Website quality for SME wineries: measurement insights

Abstract

Purpose The study aims to offer a general review of website evaluation, with particular application to the winery tourism field. Automated website evaluation is explored as a complementary tool in the evaluation of small and medium enterprise (SME) winery websites. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a mixed-method investigation including a critical review of winery website evaluation literature and analysis of winery website scores generated through a free service of a commercial automated evaluation scoring system. Findings No standards currently exist for winery website evaluation metrics and current evaluation processes suffer from human rater bias. An automated evaluation scoring system used in the study was able to discriminate between a sample of known best practice websites and other independently formed samples representing average wineries in the USA and in North Carolina. Research limitations/implications Wineries and other small business tourism firms can benefit by incorporating automated website evaluation and benchmarking into their internet strategies. Reported human rater limitations noted in manual evaluation may be minimized using automated rating technology. Automated evaluation system metrics tend to be updated more frequently and offer better alignment with trending consumer expectations for website design. Originality/value The current study used an automated website quality evaluation tool that serves to move winery website design efforts forward and supports the goals of reputation management for tourism businesses relying on internet marketing.