A beautiful website is important, particularly in the wine industry, where photography, design and storytelling play such a significant role in how customers experience a brand. But a winery website needs to do more than look good.
It should make it easy for customers to discover your wines, understand your story, purchase online, join your Wine Club and find the information they're looking for. And while a complete website redesign might sometimes be necessary, there are often plenty of smaller improvements that can make an existing website work harder.
Here are seven things I'd look at when reviewing a winery website.
1. Is it immediately clear what makes your winery different?
When someone lands on your homepage, they should get a pretty good idea of who you are and what you do. That doesn't mean you need to explain your entire history above the fold, but your winery name, location and what makes you different should be reasonably clear.
Are you a small family-owned producer? Do you specialise in cool-climate Riesling? Are you certified organic? Do you make wines exclusively from your estate vineyard? Whatever your story, give people a reason to keep exploring.
Beautiful photography can do a lot of the heavy lifting, but don't forget the words.
2. Is it easy to buy wine?
This is probably the most obvious one, but it's also one of the most important. If someone visits your website wanting to buy wine, how quickly can they do it? I'd check:
Is the wine shop easy to find from the main menu?
Can customers browse by variety, range or style?
Are prices and bottle sizes clear?
Is shipping information easy to find?
Are sold-out wines handled sensibly?
Does the checkout work properly on mobile?
I'd also pay attention to product pages. Tasting notes are great, but customers might also want to know about food pairings, cellaring potential, vineyard origin and what makes that particular wine special.
You don't need to write an essay about every bottle, but give people enough information to feel confident about buying.
3. Does your website work properly on mobile?
This deserves its own section because it's so important.
It's easy to spend hours perfecting the desktop version of a website, particularly when you're working with beautiful wine photography, but plenty of your customers will be visiting on their phones — and things that look fantastic on a large screen don't always translate.
Headings can become enormous, buttons disappear below images, pop-ups take over the screen and product grids become difficult to navigate.
I'd recommend going through your website on your phone as though you'd never seen it before. Try finding a wine, adding it to your cart, checking shipping and completing the checkout process. If anything feels frustrating, it's probably worth fixing.
4. Is your Wine Club easy to find?
For many wineries, the Wine Club is one of the most valuable parts of the business.
I'd make sure your Wine Club has a dedicated page that clearly explains how membership works, what it costs and why someone should join. And if your customer can’t access this page within 1 click from first visiting your website, you’ve potentially already lost them.
Don't forget to check the actual sign-up process — a gorgeous Wine Club page doesn't mean much if customers get stuck halfway through joining.
5. Are you encouraging visitors to join your mailing list?
Not everyone who visits your website will be ready to purchase.
An email sign-up form gives you an opportunity to continue the conversation, introduce your wines and encourage future visits. Rather than simply asking visitors to “Subscribe to our newsletter”, explain what they'll receive. That might include first access to new releases, winery news, event invitations or occasional subscriber offers.
Make sure your sign-up forms are connected to your email marketing platform and collect the appropriate consent. And once someone subscribes, make sure you've got a welcome email ready to introduce them to the winery.
6. Is your website connected to the right systems?
This is the less glamorous side of website design, but it's incredibly important.
Your website might need to communicate with your email marketing platform, Wine Club app, POS, shipping provider and analytics tools. If those systems aren't connected properly, you can end up with all sorts of problems.
Customers receiving the wrong discounts, inaccurate stock levels, missing purchase data or email automations that never trigger.
If you're using Shopify, it's worth reviewing your installed apps and integrations from time to time. Are they all still needed? Are they working correctly? Are you paying for anything you no longer use?
Sometimes a good tidy-up can make a surprisingly big difference.
7. Do you know what's actually working?
It's hard to improve something if you don't know how it's performing.
At a minimum, I'd recommend having Google Analytics and Google Search Console set up correctly. These tools can help you understand how people find your website, which pages they visit and where opportunities might exist.
If you're using Shopify, your store analytics can also provide useful insights into sales, conversion rates, average order value and returning customers.
You don't need to become obsessed with every metric, but knowing which pages are attracting visitors, where people are dropping off and how your online shop is performing can help you make much better decisions.
Let your website do the heavy lifting
I think winery websites are particularly interesting because they have so many jobs to do.
They need to tell a story, showcase the wines, encourage cellar door visits, support Wine Club memberships and make online shopping easy. That's quite a lot to ask of one website!
But with the right structure, content and systems behind it, your website can become a really valuable part of your business.
Need a fresh pair of eyes on your winery website?
I work with wineries across Australia and New Zealand on Shopify website design, optimisation, Wine Club experiences and eCommerce strategy.
Get in touch to discuss a website review or digital optimisation project.
