Our new user interface upgrade release to the Chateau Ste Michelle mobile site brings your location into the picture. Through use of a cleverly engineered location-sniffing retailer locator, the new mobile winery website locates your exact position right before it locates the nearest purveyor of CSM wines.
Let’s call it a new breed of sniffer – a DOUBLE sniffer! The technology determines a) whether you are [sniff] accessing from a mobile device, and b) from what location you are [sniff] accessing it.
They call it Stagecoach because the property is so big you need a stagecoach to travel around it. Not really, but that could’ve been the origin of the name. With over 1,500 acres, their land is bigger than some entire appellations. And people have been settling here since before there was a golden state. Read the rest of this entry »
Continuing the multi-year rollout of Ste Michelle Wine Estates tools and touch points, you can now dial up the Chateau Ste Michelle website from your smart phone at http://www.ste-michelle.com/mobile/. The content and design is pared down and tailored to the medium, allowing for a simplified map, events, tours and other information you might need if you were literally on your way for a visit (hands on the wheel there, buddy). It facilitates channel partners who might be looking for tasting notes, and sharing of event and product info in social media, not to mention clicking on over to Ticketmaster for tickets to the concert series. Look for some added features, like the ability to run QR code-based promotions, in the near future.
This Monday an intriguing email landed in my inbox from a friend, exclaiming about an interview she heard on NPR by Eli Pariser, author of the book The Filter Bubble. Destiny (Social Media? Facebook Filters?) continued to push the book towards me, as I later saw a Facebook post linking to Mr. Pariser’s TEDx presentation:
What’s a filter? Well, this refers to how search engines and websites tailor results for you. At face value, this seems like an great idea. Your Facebook feed depends on what things you tend to click on and interact with. If you start to ignore posts from one particular person or subject, then they’ll get filtered out. Similarly, your Google results depend on anything from your physical location to whether or not you are logged into a Google Account such as gMail, Google Analytics, or AdWords. You can read Google’s official explanation of Personalized Search for more details.
Villa Mt. Eden Winery’s history is rich and long. 130 years long.
This Napa Valley Burgundian-focused winery is one of few still in existence from the early days of The Valley, when men were men and wine was, well, not whiskey. Back then George Yount started a winery long before they named a town for him (Yountville).
Rugged, pioneering and hand-tooled in approach, Villa Mt. Eden’s wines have come to boast an immense quality-to-value ratio. It’s all about place, timing, and craftsmanship. Read the rest of this entry »
Tenaya Capital is a leading venture capital firm with a core of partners who started as an offshoot of Lehman Brothers and have since built a cohesive, successful team that’s stuck together through a few funding rounds and dozens of successful investments.
They’re re-launching with a new round of investment – and web development from FINE minds that helps reflect their established history and promising future. Read the rest of this entry »
It began as Napa Valley’s first fine dining establishment in 1981 and quickly evolved into one of America’s most desirable small luxury hotels. Along the way, Auberge du Soleil has become one of the select handful of iconic wine and hospitality brands to embody the signature Napa style of informal elegance, and approachable luxury.
A flagship member of Auberge Resorts Group, Auberge is also a longstanding member of Relais & Châteaux, the most prestigious collection of small luxury hotels and restaurants in the world.
The Auberge website, not unlike recent renovations to the property itself, helps position the company for the next era of the Napa Valley experience. A new generation of discriminating guests are entering their target segment, bringing with them an appreciation for French-accented luxury spa experiences and well-crafted digital experiences alike.
The new Auberge digital ecosystem reflects this new clientele’s expectation that a hotel website is more than a brochure; it needs to demonstrate an actual experience by becoming a worthy extension of it.
Emergence Capital Partners backs companies offering what they call tech-enabled services, a market rooted in the burgeoning world of SAAS or “cloud”-based technologies. Their portfolio includes industry luminaries like Salesforce.com, Bill.com, YouSendIt, Ask Jeeves, Lithium, Yammer, Genius.com, and more.
The Emergence site immediately throws viewers an elemental twist. Instead of the air and cloud imagery you might expect to see floating on the home page, visitors are greeted by splashing water. The intent is to capture the spontaneous, fleeting nature of their work. Opportunities in this field come from recognizing a black swan or capitalizing on a perfect storm and turning a ripple effect into a full-scale wave.
The key consideration in our development of a new website for San Francisco tour provider Alcatraz Excursions was to demonstrate how this unique travel company delivers first-rate experiences, and separate it from the pack of cut-rate tour operators.
Alcatraz Excursions is the leading provider of uniquely San Francisco experiences designed for every type of traveler – adventure seekers, wine enthusiasts, nature lovers, and all in-between.
This just in from FINE’s Traverse City Digital Marketing mavens, the artists formerly known as Big Daylight. Turns out we didn’t need to add Big Daylight to the FINE fold, because SEO is as useless as a gallon of the finest snake oil. Or not…
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I’m writing this post in response to a number of things.
1. One of the top referring keywords for Big Daylight is, hilariously, “You Don’t Need SEO”. This is because a previous post I wrote talked about how You Don’t Need SEO Domain Names, but it ended up also positioning for “You Don’t Need SEO”.
2. A lot of people are searching on this, so obviously there is a burning need out there for people to either prove or be reassured that They Don’t Need SEO.
3. The recently published “World’s Shortest (and Probably Most Controversial) Guide to SEO” which (attempts to) condense an effective SEO strategy down to 10 words: Create something that people will want to link to. Repeat.
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Our new user interface upgrade release to the Chateau Ste Michelle mobile site brings your location into the picture. Through use of a cleverly engineered location-sniffing retailer locator, the new mobile winery website locates your exact position right before it locates the nearest purveyor of CSM wines.
Tenaya Capital is a leading venture capital firm with a core of partners who started as an offshoot of Lehman Brothers and have since built a cohesive, successful team that’s stuck together through a few funding rounds and dozens of successful investments.
