Some market research here… Has anyone here started using Vinquire on a regular basis? In addition to Wine-Searcher or maybe as a replacement?
We’ve seen a rise in traffic from Vinquire over the last few months, so I’m wondering if some early adopters here have found an advantage to using the site over Wine-Searcher. Maybe the subscription-based format of W-S is turning people away?
never even heard of vinquire until now
just took a peek for a minute and thats all I need.
WS Pro is easily worth the $30 a year
Tyler - what’s the big advantage with W-S? On first impression, Vinquire seems to have richer, more user friendly interface.
IMO it looks cluttered and too rich for my tastes. Call me old school but I like the straight data look of the old CT and WS. Plus the searches look a bit sloppy too, not as smart as WS. I typed in 2009 Rivers Marie and it pulled up a completely unrelated wine where WS does not.
I switched almost entirely to Vinquire about a year or so ago. Will still go to W-S as a back-up source if I don’t find something on Vinquire. But I generally find Vinquire to have more data and I prefer its presentation (full disclosure: I never used the Pro version of W-S).
Never heard of it. I’ll have to check it out.
Do not like Vinquire. Like Tyler, I find the interface more cumbersome than useful. Also, really don’t like searching for a wine and having to dig to find the one you are looking for, not a problem for me on W-S.
I think it went up to $39.
I will use both but use Vinquire more ( I dont use WS Pro either)
If I need a quick price check, say from an email offer I just copy
and past into the query field including vintage and bottle size.
I don’t think WS will let you just search for Mags, lists them at the end.
It’s has some limits, and they push their “prefered vendors” up front
I just scroll down to “Check for all results” - that is mostly on a popular
search.
I agree with Tyler about the looks.
Cheers
Rip
I don’t think WS will let you just search for Mags, lists them at the end.
you can search only 0,375,0,75, mags or D-mags,cases or others(bigger).
Thanks for the heads up on Vinquire, never heard of it until this post…
Completely agree. Plus how do you search by vintage on Vinquire? And why do I need to see the reviews? Especially if it’s the same one repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated?
If I go to a site like that, I’m usually searching because it’s a wine I want, NOT because I want to read someone’s friggin review! And why do I really need to see the pretty pictures of the bottles?
It provides more data but less relevant information. I like the WS interface for the same reason I like the Google interface and for stores, the Winex search page. I end up buying things from them just because they provide all the information I want in a readily-digestible format. The VInquire site seems to have been put together by someone with experience in Web design, not information presentation.
Well, you can look at the rivers maries search as a failure or… not. Note that the wine it brought up has marie, river and 2009 in the name. It’s listed first because it’s an ascending alphabetical sort.
Someone whined about vintage. Well, put it in as part of the search… WS needs it in the vintage field.
I like the single search field on the vinquire page (which, ironically, is closer to the Google experience that Greg T loves than WS is…).
However, I don’t like the search results page. The ads take up space and are distracting and the double header at the top uses too much space. The bottle image doesn’t bother me (really, how picky can some of you be?) but the basic issue with that page is that too much of it is given over to things other than my search results.
The results themsevlves are presented better than WS - click on a store and you get a nice page with the crucial information about the store and a little map. However, clicking on the results of that 2009 R-M search get me to a wineaccess page, not the store page. That’s a HUGE fail - I want to go to the product page for that wine and, ideally, buy the wine. Clicking the Buy button does that, the wine link should too.
I’d do more… but hey, evaluating web sites is work for me and it’s been a long day. Off to open something…
I do think the search result that included the Barnett wine because it has marie in the name is a bit of fail. WS recognized the two words rivers marie as a wine and sorts out everything else, which in my mind is pretty smart. I also like the seperate vintage field for WS as you can leave it blank and then WS pulls all vintages from which you can drill into which is nice.
I also didnt know that WS Pro raised their subscription fees to $39, I still think its worth it as the money I would save on one order would easily cover this subscription fee.
Also, the WS Pro alerts are a huge WIN! To have the functionality to set an alert when a certain wine comes in at a certain price point is awesome! I have caught so many deals this way its hard to count at this point.
Vinquire reminds me of winezap which I used a bunch at first until I discovered WS Pro.
Rick - the single search field is closer to Google but the way WS produces results is more relevant. Searching for wine, as opposed to completely general subjects, means you can develop parameters that are more likely than not to be of interest. In WS you don’t have to include a vintage and you’ll get the same results that this other site produces, but they’ll allow you to click on a vintage if you wish.
That aside, I agree about the real estate given over to information other than search results, which is what I was trying to say.
Agreed. I like their single field search box, but the results page suffers from trying to serve several different masters vs just present me with the results I’ve searched for.
Tyler - Including the Barnett is a bit of a fail, but I wanted to point out that it wasn’t a randomly inserted thing. It’s apparent that what they’re doing is separating out 4 digit numbers as vintage and then matching the words left with words in the wine description. That works most of the time, but sometimes you’ll get things like that. WS has probably structured the data better/more and thus avoids that issue. I think the results page has bigger issues though…
My WS Pro expired and I was debating whether to renew at the $39.00 fee. I know that Tyler highly recommends the “Pro version”. Does anyone else think that it is worth renewing for $39.00?
Tyler - I was not aware of the alerts that you can set up when a specified price shows up.
Luis… if you routinely buy wine off the web WS pro might be worth it. As Tyler points out, you can save that amount on one good deal. Of course, the other viewpoint is that it makes you spend more… 
I don’t do it simply because I’m not buying much wine over the web now and so it’s not worth the money to me.
I use Carrie Search. Tell her what i’m looking for and she gets all the data, prices and starts making phone calls. I don’t even have to stop playing Bejeweled on my computer.
Just kidding. I have W-S on a tab all day. If we don’t have wine somebody calls for, I try to find it, (customer service thing). I’m so used to W-S and so old, that change could cause issues. I don’t like the layout of Vinquire, but I use it occasionally when W-S results are lacking.
If I had a complaint about W-S, it would be that their data base is not updating regularly. We have been called for wines that haven’t been on our website for over a month and the caller is blaming us for faulty info. Since we don’t pay to advertise on W-S, they are mining the data from our website. Of course we get an e-mail that THEY sent the customer to us, now join.
Other issues with W-S are that some of the advertisers don’t even have the wine they are advertising and that links for a specific wine send you to the home page requiring more searching to find the wine. W-S requires the link go to the wine, but doesn’t have the time to enforce it.
Still, W-S is the most efficient system right now.
I’d never heard of Vinquire until seeing this post.
I’m not buying so much wine these days but I’ve kept up my WS Pro subscription; their customer service has been absolutely tops, in my experience.