ThePortForum.com

Posted: **00:22 Sun 28 Jul 2013**

Christopher wrote:Very interesting Julian!
One you missed is Niepoort. I really like the website and the app. They have a simple but stylish front page that allows you to click through straight away to what you want, technical information on the specific vintages fully up to date, harvest reports or news etc
They also generally include production numbers on each vintage, certainly the more recent ones which I find interesting.

+1. Niepoorts website and app are easy to use and have lots of tech info. By far one of the best.

Posted: **08:15 Sun 28 Jul 2013**

Christopher wrote:One you missed is Niepoort. I really like the website and the app.

Quite right added to the list. Thank you.

But what ‟app”?

Posted: **08:18 Sun 28 Jul 2013**

For each of the Hall of Shame entrants, should I write to webmaster@, pointing to that post?

Edit: that post slightly expanded. My politeness seems to be diminishing.

Posted: **08:43 Sun 28 Jul 2013**

jdaw1 wrote:For each of the Hall of Shame entrants, should I write to webmaster@, pointing to that post?

Yes.

jdaw1 wrote:My politeness seems to be diminishing.

The message needs to hit home. Politeness sometimes doesn't have that effect.

Posted: **09:58 Sun 28 Jul 2013**

jdaw1 wrote:
Christopher wrote:One you missed is Niepoort. I really like the website and the app.
Quite right added to the list. Thank you.

But what ‟app”?

They have a very good iPhone app, containing data on all their wines and ports. So an extra gold star to them.
(Not aware of an Android equivalent.)

Posted: **13:12 Sun 28 Jul 2013**

djewesbury wrote:They have a very good iPhone app, containing data on all their wines and ports. So an extra gold star to them.
(Not aware of an Android equivalent.)

I am an Android user and this is one of my pet bugbears. Companies that don't look beyond iPhone and yet Android is the growing market.

Posted: **15:19 Sun 28 Jul 2013**

benread wrote:Companies that don't look beyond iPhone and yet Android is the growing market.

iPhone development is easier than Android due to fewer platforms. That often outweighs the fact that it also reaches fewer potential customers.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Posted: **21:06 Tue 15 Jul 2014**

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=79367#p79367]Here[/url] AW77 wrote:Noval declared the 2012 last week. 1000 cases were made. More:
http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2014/07/ ... 12-vintage

Fabulous — we love declarations. What details have been put on QuintaDoNoval.com? Err, none. At least there is mention of the 2011, even if the picture is of 2008. Really — what a shambles.

Posted: **07:52 Wed 16 Jul 2014**

jdaw1 wrote:Fabulous — we love declarations. What details have been put on QuintaDoNoval.com? Err, none. At least there is mention of the 2011, even if the picture is of 2008. Really — what a shambles.

There is at least an announcement on Christian Seely's blog.

Posted: **16:16 Thu 17 Jul 2014**

And I've just received copies of the marketing launch. I'll post some details over the weekend.

Posted: **22:11 Thu 17 Jul 2014**

Looking at the earlier posts on this thread I see a lot of apologies along the lines of 'we are port wonks and our needs are different'.

Well no, I do not agree with this. There may be a big tranche of port buyers out there for the vintage wines who will often and randomly spend £50 and more a bottle on a wine they keep for twenty years but I've never met any of them. Or even for the SQVPs at around £30 a bottle, or the tawnies of greater or lesser age.

Wine buyers at these levels are not stupid and do their research, if not on company sites then on sites like these or in books. I have never used the producers sites as they bore me and contain very little of relavence to me. There may be honourable exceptions, but I've never got past the first blizzard of nonsense which always greets one on entering the site.

Top marks Julian for pointing this out, apologies that this has mostly been said already.

Posted: **11:52 Mon 27 Oct 2014**

In and email dated 22 Oct 2014, The Don wrote:
Sandeman launches its new website

The House of Sandeman is pleased to announce that its new website is already available. Beyond a new version of the brand’s website, this represents an entirely new online and social media approach.

With the launch of the new website, Sandeman creates an online source of all its relevant information, from new products, to prestigious awards or clippings in general, which will be all presented in first hand. At the same time, it will also gather all Sandeman’s social activity, from facebook, twitter, youtube and even Instagram, where we challenge our clients, consumers and friends to upload their best Sandeman photos.

One other innovation is its convenient responsiveness to different platforms, which makes our website accessible not only from desktop computers but also mobile phones and all types of tablets. Additionally, the new section Enjoy Life will assist you in making the most of the special yet daily moments of your life.

Worth mentioning the appealing mode how Sandeman’s portfolio is now displayed, offering tempting and innovative consumption ways and moments.

Visit us at www.sandeman.com

Posted: **15:54 Mon 27 Oct 2014**

Cask 33 sounds exciting. This is the future of port websites.

Posted: **11:49 Thu 13 Nov 2014**

How do you like Sandeman's new website? I see an effort in activating it in social platforms and their decent portfolio presentation...

Posted: **13:11 Fri 14 Nov 2014**

FLOG wrote:How do you like Sandeman's new website? I see an effort in activating it in social platforms and their decent portfolio presentation...

I assume you mean this website?

Interestingly, at work I use Internet Explorer 8 and I cannot get past the age check so I can't comment on the website.

I am all in favour of port producers announcing updates and changes to their websites via forums and social media. We like reading about port and may not see an update or a change for many weeks or months without announcements like yours, so thank you for posting.

And can I ask in what capacity you'd like feedback on the new website? Are you involved in writing it or maintaining it? Are you part of Sogrape's marketing team? Or are you just a Sogrape employee who is passionate about Port (like all of us here are) and want to spread the word. Knowing your reason for asking how we like the new website helps us to know how to answer your question on how we like it.

My first piece of feedback is - I don't know. It doesn't work with IE8!

Posted: **16:00 Fri 14 Nov 2014**

FLOG wrote:How do you like Sandeman's new website? I see an effort in activating it in social platforms and their decent portfolio presentation...

Here is my feedback...

The boxes with what appear to be Tweets from people are utterly annoying and clutter the website when trying to find legitimate information I am trying to seek. Please remove them.

For me it's a bit graphic heavy but loads relatively quickly, which is good. However, clicking on the short one or two line sentences to get to the next sentence in the story about the history of the House is annoying. It's also could use far more detail than just a few lines of history, where I then have to go to the next section to keep reading about the history. Can it please just be all in one place where I can quickly and easily read about the company's history in some detail?

Posted: **17:27 Fri 14 Nov 2014**

It has lots of heavy graphics, beautifully presented, that are utterly unsuited to the web.

Starting at the front page, it takes three clicks to reach Sandeman Porto Vintage. Why do I need to click on “Description” to reach two low-fact sentences. Then I have to click “Back” to reach the buttons. At least “Tasting” has some content, even if in a hard-to-read typeface. “Back again”, and to the next.

If you have thin content, don’t make the reader work to get to it. Lots of clicks are fine if each click leads to lots of information. It doesn’t.

Let me summarise. Sogrape commissioned a new website. It didn’t know what it wanted, so vaguely waved hands in the crucial meeting. The contractor has done lots of polished bells and whistles to justify charging a fortune. Nobody thought about the user. Typical example of a website that pleases PR but users hate and from which users quickly click away. A website expensively designed for command-W/control-W.

Solution. Start again. Start with pen and paper. Write pages of well-written well-considered content. The stuff that you might tell your importers. Design the organisation with pen and paper, writing boxes and arrows. Implement that cleanly and unfussily (which would have the extra merit of working on every browser on every OS on every hardware). It would be more work — because real content is work — and a lot less money.

(You did ask, and you did ask in this thread in which I have been as blunt about other websites.)

Posted: **23:02 Sat 15 Nov 2014**

FLOG wrote:How do you like Sandeman's new website? I see an effort in activating it in social platforms and their decent portfolio presentation...

It looks very nice. It is largely content free. I do not need I feel I need advice about what to drink when asking for a pay rise or sealing a deal. I may of course be the wrong demographic. Julian makes good points about content, this does look as though it was made by people who liked web design rather than port. It is all rather incomprehensible. Being sold a lifestyle is starting to look a bit frayed round the edges, as is the shoehorning of port into various unlikely settings. Less bothered by the twitter stuff than others.

Look on the bright side, Sandeman make lovely port, I'm drinking the 09 LBV. Bit of a beast but very good.

Posted: **23:08 Sat 15 Nov 2014**

jdaw1 wrote:It has lots of heavy graphics, beautifully presented, that are utterly unsuited to the web.

Start again.

A potential customer is standing in Oddbins. Oh look, Quinta do Vau 1988! What’s that? What does it taste like? Is that the same as the Sandeman Vau 2000 also being sold by Oddbins? The new website is a disaster on a phone (if it works at all), and says little-to-nothing useful. Whilst PR are swooning at the website designer’s 27″ screen, the customer — sorry, potential customer — has closed that tab and is finding useful stuff elsewhere.

Sandeman make some lovely Port. A potential customer might learn that on

, but not on Sandeman’s over-scripted under-contented website. Start again.

Posted: **01:15 Sun 16 Nov 2014**

Don't try it from a mobile. I just did and it's 10 times worse to try and navigate and slow download due to heavy graphics. I love Sandeman Ports but the website needs a total do over.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Posted: **23:20 Fri 29 May 2015**

What is it with these people? I’m most of half a century old: is that why I fail to understand the rank stupidity of modern webmasters? When I was young, nobody would start with a perfectly reasonable website, and then delete most of the content. For various reasons, the more tiresome of which need not be mentioned, it just wasn’t done.

So, Davy’s had a good website. It had content about each location. Ahh, actual content! So last season. So passé. Nobody is still wearing that, darling. Now there is a new website, all sparkly and clean and doubtless £££ of money that once belonged to customers, which now has this little about the B&F.

(Please do praise my self-restraint: I haven’t ranted about the inconsistent presentation of phone numbers. Though I should — there’s so little other content on which to comment.)

Posted: **23:47 Fri 29 May 2015**

Presumably you didn't follow the links to this?

Posted: **08:32 Sat 30 May 2015**

DRT wrote:Presumably you didn't follow the links to this?

So what was a website, each location having a page with its own link, has become a six-megabyte PDF. Forget mobile-friendly: that’s not even desktop-friendly.

(No, link not seen. Was it hidden by a script?)

Posted: **08:49 Sat 30 May 2015**

jdaw1 wrote:... is that why I fail to understand the rank stupidity of modern webmasters?

Someone at Davy's has got carried away with Wordpress I think.

Posted: **09:52 Sat 30 May 2015**

jdaw1 wrote:
DRT wrote:Presumably you didn't follow the links to this?
So what was a website, each location having a page with its own link, has become a six-megabyte PDF. Forget mobile-friendly: that’s not even desktop-friendly.

(No, link not seen. Was it hidden by a script?)

I am not defending the method, simply pointing out that the information you say has been removed is in fact still there.

The PDF is linked to from the bottom of this page.

Posted: **09:59 Sat 30 May 2015**

jdaw1 wrote:Forget mobile-friendly: that’s not even desktop-friendly.

...and works perfectly well on my MacBook, iPad Mini and iPhone 5

Posted: **10:17 Sat 30 May 2015**

Previously somebody could, and I did, link to the relevant location. Easy peasy. The new website requires that the recipient download a large PDF and find it within that. Do you agree that is much worse?

Posted: **10:21 Sat 30 May 2015**

jdaw1 wrote:Previously somebody could, and I did, link to the relevant location. Easy peasy. The new website requires that the recipient download a large PDF and find it within that. Do you agree that is much worse?

Yes. As I said previously I am not defending their method, simply pointing out that the information that you implied had been removed is still accessible, albeit in a stupid form.

Posted: **10:33 Sat 30 May 2015**

It looks like Davy's have employed someone who has been on a responsive web design course, content and has designed the latest site based on mobile/tablet look and feel but has forgotten about content and accessibility.

Posted: **10:36 Sat 30 May 2015**

PhilW wrote:forgotten about content

A good website is about relevant content, lots, easily found and accessible. Sigh.

Davy has spent lots of money to make a satisfactory product much worse. Sigh.

Any chance of menus?

Posted: **10:42 Sat 30 May 2015**

On their [url=http://www.davy.co.uk/]home page[/url], Davy's wrote:Our website is currently being upgraded. Look out for great new content to be added over the coming weeks.

Posted: **11:01 Sat 30 May 2015**

DRT wrote:
On their [url=http://www.davy.co.uk/]home page[/url], Davy's wrote:Our website is currently being upgraded. Look out for great new content to be added over the coming weeks.

Please advise: what is the upper limit on the word ‘coming’? When should I give up on the ‘coming’? Four weeks from now? August? January 2018? The day after the abolition of income tax?

Posted: **11:16 Sat 30 May 2015**

Rather than ranting on like a Daily Mail columnist who hasn't properly researched the story before going to press, perhaps you could email them and ask if they would appreciate constructive feedback on what has been released to date and suggestions for what would be helpful in future.

After all, this organisation has been very helpful to

over the years and perhaps this is a small opportunity to give something back rather than throw a hissy fit.

Just a thought.

Posted: **11:38 Sat 30 May 2015**

Sure. My complaints were in this thread — so on topic. Draft email.

James,

Davy’s seems to be building a new website, and as we’re customers watching it happen, I thought that you might welcome some comments.

• Please do include menus. As we can be a large-ish party, we typically pre-order food — it helps with your stock management, and gives us more time for drinking. Three examples follow. But is much easier for us if the menu is online, and it is possible to email attendees a link to it.
http://www.jdawiseman.com/2015/20150209 ... m_food.pdf
http://www.jdawiseman.com/2015/20150331 ... m_food.pdf
http://www.jdawiseman.com/2015/20150909 ... m_food.pdf

• Please help us to help you, by making it possible to link to a specific Davy’s location. Our arrangement threads have hitherto included a link to the website of the specific venue. That feeds Google which feeds you. Examples, mostly Boot and Flogger but also a Bung Hole, are in the first posts of:
http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9674
http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9662
http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=8994
http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9353
http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9418
http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=7414

[Other stuff]

Best regards,

Julian Wiseman
(whom you met at Davy’s Holborn’s re-opening).

(The links might look better in the email.)

Posted: **11:45 Sat 30 May 2015**

Splendid.

Posted: **15:23 Mon 01 Jun 2015**

Sent.

Posted: **15:45 Mon 01 Jun 2015**

… and a speedy reply:

That functionality is all planned in. Hopefully we will have finished the whole thing within a few months (latest). In the meantime we are updating the site every few weeks.

Posted: **16:32 Mon 01 Jun 2015**

...and relax.

Posted: **18:45 Sat 26 Mar 2022**

The main pages of Quinta da Pedra Alta, www.qpa.pt, are a disaster. The IT people played because they hate the customers.

But hidden behind are real pages giving real information, such as for the 2018 Vintage.

Touriga Nacional (49%)
Touriga Franca (27.5%)
Tinta Roriz (13%)
Sousão (9%)
Tinta Barroca (1.5%)

And then there’s an even more detailed and quite fabulous PDF.

Posted: **23:23 Wed 01 Jun 2022**

Behold Burmester, of whose history I sought detail.

Behold. Weep.

Posted: **07:12 Thu 02 Jun 2022**

Is that website some kind of April Fool's joke? it's like the website of a bad law firm specialising in defending RTAs.

ThePortForum.com

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