Winery

Most of your sales happen in a room the website can't see

For most small and mid-sized wineries, the sale happens in person. Someone sits at the bar or out on the terrace, tastes six wines, falls for one of them, and walks out with a few bottles and maybe a club membership. The website rarely makes that sale. What it does is decide whether the person turns up at all, and whether they keep buying once they've gone home.

So plan the site around three people who show up at different times:

• The planner, who hasn't visited yet and is choosing between you and other wineries nearby.
• The returner, who has visited, liked something, and now wants to buy it again or join the club.
• The stranger, who has never visited and maybe never will, but saw your bottle on a restaurant list, got one as a gift, or works in the trade.

Most winery websites are built for a fourth person who doesn't really exist: someone with time to spare who wants to read about your family history before finding out whether you're open on Sunday. The story matters, but it belongs further down. Everything below is ordered around those three real visitors.

The weekend planner comparing you with four other wineries on the same road

The planner is often on a phone, often in a group chat, and often working out a whole day: two or three wineries, lunch somewhere, back to the rental by six. They aren't asking whether your wine is good yet. They're asking whether you fit the plan. If your site makes them dig for that, they'll move on to the winery that doesn't.

These are the questions to answer, and where possible to answer on the homepage or one tap away:

• Are you open today, and until when? Show this season's hours, not the hours from two summers ago.
• Do I need a reservation, or can we just walk in? Be honest. "Walk-ins welcome on weekdays, reservations recommended on weekends" is useful. Leaving it vague just means people get turned away at the door.
• What does a tasting cost, what's included, and is the fee waived if we buy wine?
• How long does it take?
• Can we bring the kids? The dog? A group of twelve for a birthday?
• Is there food, or can we bring our own?
• Is it accessible for someone who uses a wheelchair or can't manage gravel and steps?
• Where exactly are you, and how far is it from the nearest town? Some vineyard addresses confuse map apps, so give directions if yours does.

Remember the group. Usually one person does the planning and sends links to everyone else. A visit page that answers all of this in one place, with a clear link you can share, saves the planner from having to explain your winery over text. Photos of the actual tasting space and the view help here more than bottle shots do, because at this point people are picturing an afternoon, not a wine.

Booking that matches how you actually run the room

If you take reservations, the booking tool should reflect how the tasting room really works. If you run seated tastings at fixed times, show those slots. If big groups need a different arrangement, send them to a separate request form so they don't book six spots on the standard calendar and turn up expecting a private host. If you charge a deposit or have a cancellation policy, put it on the booking screen, not in an email afterwards.

Put a "Book a tasting" or "Plan your visit" button anywhere a planner might land: the homepage, the visit page, and the top of the experiences page. If you don't take reservations, don't show a booking button. Say clearly that walk-ins are welcome and give the hours.

The morning after: someone trying to find the bottle they liked

This visitor is worth more than they seem. They've already met you and tasted the wine. Often they can't remember what it was called. "It was the white, the second one, it had a fish on the label" is a perfectly normal way for people to remember wine.

Help them find it:

• Show a clear photo of each label in the shop. People recognise labels before they recognise names.
• Use the same wine names on the site that you use on the bottles and the tasting menu. If staff call it "the Reserve" but the site lists "2023 Estate Pinot Noir, Block 7," say both.
• Let people browse by colour and style, not only by grape or vineyard block.
• Consider a "from today's tasting menu" collection, or put a QR code on the printed menu that goes straight to those wines.

Next comes the practical bit the returner needs: can you actually ship to them? Shipping rules for alcohol depend on where the buyer lives, and some places don't allow it at all. Find out from your compliance provider or shipping partner exactly where you can send wine, and put that information near the product, before checkout. Someone who adds three bottles to the cart and is only told at the last step that you can't ship to their state will feel misled, even though it isn't your fault. If you can't ship somewhere, tell them what they can do instead: pick up at the winery, find you at a local shop, or join the mailing list for when you visit their area.

Also, show what's sold out or between vintages rather than quietly hiding it. A returner hunting for a particular wine wants to know it's gone, or that the next release is coming in spring, not wonder whether they're misremembering it.

Explaining the wine club so nobody feels ambushed

For many wineries the club matters more than individual bottle sales, and it's usually pitched in the tasting room at the moment someone is enjoying themselves. That works, but people often go home and look it up before or after they sign. If the club page is vague, they get nervous. They wonder what they actually agreed to.

Spell it out plainly:

• How many shipments a year, and roughly when.
• How many bottles in each, and whether members can choose or swap.
• The price range per shipment, including whether shipping is extra.
• What members get: discounts, free tastings, release parties, pickup events, first access to small lots.
• How to pause, skip, or cancel, in plain words.

The cancellation detail is the one wineries most often leave out, and it's the one that builds trust most. A club that's easy to leave is easier to join. If you have more than one tier, a simple side-by-side comparison works better than three separate pages.

Give existing members a login, or at least a clear way to update their card, change their address, or skip a shipment. If the only way to do that is phoning during tasting room hours, members will cancel instead.

A story with dirt under its fingernails

Every winery has an "Our Story" page, and most of them say the same thing: passion, tradition, family, terroir, a love of the land. Readers stop noticing those words. What gets read is detail no other winery could say.

Write about the specific things. Which slope the vines are on and why that matters to the wine. The year frost took half the crop and what you did about it. Why you planted a grape the neighbours thought was a mistake. Who actually makes the wine, with their name and face. How the winery started, told the way you'd tell it to a guest at the bar, not the way it would read on a plaque.

Keep it short enough to finish. A few well-chosen paragraphs and real photos (the crew at harvest, the old tractor, the winemaker's hands purple in October) do more than a long chronology. If there's a long history, put it on its own page for the people who want it, and use a short version wherever the story appears on the homepage.

The story also has a job to do. It's what turns "a nice afternoon out" into "our winery," which is the feeling that sells club memberships and repeat orders. Link from the story to the wines and the visit page so a reader who's been won over has somewhere to go next.

Wine pages that work for a first-timer and a buyer

Each wine needs a page that serves two very different readers.

The first-timer wants to know what it tastes like in normal language, what to eat with it, and whether it's worth the price. Write tasting notes a non-expert can picture: "bright and a little salty, good with oysters or a hot evening" says more to most buyers than a list of six obscure fruits. A suggested food pairing, a serving temperature, and whether it will keep in the cellar are all useful.

The second reader is a restaurant buyer, a wine shop, a journalist, or a serious collector. They want the technical details: vintage, vineyard or block, grape percentages, alcohol, production notes, how many cases were made, and any reviews or awards you have actually received. Put this in a section lower on the page or in a downloadable sheet, so it's there for those who want it without putting off everyone else.

If you sell to the trade or get press attention, a simple trade and media page is worth having: high-resolution bottle shots on a plain background, current tech sheets, a short and a long description of the winery, and a direct contact for wholesale enquiries. It saves you answering the same email over and over, and it makes it easier for someone to put your wine on their list.

Weddings, private tastings and corporate groups are a separate customer

If you host events, the person booking a wedding or a company offsite isn't a tasting room visitor. They're planning months ahead, often with a partner, a parent, or a manager who also has a say, and they're comparing venues on capacity, cost, catering, rain plans, and dates.

Give them their own section, apart from the daily visit information, so a couple researching wedding venues doesn't have to wade through tasting fees and dog policies. Show the actual spaces with capacities, what's included, whether you require particular caterers, any noise or end-time limits, and how to check availability. You don't have to publish exact prices, but saying "packages start from" or describing what affects the cost will screen out enquiries that were never going to fit. Real photos from past events, with permission, are far more convincing than staged ones.

An enquiry form that asks for the date, guest count, and type of event lets you reply with something useful instead of starting a long back-and-forth.

Age checks, shipping limits and what's actually in stock

Selling alcohol online comes with obligations that vary depending on where you and your customers are. Don't guess at them. Your ecommerce platform, payment processor, and compliance or fulfilment partner can tell you what's required for age verification, which places you can ship to, and whether an adult signature is needed on delivery. Build the site around their answers.

From the visitor's side, a few principles help. If you use an age gate, keep it to one quick click or date entry and remember the answer, so returning visitors aren't asked on every page. Show shipping limits early, not at checkout. Say whether deliveries need an adult signature, because a parcel bounced back to the depot is a bad experience that people blame on you. Keep stock levels and vintages up to date, because few things damage trust faster than selling a wine you no longer have.

Let the season set the homepage

A winery's year has a rhythm, and the homepage should follow it. In harvest season, show the harvest: photos, any events, and a note if the tasting room has changed hours or will be busier than usual. Around a release, lead with the new wine and how to get it. In the quiet months, put the reduced hours front and centre and push gifts, club sign-ups, and shipping. Before holidays, give clear cut-off dates for delivery.

The worst thing a winery homepage can do is announce an event that's already happened. It tells every visitor the site isn't maintained, and they'll start to doubt the hours too. If you can't update the homepage often, keep it simple and evergreen, and put dated content on an events page you can easily check.

Why a winery template only gets you halfway

Plenty of owners start by looking for a winery website template, and that's a reasonable place to start. Most templates come with the right parts: a big hero image, a story section, a wine list, a visit page, a shop. The problem is the order. Templates tend to open with atmosphere and story and leave the practical information for last, which is backwards for a planner on a phone deciding where to go this afternoon.

Whatever template or builder you use, rearrange it so the homepage covers your three real visitors in roughly this order:

1. A strong image of the place, with today's or this season's hours and a single clear action: book a tasting, or plan your visit.
2. A short answer to "what's a visit like": tasting format, price, walk-in policy, with a link to the full visit page.
3. Featured wines with label photos, linked to the shop, plus a note on where you ship.
4. A brief, specific taste of the story, linking to the full version.
5. The club, explained in a sentence or two, linking to the full details.
6. Events and private bookings, for those who need them.
7. Address, map, contact, and a mailing list sign-up at the bottom of every page.

Before you launch, test it the way your customers will. Hand your phone to someone who has never visited and ask them to find out whether they can bring a dog on Saturday and what a tasting costs. Then ask a regular to find and order the wine they bought last time. If either of them hesitates, that's the part to fix first.