The Last Stop Your Visitors Make Before Buying Your Wines

If you manage marketing for your winery, you may not pay much attention to your About page. But your About page is often where your users decide whether to buy your wines.

It’s time your About page started doing its job.

This article focuses on just three things:

1. 1. The reason you need to change your About page — now.
   2. The two essential things your About page must accomplish to turn visitors into customers.
   3. How to get the job done.

1. The reason you need to change your About page — now.

Winery About pages are generally modeled on those from other industries.

In those industries, they work well to establish legitimacy, authority, or experience — qualities wine consumers do not seek when shopping for wines.

If your About page follows this approach, you are doing it wrong. And it is costing you sales.

Most wine consumers don’t know what terroir tastes like. Likewise, malolactic bacteria is not a topic that gets mouths watering, nor is your alluvial soil or clones.

And your website visitors probably already believe your winemaker knows how to make wine, so you don’t need to tell them about the program at Davis.

These are not the burning questions your visitors have when turning to your About page for answers.

What’s the urgency? you ask. After all, it’s just the About page. Nobody really looks at it, right?

Wrong.

Firstly, more than half of the visitors to your website want to see the About page.

Secondly, the last page a user will view before they decide to make a purchase or to visit your tasting room is, frequently, — you guessed it — your About page.

So if your About page leaves your visitors without answers to their final questions before they can make a purchase, you just learned what your top priority is.

2. The two essential things your About page must accomplish to turn visitors into customers

As mentioned, the last page a user will view before they decide to make a purchase or if they care about you at all is, frequently, your About page.

They have seen the photos of your sloping vineyards, your rustic barn, and your trusty golden retriever, and now they want to know if they will like your wines.

So, there are two things your About page must do.

First, it should give your visitors the feeling that they have a pretty good sense of what types of wine you make. After reading your About page, your visitors should know that they’ll like your wines.

Accomplishing this can be trickier than it sounds. This is not about tasting notes and it’s not about poetic metaphors. This is about providing real-world usable descriptions of your wines in the language your visitors use and understand.

How can you know the level of wine knowledge your visitors have? How can you explain your wines to the wine novice while also satisfying the needs of the expert?

(We’ll cover the How in the next section but for now, just know that it will be one of the most important pieces of content you write for your website.)

Second, it should send your visitors to the next step in accomplishing what they want to do.

You cannot expect that your users will look for the correct link in the top navigation bar, and feel compelled to click on it.

Instead, give your users two easy options right there in the middle of the page: Buy some wine, or Schedule a Tasting.

After reading your About page, your visitors should have all their questions answered, and they should be landing on the appropriate page for their next step.

You can monitor this in Google Analytics.

We all love to hear how the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, but your About page should not be “About Chemistry”.

3. How to get the job done

Do:

Describe the wines you make in clear, simple terms anybody can understand. Words like fresh, light, robust, heavy, oaky, and fruity are words that most people can translate into a sensation in the mouth.

Additionally, there are ways to segment your audience and display different versions of your About page to different audiences.

Communicating the taste of your wines, to varied audiences, through the medium of words on a screen, is a specialized skill not possessed by all. Be prepared to dedicate significant time and concentration to this task, or hire someone to do it for you.

Don’t:

Use technical wine descriptors that require the degree from Davis you’ve been describing. Avoid leaning on terms like volcanic, minerality, clone 667, fog layer, and alluvial — few wine consumers have had the training to translate these terms into flavors.

Remember, your average wine drinker struggles to discern between fruity and sweet. Your wines page, not your About page, is where you can get crazy with jargon.

Do:

Mention your philosophy or approach to making wine if there’s a benefit for the consumer, such as making lighter-alcohol wines that are refreshing and easy to drink or if you source grape varieties capable of flavors that are different from what you find on the shelves.

Don’t:

Attempt to educate your readers about fermentation, soil science, cover crops, beneficial insects, geology, or climate. No one wants your About page to be “About Chemistry.”

Do:

Tell your winery’s story if it’s compelling, entertaining, meaningful, and helps your visitors understand and buy your wines. Otherwise, put your story on your Our Story page, and make it worth reading.

If you would like to brush up on your storytelling skills, read this post >

Don’t:

Describe your clones, fog layers, soil, hardpan, or diurnal shift. No one cares. (Feel free to include this on a page describing your vineyards, varieties, or growing practices, but keep it off your About page.)

Do:

Describe what kinds of food your readers could enjoy with your wines if it is helpful (people know what food tastes like).

Don’t:

Attempt to impress your readers by listing ingredients they’ve never heard of or have no hope of finding in the store.

Remember: your About page is for the reader. It should help them determine if your wines are the kinds of wines they like.

That’s all.

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