool, and these reports will help you understand how to convert more visitors into buyers.

The revenue dashboard provides an overview of transaction performance, and makes for a good place to begin investigating which sources generate sales. We measure revenue performance across a number of dimensions, some of which include:

• Traffic sources (email, referring sites, organic search, paid advertising, social)
• Branded and non-branded keywords
• Geographical location
• Time of day

Get the revenue dashboard here

The eCommerce Traffic Report

This custom report provides more detailed information about your top revenue channels, and shows important metrics like the % of new visitors, and per visit value. You can drill down into each segment to find out more information, like specific keywords and referring site URLs.

Get the eCommerce traffic report here

What can you learn from this?

You might find a certain referring site only sent a couple visits, but those visitors converted at 10x the site average. Perhaps your email campaigns convert way better at a certain time of day, and from specific geographical locations. Or that certain landing pages perform especially well.

Want more?

We have all sorts of custom dashboards and reports that provide insights about everything from mobile eCommerce and social media to general site usage and email campaign performance. If you're interested in learning more, or need some help setting these reports up, feel free to contact me.

Be sure to sign up for our Basic SEO Strategy webinar, on Wednesday, July 11, 2012 at 10:00am PDT. Learn best practices for creating meta tags, doing keyword research, and other useful tips that you can implement to boost consumer direct online sales.

 Join us for a Webinar on July 11, 2012              

Choosing the right keywords can increase your site traffic, and bring qualified visitors who are ready to buy. This webinar covers essential strategies to optimize your website to rank in Google for target keywords. Includes tips and best practices that anybody can quickly implement. Learn how to perform basic keyword research, evaluate competition, and build an seo-friendly site.

Title:    5 Ways to Optimize Keywords for your Website

Date:   Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Time:  10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

REGISTER NOW!
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/239563953

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

 System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

 Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/239563953

Michael Meisner
SEO & Web Analytics Consultant
mmeisner@ewinerysolutions.com
(707) 260-0302

Sell more direct!  in the tasting room and beyond

Presented by eWinery Solutions and Napa Valley POS

Customers find your winery in many ways, are you targeting them effectively?

Learn to manage the direct-to-consumer relationship across all points of contact.

Seminar Details (9:00 AM - 12:00 PM)

Date:                May 10, 2012

Location:        Andis Wines
                         11000 Shendandoah Road
                         Plymouth, CA 95669

Schedule:       9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
                         Coffee & Pastries included

Fee:  FREE!
seating is limited - first come first served

RSVP: Phone (707) 260-0305
daniel@ewinerysolutions.com

________________________________

How does your customer perceive your brand:

• On your website?
• In your tasting room?
• In social media?
• Through marketing?

Do you have the proper resources to engage your customers in the tasting room and beyond? We have the tools you need to build long lasting relationships and drive sales.

Join us for a top-level overview of eWinery Solutions and Napa Valley POS software. Experience the powerful integration and extensive features that will improve your DTC sales.

Plus a chance to win an iPad!


Call or email us today! We look forward to seeing you there.

We are offering free site audit reports to anyone who wants to learn how to make their website more attractive to search engines and improve the user experience. You'll receive a 20 page PDF report that gives you a score and a breakdown of how well your website performs in search engines, social media, and more. Use this report as a guide to improve your site, and make it more search engine friendly. We will happily review it with you, and make suggestions that will help your site attract more traffic, which in turn will translate to more sales!

Your website is a first point of contact for many of your customers and prospective visitors to your winery. If they are searching on Google for wineries in your local area, and you don't show up on page one, you're probably missing out on a good number of visitors to both your website and winery. It's important to address basic problems on your site, and make it more appealing to both search engines and users. These are the first critical steps you must take before starting any other online marketing efforts.

Visit http://www.ewinerysolutions.com/seo-audit to request your report.

I'm always surprised when I take a look at a winery website and notice all the things they should be doing to gain traffic into their site. Your website should attract visitors from all over - people who are looking for a winery to visit, looking for your wines to buy, or something else relevant to your winery like a private event or wedding venue. Most wineries seem to rank only for their brand name, and don't draw much traffic from non-branded terms.

1. Optimize for non-branded terms

One of your main goals should be to attract visitors to your website who may not be familiar with your brand yet. When people search for something like "Calistoga winery" or "Wineries in Calistoga", chances are they don't know the names of many wineries there. If you own a winery in Calistoga, wouldn't it be great if you could attract visitors to your site for these sorts of terms? If someone is searching for your brand, they're already familiar with you, whereas if they search for something like "Calistoga winery" they're probably planning a visit and would like to find which wineries are located there.

It helps to think about what defines your winery. Consider the following:

• Varieties you produce
• Appellations you're part of
• Vineyards your grapes come from
• Other aspects, like picnics, weddings, rentals, cave tours

V. Sattui has done a great job optimizing this page for their picnics. Since a lot of people search for wineries that allow picnics, they made a page to target those searches. Notice the title of their page says "Napa picnic area - picnics in Napa Valley" and also how they use headings and copy that includes variations of those phrases. A little keyword research can go a long way, and you will need to adjust your copy to include the phrases that you're optimizing.

2. Carefully construct your meta tags

Your meta tags include the page title, description, and keywords. You should focus on writing a good title and description; the keywords tag does not carry much value anymore after being abused for so many years. The title and descriptions should address the user first, and be readable and meaningful. Do not simply stuff a bunch of keywords in there, as these will show up in search results.

The title will be the clickable link that appears in search results, and the description is the text that shows up under the listing. Therefore, you want to be sure that the writing conveys something to the visitor.

3. Build more links into your site

If gasoline powers engines, then backlinks power rankings. You'll want to build links from other site into yours. This is perhaps the most influential factor when it comes to ranking your site well. A link into your site counts as a vote of importance, and you want a lot of votes. A quality link not only boosts your rankings, but can also drive traffic to your site from the clicks it receives. Links come in all sorts of varieties. Here are a few ideas that you can get started with:

• Create social profiles. Sites like Snooth, Wine Berserkers, and many others allow you to sign up and create a user profile. In that profile, you can add a link to your website.
• Build a Wikipedia page. Anyone can edit and add a Wikipedia page, just like Chateau Montelena has done here
• Drop links on Twitter and Facebook. Search engines love to see backlinks from social sites, as it's an indication that people are chatting about you.
• Comment on blogs. Do a Google blog search for your winery, or some of your varieties and chances are you'll find a wine blogger reviewed your wine. Usually they allow you to comment. Not only is this a good way to "touch" your audience, but you can add a link to your site.

4. Guest blogging

Guest blogging offers a great way to reach new audiences. With so many wine bloggers out there, you have abundant opportunities to reach out to them and see if they'll allow you to post something. You don't want to simply write about your winery either. Take a topic, like the demise of Merlot popularity, and write about while framing it in your winery's context. If you make an excellent Merlot, like Gundlach Bundschu does, you can easily spin the article so that it's both interesting and relevant to your winery.

To find some guest blogging opportunities, use some of these search operators in Google:

• Guest Post “keyword”
• Write for us “keyword”
• “keyword” submit guest post
• “keyword” submit a post
• “keyword” guest blogging
• “keyword” guest blogger

5. Video Marketing

Video sharing sites continue to rise in popularity. If you can create a small promo video, you can upload it to sites like Youtube and Vimeo, and also use it to promote in emails or on your own website. Gundlach Bundschu put together a great video on the history of Merlot, which went viral and has received almost 25k views in just a few weeks. Obviously they put some work and thought into it, but it goes to show that a little creativity can really help when trying to generate a buzz.

Effective SEO strategies harness the power of the internet to drive traffic to your website, establish customer relationships, and build trust in your brand. Modern marketing strategies require you to leverage search engines, social networks, and content publishers to build your online reputation and attract new customers. It's crucial that you understand how to optimize your site, and realize the rewards of doing so.

eWinery Solutions provides SEO services to help drive visitors to your site and expose your brand to new faces. Visit their site to request a free site audit, and receive an hour of consultation at no charge.

Search Engine Optimization

Your site exists. But can it be found? Where are you?

Search for some of your wines on Google. Did your website come up as the #1 result? #2? #3? What about if you searched for “Sonoma Winery”? Or “Napa Cabernet”? Are you now in the top three results? If so, perhaps you don’t need to read the rest of this email. Just go back to what you were doing, sorry for the interruption.

BUT if your top search results did not include you, or even worse, showed your competitor, then your website definitely needs a touchup. People searched for Sonoma Winery 49,500 times last month. They found something. Was it you they found? Napa Cabernet received 27,100 searches. It was your wine they saw, we hope. Search for a few terms about your region. What happened? Try grape varieties. Were you on top? Or try these or something appropriate for you: Napa Winery Tour (searched 22,200 times last month), Geyserville winery (720), Russian River Pinot (5,400). You get the point. How high up were you ranked?

Remember that 60% of clicks on search come from the 1st three results! Just being on the first page is really not good enough. What you need is an inbound marketing strategy focusing on Search Engine Optimization. Think of this as content + social media + links = SEO.

•  Content is what’s on your website. Your wines, your story, your vineyards, your staff, your tasting room, your dog, etc.

• Social Media is Facebook, Twitter, You-Tube, Pinterest, and all those others you keep saying you need to join, but never get around to it.

• Linksto you on other sites, blogs, social media are a great source of pride yes, but sales too, especially if they help you rank higher.

Search Engine Optimization is all this plus keywords and descriptions that you enter on your site.

These work together to get you and your wines on top of your competitors and their wines.

Add to this mix eWinery Solutions and top SEO inbound marketing expert Mike Meisner, and soon you won’t have a moment to yourself. You’ll be far too busy filling orders.

Here’s what we can do for you:

• Help you increase your brand exposure with strong social media interaction, efficient use of search engine marketing, blogging, and informative content.

• Showcase your brand to more people, thereby increasing your sales and boosting your conversion rates.

• Using a metrics-based approach we will help you understand the quality of visits and measure campaign effectiveness.

•  We will create campaigns that result in more foot traffic, calls for inquiry, wine sales, and wine club signups.

Compared to buying ads (called Outbound Marketing), SEO or Inbound Marketing costs less, far less, and is better targeted, is very accessible to small and medium-size businesses, offers a higher close rate, and fosters trust. All of these lead to more customers and improves your bottom line.

Call Mike Meisner at eWinery Solutions today at 707-260-0302 or write to mmeisner@ewinerysolutions.com and get started with a free site audit now!

A complete business intelligence solution at your fingertips

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"Within one system we will be able to pull data from our tasting room, wine club, ecommerce and telemarketing channels and create customized reports and do predictive analytics to support targeted cross-marketing programs to all our customers."

Napa, CA (PRWEB) January 23, 2012

eWinery Solutions, the industry leader in fully integrated business platform solutions for the wine industry, announced the launch of their new Business Intelligence “BI” Reporting. The new functionality will help sales and marketing staff at wineries and wine retailers obtain real-time access to business critical data. Powered by Information Builders’ suite of Business Intelligence solutions, BI Reporting delivers key point-of-sale, ecommerce, club member, inventory, CRM, and telesales information when it's needed most; whether in the office or remotely via a mobile device.

Dick Kline, founder and CEO of eWinery Solutions, has seen the complexity of reporting needs evolve as multiple integrated partners shared common customer data. “Our clients need enhanced reporting tools that go beyond just creating a dashboard of static reports that look pretty. They need in-depth analytics on all facets of their consumer direct business. By partnering with Information Builders, we’re bringing best-of-breed business intelligence to the wine industry. Helping our clients do business better is what we’re all about.”

eWinery Solutions BI Reporting includes over a dozen standard reports that can all be used “out of the box” or tailored by the user. A library of over 50 charts and graphs are available for each report to give clients a “business at a glance” overview as well as an in-depth look into their sales, customer records, and clubs. Reports can be created in HTML, PDF, Excel or Flash format. All of the reports allow for customizable date ranges, comparative time period evaluation, and exporting of data to Excel for further analysis.

Features and Benefits 

•     View data from multiple vendors (such as Napa Valley POS, VinoVisit, and others). Data is available from any vendor utilizing eWinery Solutions API’s.
•     Date ranges are customizable so that wineries can see trends and create projections based on the information that is most relevant to their businesses. For example, a winery may choose to measure:

o    Total sales and top performing products on an annual basis 
o    Wine club signups and cancellations on a quarterly basis 
o    Number of orders and conversion rates on a monthly basis 

•     Full mobile version. View all of your reports from your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. Each screen has been optimized for mobile viewing.
•     Save and distribute a report in a number of formats.
•     Actionable alerts highlight areas where attention is needed (i.e. orders stuck at fulfillment).
•     The data behind all reports can be downloaded for further analysis.

Matt Wood, Estate Director of Domaine Chandon and Newton Vineyard, has been a longstanding proponent for better business intelligence software for the wine industry. "This addition of strong BI tools to the eWinery Solutions platform is key to executing focused 360 degree CRM strategies to drive consumer direct sales", said Wood. "Within one system we will be able to pull data from our tasting room, wine club, ecommerce and telemarketing channels and create customized reports and do predictive analytics to support targeted cross-marketing programs to all our customers."

About eWinery Solutions

eWinery Solutions is the market leader in developing and implementing comprehensive business solutions exclusively for the wine industry. Our integrated business platform connects wineries with consumers through our advanced technology, professional services and extensive industry and retail experience. Founded in 2003, the company now serves more than 350 clients in the U.S. and major wine producing regions of the world, with more than 400 websites operating utilizing the company’s proprietary technology and services.

The company employs 30 staff members in its Napa headquarters and satellite offices in Nevada City, California and New York City. Additional information on the company and management, including a list of major clients, can be found on the company website at http://www.ewinerysolutions.com.

About Information Builders

Information Builders provides software and services that bring smarter decision-making and streamlined processes to leading organizations in business, government, and education worldwide. The company’s software is installed in tens of thousands of locations, servicing millions of users. Its WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform delivers massively scalable information applications, analytics, and customer-facing portals to the new generation of information users to deliver game-changing business results. Its iWay Software integration platform allows enterprises to leverage all of their information resources to streamline internal and business-to-business processes while escalating the overall accessibility and integrity of information regardless of environmental complexity. Headquartered in New York City with 60 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,350 people and has established significant industry partnerships. Visit Information Builders at informationbuilders.com. For ongoing news, go to informationbuilders.com/new or follow Information Builders at @infobldrs.

The most secure, integrated ecommerce platform in the Wine Industry

 Napa, California (PRWEB) January 12, 2012

01.12.2012– eWinery Solutions, the industry leader in fully integrated business platform solutions for the wine industry, announced today it has received Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard certification (PCI-DSS) for its consumer direct software platform. eWinery Solutions is responsible for securing information for millions of credit card members every year. PCI-DSS certification confirms eWinery Solutions has met security requirements for increased controls of consumer data providing enhanced protection from credit card fraud.

The eWinery Solutions business platform is the first fully integrated ecommerce platform in the wine industry to achieve PCI Compliance Certification. The PCI Standard is the result of a collaborative effort formed by the five major credit card companies (Visa International, MasterCard Worldwide, American Express, Discover Financial Services and JCB) to cultivate a well-organized methodology for protecting sensitive payment and consumer data in an effort to prevent electronic payment fraud. All merchants, entities and software solutions that process, store or disseminate electronic payment data must be PCI- DSS compliant.

“Our clients trust us with their consumers’ sensitive credit card data. As the wine industry’s leading integrated consumer direct business platform, it’s mission critical for us to protect that data every moment of every day. We’ve worked hard to achieve PCI Compliance Certification, because without data security for our clients and their consumers, nothing else matters.” said Dick Kline, Founder and CEO of eWinery Solutions.

 Michael Grow, Chief Technology Officer for eWinery Solutions said the assessment vendor, K3DES, was a great asset in the process. "We felt strongly about using an outside Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) to ensure our systems held up to the most rigorous scrutiny possible.This same level of scrutiny is just not achievable with self-certification using non-qualified staff. We want to thank K3DES and their diligent auditors for their incredibly thorough examination of our advanced systems and protocols.”

K3DES is approved by the PCI Security Standards Council as a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) and is an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV), sanctioned to audit, provide the attestation of compliance and perform the quarterly perimeter network vulnerability scans required by PCI.

“We’d also like to thank our clients for their support during the process of attaining PCI Compliance Certification,” Grow said, “We’re fortunate to enjoy such collaborative partnerships.”

About eWinery Solutions

eWinery Solutions is the market leader in developing and implementing comprehensive business solutions exclusively for the wine industry. Our integrated business platform connects wineries with consumers through our advanced technology, professional services and extensive industry and retail experience. Founded in 2003, the company now serves more than 400 clients in the U.S. and major wine producing regions of the world utilizing the company’s proprietary technology and services.The company employs 30 staff members in its Napa headquarters and satellite office in Nevada City, California. Additional information on the company and management, including a list of major clients, can be found on the company website at http://www.ewinerysolutions.com.

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www.ewinerymobile.com is where a winery needs to go to find out all about this new and very exciting technology and how it will immensely benefit them. Here a winery will learn what is the difference between a website and a mobile site, and will learn what to do and what not to do. eWinery Solutions is now building mobile sites for those of their 400 clients who want one.

eWinery Mobile is a streamlined, customer centric software solution that is fully integrated into the eWinery Solutions admin panel.  eWinery users will be able to update content and  member data through new admin panel functionality.  Rather than needing to build, maintain and host a mobile solution with a separate service provider, eWinery Mobile allows you to operate within the rapidly expanding mobile phone sales channel utilizing the same eWinery Solutions tools you have at your fingertips today.

With eWinery Mobile, all orders placed on a mobile device will be processed (including real-time compliance checking) and reported as a Mobile transaction in your Admin Panel.

Contact us at mobile@ewinerysolutions.com  to reserve your mobile website.

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