Matt,
You’re welcome. I wrote that later in the evening, so a couple of points were, um, not as clear as I’d like. At the risk of being pedantic…
Hosting: Cheap hosting usually is cheap because the hosting company overloads the server. Instead of fewer sites that each pay a bit more, they put on a lot of sites that pay little. This tends not to affect straight HTML sites because HTML is fast to load. It does tend to hurt database driven sites which need more resources and most product sites are database driven. Aside from a poor user experience (people start to abandon sites that take more than 1 second to load), slow sites are being penalized in search rankings now - Google uses page loading time as a factor in ranking site as of late last year.
Security: There are two parts to this. First, credit card security. If you store people’s CC information you need to worry about this. Even if you don’t, you’ll need SSL certificates, etc. And even if you don’t, more merchant services places are asking for PCI compliance which is a set of rules that describes how you’ve secured your site. A hosted commerce service like Shopify etc should take care of this for you. So, do look for information about that issue and ask if it’s not apparent from someone’s site.
Design: Important in that you want to present a professional look. Point and click stuff tends to look like what it is - inexpensive. There ARE exceptions, but my overall point here (pun intended!) is that you want to end up with a site that looks decent and brings you credibility in the eyes of a new visitor. Don’t forget about mobile either - Massa Ranch is in Napa… I can see people being on their phones and looking for you. Think about what they might want to see (hours, directions, etc) and cater to that.
CONTENT: Overlooked by many, I’d recommend that anyone doing a site pay a lot of attention to this. A former client of mine asked for my opinion on the site of someone she was working with and, while that site had technical issues, the biggest problem was the copy. The site sold equestrian riding clothes… but the copy for the clothes didn’t mention that they were for that purpose. It talked about construction, materials and the like but not that the shirts were riding shirts, etc. How could that product page ever rank well for searches like “riding shirt”? It didn’t and won’t until they revise the product copy to use the words that their prospective customers use.
The moral of this? Put yourself in the mind of the person looking for what you offer. If they want to find Massa Ranch wines, make sure that Massa Ranch is in your product copy. In the copy about where you are, clearly note nearby towns. Massa Ranch is near Yountville… You want people who are looking for Yountville wineries to find you. Sure, you can use the phrase “in the heart of Napa…” But if that’s all you use you lose the specificity. Do some keyword research to see how people search for the kind of wines that you offer and let that inform your copywriting. Finally, be aware of keywords like this, but write for humans. Don’t stuff keywords on the page, etc.
In fact, the main criterion I’d consider when thinking about a site is "How will this look and feel to someone coming here for the first time? Making their first purchase?" Simple example: Some stores still make you create an account before you can check out. That raises the number of people who abandon their purchase because some subset of buyers think “Screw this, I just want to buy a bottle of wine…” Instead, ask the person if they’d like to create an account after the purchase and make it clear why they might want to (newsletter with deals, etc).
Questions? Ask away…
PS: I’ve deliberately left off any talk about how the platforms deal with wine shipping, etc. Obviously places like Vin65 will have an advantage here. Whether that matters to you is dependent on whether you want to ship nationally, etc and whether it makes financial sense to do so. Raw product site hosting should land somewhere in the $10-$30 month range for a good host. If you could layer on shipping rules that are wine specific for a nominal fee over that it would be worth it.