FWIW:
I like subscribing and getting to see offers, and sometimes only early bird offers, a day early.
I am not in favor of grouping offers by wine type, i.e. pinot, cab, etc.
I am in favor of posting an offer and then not having its position change, as it does now whenever someone posts a comment to that offer. Keep them in the order of their posting time, not by the most recent comment.
Is it possible to post who all of the contributors will be? My thought being that if I know winery X will be posting some time, then I better save some cashola for their offer, even if I do not know what or when that offer will be. I don’t have a bottomless pit of cash or credit, so I will be forced to make some decisions during the day…buy now from winey Z or wait until winery X.
Food offers last = very good idea.
I like the idea of a general preview (for all members) of the Newbies - this gets them some exposure and alerts folks to look for them. You could keep this preview limited to name of winery, wines offered (but not prices) and whatever “pitch” the wineries want to make about themselves and the wines. The preview for subscribers would include the full offer details as usual. The general preview could be the night before or even the morning of BererkerDay.
I believe this will be my 4th BDay and I thought all of the last 3 were great!
How about a pinned post that acts as an Index? It could list all the offers, when they’ll go active, and provide a link to the thread giving the details. Maybe only provide links when the offer is activated?
So it might start off as:
08:00 Winery A
08:00 NEWBIE Winery B
09:00 Winery C
09:00 Winery D
10:00 NEWBIE Winery E
Then at 8:00 it’d look like:
08:00 Winery A - 6 pack deal $150 (40% off) - Link
08:00 NEWBIE Winery B - 50% discount off all purchases - Link
09:00 Winery C
09:00 Winery D
10:00 NEWBIE Winery E
At 9:00
08:00 Winery A - 6 pack deal $150 (40% off) - Link
08:00 NEWBIE Winery B - 50% discount off all purchases - Link
09:00 Winery C - 3 pack deal $100 (33% off) - Free Shipping - Link
09:00 Winery D - Special Bottling - $55 - Link
10:00 NEWBIE Winery E
- You could use a tag like NEWBIE to highlight the new folk.
- The (very short) description could be supplied by the offering entity. And it could be the thread title too to keep things consistent.
- The list stays in the same order - no one drops up or down - all are visible in one place. No issues with threads falling off the first page.
- I showed the description only appearing when the link went active, but it could be there all the time if you wanted to give buyers a better idea of what’s coming.
- I showed the offers listed in chronological order, but they could be listed alphabetically or in categories as well.
Todd I know you say that all of the offers posted at once would shorten the day or ruin the fun, but I don’t know, I know I’d still spend all day mulling, reading, commenting. Suspect many others would, as well.
Could be worth a try.
rly hoping for an offer on vingardevalise suitcases again this year…
Todd, thanks for your generous time contribution. You’ve clearly put a great deal of thought & energy into organizing. We hope - and look forward! - to being involved this year, Kurt
I like Brian’s suggestion ^^
We have January26-27 circled on the calendar! Already starting to think about our offer.
Todd,
Just let us all know what you and the powers that be decide on and we will abide - and bring everyone some good offers for sure!
Cheers!
I agree that 150 offers on one forum is too much and those at the bottom get lost. My suggestion would be to have five separate forums:
- BerserkerDay VIII Established Wineries
- BerserkerDay VIII Up and Coming Wineries
- BerserkerDay VIII Limited Quantity Offers
- BerserkerDay VIII Non-wine Offers
- BerserkerDay VIII Auctions
The offers in each forum would be listed alphabetically and could not be bumped. This way you have to read thru all the offers in a forum to make sure you see them all. You could reply with “Interested” to any offer you might want to come back to later, and while it wouldn’t bump the thread you would be able to find it easily when you come back.
The difference between "Established and “Up and Coming” wineries would be determined by last year’s sales dollars. Any winery that sold say $5,000 of wine last year goes in Established, and all others and Newbies go in Up and Coming.
The Limited Quantity Forum would be for those wine offers with limited quantities that sell out every year eg EMH Black Cat. This forum wouldn’t open until about lunchtime EST so the West Coasters get equal chance.
I think this simplifies the whole thing and leaves it much the same as previous years, without introducing a bunch of complications.
The more ideas I read the more I’m convinced the challenge has less to do with the number of offers and more to do with the tech of this BB. I’m not up on all the possibilities of what the software can do, but I’m sure Todd is . . . but it seems the biggest issue is “offers getting lost”. There has to be an easy fix for that, which starts with not moving the offer to the top of the forum whenever someone says “in” or “great stuff . . . everyone should buy”. Once that board behavior (i.e., moving the thread to the top) is fixed, the rest should more easily fall into place.
So far folks have identified a few ways to make this work - pinned threads, separate forums, maybe something I’ve missed. But one or a combination of those seems to me like there’s a solution.
Andrew - I’ve solved the problem (outlined in the first post) of offers getting buried. I haven’t yet solved the problem of those who end up with a (randomly generated) launch time late in the day, when, presumably, all the money is gone.
Todd, if you break it up into a number of subforums you can launch everything at the same time. This way we only have to read thru each subforum once, and we have to read to the bottom of each one in order to see all the offers.
If you want to keep it interesting thruout the day then stagger the opening times for each forum.
Just to throw it out there and sorry if I missed this in an earlier post, but what about Berserker Fest and make it a multi day event. Keep a big category for each day which will (maybe) prevent people from going all in on day one. Won’t be perfect the first year but gives you framework to continue the amazing growth BD has had.
I apologize if this has been covered, but it seems to me that a way to not have offers get buried is to just have each new offer stay on top. In years past, if offering 1 (in terms of timing) is popular, any and every new post on it moves that offering back to the top. What I saw happen is that a new/unknown winery quickly fell to the bottom (and then to the second page) and out of sight. If Offer #1 slides to the second page, well, that’s after it has spent several hours on the first page. My personal experience - squeezing in a few minutes here and there - has been to log on, quickly see what is on page one, and then get back to work. If I grab a couple free minutes, I don’t need to see “old” offers as I skim the page - I know they are on the site somewhere.
Just my two cents.
I still don’t understand why it is so important to release some of the offers late in the day, when many people have over-spent their budget already. You are designing a system guaranteed to disappoint a share of the retailers that you want to attract, for the questionable benefit of extending the fun. As several people have suggested already, why not group the offers into a couple of subforums, and either launch them all at once or launch them one after the next over the first few hours of the day. That way every retailer’s offer gets plenty of time to shine, and the subforums help people focus on the varietals/regions/whatever that they are most interested in?
You asked for thoughts, so please take this in the manner intended and not as criticism. I tend to think one of the problems when tackling issues that are caused by BerserkerDay is that it’s like the story about the blind men and the elephant – everybody perceives things from their particular POV.
Problem: Newbies get buried by the more established and can’t be found.
Solution: Put new offers in separate forum (so 2 BD forums). People who want to find the new offers can find them easily because they will be grouped together. Put a sticky at the top of each the forums reminding people that there are two forums.
Problem: Newbies don’t get orders.
Solution: Encourage those presenting new offers to come up with clear, compelling reasons to order their wine. The less that is known about a product, the more appealing the offer has to be to get people to jump on it. I don’t think that people are resistant to trying new wines, but the reality is that there are only so many offerings that one can buy. If people haven’t tried the wine/the winemakers aren’t part of the community, why should people buy?
Problem: Some people like it the way it is.
Solution: Leave the established vendors section as is where discussion changes the post order or “bumps”. Personally, I like the bumping because it tells me what other people are interested in (I understand that the herd mentality has its downside too). One of the cool things about the old way is that lurkers, guests and new members can easily tell which wineries have gained the trust of long term Berserkers by repeatedly delivering wines people here enjoy. Why should we try to hide that? Make it easy for the new people to see which offers have earned support of long term Berserkers. Lets not lose this aspect. Some people come to find out which wines that have earned the endorsement of the WB crowd. I do.
Problem: Some offers get the short shrift if they are in the last third of the day.
Solution: Perhaps look to see who got the late slots last year and give them early ones this year. Consider putting all the WB veterans offers into 3 groups. Newbies show up at 8am, Group 1 shows up 9am and Group 2 shows up at 11am and Group 3 shows up at 1pm. Then, the auctions etc start at 4pm, so all of the offers have some time to be digested before the party moves on to the next phase.
Problem: Without the offers all day, you lose the madness.
Solution: Have some offers that are only live for the first 30 min. of each section. Offers where the money is donated to the board, where the number of these offers is very limited and the offer itself is particularly special. Anyhow, you’ve said you want to keep things to one day. If this is a non-negotiable point, then you’re going to have madness simply by the fact that you’ve got 150 vendors participating.
One more thing…I understand that you’re trying to split up offers by grape. Given that many of the winemakers who participate offer wines from multiple grapes, I see the potential (read: likelihood) for confusion. I strongly suggest that if you’re going to try to categorize offers, you segregate by region rather than grape. I’m fairly agnostic as to what these groups might be; but Napa/Sonoma, Rest of California, Oregon/WA, Old World, Food/Other seems like it might be a start.
Thanks to you Todd, the winemakers, and everyone else who has worked so diligently to make BerserkerDay a success.
Much of this information can be gained without having the thread float to the top.
First cut - how many views
Second cut - how many replies (note that the icon gets little sound waves if it has 19+ replies)
Third cut - what do the posts say (often people post positive things along with “in!”)
Andrew –
- Views is partly a function of when the offer is made. Earlier offers = more views.
- Generally I’m looking for replies, though it’s harder to see at a glance where the action is, particularly as offers roll to the second/third) page.
- This would require someone to open every offer repeatedly, which is hard to do.
I think newbies, if truly new to the wider wine world, should send samples out to some of the more prolific members for tasting notes. People like Pobega, Hack, Alfert, Lindquist could post tasting notes with the offer and it would be much more tempting to buy than if notes are based on the winery’s notes. The random comment of “this is a great deal” doesn’t carry much influence.