About Huff Estates
Huff Estates Winery was constructed with one thing in mind – producing high quality wines. The state-of-the-art facility has its crush pad and fermentation tanks sitting on top of a hill allowing for a natural gravity flow into the barrels below, which sit just behind the contemporary tasting bar. An indoor seating area is open for lunch from May to October, where you can sit back, relax and even listen to our “Live Long Weekends” music every long weekend in the summer. This room is equipped with two 24 foot sliding doors opening up to a beautiful patio overlooking the vineyard.
The Challenge: Update the Website to Promote Off-Season Package Sales
Huff Estates is a successful winery in the flourishing wine-making area of Prince Edward County, Ontario. In addition to making award-winning wine, Huff Estates also hosts visitors at their elegant inn and offers tours of other local winery and restaurants.
We had previously designed their website, which was performing well. Although Huff Estates is busy throughout the summer, traffic drops substantially when things get cold in the off-season. We decided to look at their website and see if there were some ways we could boost sales of winter-themed packages during the off-season.
The Solution: Reorganize Content into Multiple Pages and Better Highlight Winter Packages
We decided to make a number of key changes to Huff Estate’s website to increase the sales of off-season packages and tours:
First: Make Sure that Each Package Has its Own Page
The website originally had all the information for all of the packages listed on a single large webpage. We decided to break this information up, so that each package had its own page.
This was helpful for both human visitors and for Google’s search bots.
An Improved Visitor Experience
Visitors could concentrate on one package at a time. We also embedded Huff Estates’ Trip Advisor reviews, providing an excellent example of “social proof” that bolstered the visitor’s confidence. Furthermore, by sticking to one package per page, visitors were now able to easily share a package with their friends.
Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google prefers that each webpage focus on a single topic. By giving each package its own page, we were able to accomplish this. Google also prefers a larger amount of (good quality) content, which we were able to deliver by adding more pages to the website.
Second: Highlight the Packages
We added a dynamic, full-width element on the homepage titled “Featured Promotions” that drew the visitors attention to the packages. Furthermore, we created an administrative tool that enabled Huff Estates to easily change which packages would be featured.
The Results: More Website Traffic, Better Engagement, Increased Sales
- The packages page has become the third most-visited page on the site
- Pageviews of packages have more than doubled compared to the previous period, despite the fact that we had entered the off-season
- Visitors spent an average of one and a half minutes viewing each package page, indicating excellent engagement with the content
- 15% of visitors who view a package page click on the reservation link
- Most importantly, sales of off-season winter packages continue to grow apace
