BuyersVine | Search, Tag, and Comment the World’s Wine
Tim April 5th, 2007
After a short (ok, maybe not so short) break here at DemoMarks as we move to a new server there’s nothing that takes the edge off more than a nice glass of wine. What better way to ring in the new season here at DemoMarks than by reviewing the latest entry for winos in the Web 2.0 arena. Cheers!
BuyersVine bills itself as the middleman that connects buyers directly with Wineries. To help consumers they’ve added in the ability to tag wine and search it, comment on it, and even added in WineVideos for those less sophisticated (yes, that would be me). Today I’m going to demo all the features that come with the sign-up and see how it ranks against Cork’d, Vinorati, and other players in this field.
1. BuyersVine has a very simple homepage that is quite effective in my opinion. Their mission statement is clear and prominent, we quickly see a few of the features of their service, and we’re given the option of signing up. One thing to note is that many of the features do not require a login (searching, maps, and videos) but we’ll be setting up an account just to see what benefits we can gather from that as well.
2. Setting up an account can be done either as a user or as a Winery. This is the “connecting users directly with the merchants” idea being carried out. We will be a user so I start to put in my information. The only extra fluff I’d like to see them get rid of here is the “About Me” section. There’s no need for it in the initial signup and should be an optional area to be filled in later in the profile.
3. After signup I’m taken directly to the Account page where I’m asked to upload a photo. No verification emails. Really no emails of any kind. After adding a photo I’m taken right back to this page. If the account section looks pretty sparse to you then I think we’re both seeing the same thing. To be fair BuyersVine is still in beta (isn’t everyone) but if there’s any area that needs the most attention it’s the account view. I could see this area being used to show wine’s I’ve tested, wine’s I’ve purchase or nominated, and other information.
4. One area of the account page allows you to nominate a wine. This mindset is a bit different from sites like Cork’d which allow you to upload any wine yourself. Here you suggest wines listing the winery and they are then invited to join BuyersVine. This strikes me as a bit of a hinderance for filling their database for a usable search. The extra steps are roadblocks in making the community grow.
5. Near the bottom of the screen I also noticed they had a link to a form for suggesting the service to a friend. In the interest of including everything I figured I’d mention it.
6. I’m on to the search now for the perfect wine. The search page was the first time my jaw dropped while on this site. From a design standpoint all the other pages looked clean (if a bit sparse on content) but we come to the search and it’s a minefield of tags. I hardly could figure out how to use it at first. Apparently you drag and drop tags into the upper-righthand boxes to search the combinations. The interface is clunky, slow, and I kept just wanting to type in the information instead of dragging and dropping. It seems like in a rush to add in the latest trends they’ve missed the ball on usability.
7. After applying a few tags, Red and California in this instance, I’m taken to the results page which is clean and organized. Users are given the option right away of commenting on wines, buying them, and you can click through to view details about a wine. Interesting to note is that the “Buy” link is simply a link to the Winery’s site. This surprised me because I expected some sort of special price negotiation for BuyersVine users (giving BV a business model as well) but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
8. The detail view shows more information about the individual wines. All comments can be read and you can add your own. I do wish they had a rating scale here instead of simply “I’m a fan or I’m not.” Life is never so black and white, and neither is wine. It seems there are a lot of superfluous tags applied to wines. I noticed many tags with words like “Monday, Wednesday, Professor, Student, etc.” applied to the wine. While I can somewhat understand the concept I can’t imagine a wine only tasting well on a certain day of the week or from a specific occupation.
9. Done with my searching I decide to check out WineMaps. It’s a simple interface built off of Google Maps. If I lived near many wineries it would have been more useful perhaps but alas I’m in the middle of the country with my choices being limited to Mad Dog and Thunderbird.
10. The WineVideos section is a simple blog with posts of wine videos found primarily on Youtube (The embedded videos are hidden here because of Flash). The section is helpful for learning about pairing wines, tasting notes, and a bit of humor. Some users may be misled to think the BuyersVine produced some of these videos but these are all found on Youtube and produced by others.
BuyersVine is a good idea that is perhaps a bit late to the game. I found the service a bit clunky to use when searching and the problems seemed to outweigh the benefits. The design of the site is quite pleasing but in the end I don’t think they offer enough of an advantage to the user and there’s a lot of extra fluff intended to build up the site (Videos, Maps) that doesn’t quite add much to the experience. I think price negotiations with wineries could be a niche area that might push their service along, but without some sort of business model they will not be able to survive with a lackluster service and lack of community to the site.
