By Paul Mabray, CEO - Chief Strategy Officer, Inertia Beverage Group.

Welcome to another edition of the WineMarketer.com newsletter.

One of your key concerns in the growing segment of Direct to Consumer is your website. To make the most of your website, I recommend focusing on two main areas: Design and content.

Usability and UI (User Interface) studies all point to a basic pattern in how people view websites today. As a result, the most successful websites have adopted best practices when it comes to defining the location of each element on a website. One of the things UI studies have found is that typically a reader’s gaze first drops about one-third of the way down a given webpage, then jumps to the upper left corner, moves across the top of the page, and then finally floats downward in a Z pattern. (See figure 1.3.) Knowing how web visitors view a page and what information your visitors are specifically seeking, your website pages should be designed with this pattern of visual consumption in mind. The best practices suggestions we provide for the design of your website come from this basic tenet.

How Design Choices Can Make a Difference

We’ve all seen the home decorating and design shows on TV – just a few artfully and expertly made design choices can breathe new life into a room and provide pizazz. Just the same, a few careful design decisions can do the same for your web presence. As an example, here are a few design decisions we have found that can make a significant difference to the attractive appeal and performance of a web page.

- Position and color of the primary call-to-action

- Position on the page of testimonials, if used

- Whether linked elements are in text or as images

- Amount of “white space” on a page

- Position and prominence of a main heading

- Number of columns used on the page

- Number of visual elements competing for attention

- Age, sex and appearance of someone in a photo

Based on the list, it’s easy to see how the combined elements of a web page can work together to create a unified whole. And, just as some design by adding things in, where others design by taking things out, no one solution fits every situation.

The Importance of Content

Content is one of the most important parts of your website. It is how you bring your wine and your winery to life and is yet another very important way that search engines will find you. There are three things to consider when planning your content:

[1] Your subject matter – what topics will you cover? How in-depth?

[2] Your tone – what is the voice you will use to communicate to your customers and prospective customers?

[3] Keeping your site fresh – how will you keep your website up to date and worth coming back to?

The answers to these questions are highly variable and specific to your situation, but a couple of things will help guide your answers:

- Knowing your audience will help define #1

- Knowing your brand will help define #2

- Knowing your website objectives will help define #3

A Word on Your Audience

It’s important to remember that your web audience may be one or many. It’s likely your website will need to address general consumers, the press, your trade partners and your loyal customers. Thinking for each of these audiences presents a very different compilation of content relevant to each. Using the knowledge you’ve gained on how to best construct the navigational structure of your website, you should have a clear idea of where all of this content should go. Now it’s time to build that content and work on your design!

Paul Mabray, Chief Strategy Officer - Inertia Beverage

Paul Mabray has been in the wine and spirits industry all his life. Paul founded Inertia Beverage Group in 2002 with the goal of building the premier Direct Sales Services company, leveraging innovations in technology to bring Wineries and Wine Consumers closer together. Since then, Inertia has helped over 500 wine brands profitably implement Direct to Consumer and Direct to Trade initiatives.

This entry was posted by admin on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 7:56 pm and is filed under On-Site SEO, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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