An English site US importers can actually use

An Italian cantina's English site usually has two readers. One is a traveller planning a visit. The other is a trade buyer in the US deciding whether your wines fit their book and whether to ask for samples.

The trade buyer is the smaller audience and often the more valuable one. They arrive with a job to do, and a straight translation of the Italian homepage rarely helps them do it. This guide covers what to add for them, and how to set up the two languages so search engines send each reader to the right version.

Why the importer's paperwork matters to your website

Wine sold in the US comes in through a licensed importer. TTB, the federal agency that regulates alcohol, says an importer needs a federal basic importer's permit and a Certificate of Label Approval (COLA) for each unique product and label, held at the time of importation.

You don't file any of that yourself. But every document an importer needs from you is one more email if it isn't on your site. A trade page that answers those questions up front makes you easier to work with before the first call.

Build a trade page

Give trade buyers their own page, linked from the main menu or the footer with a plain label such as "Trade" or "Importers". Keep it in English first, written for an American reader.

What belongs on it:

• Who you are in two or three sentences, with region and denomination
• The wines you'd offer for export, each linked to its tech sheet
• Your current US status, in plain words. Say whether you already work with an importer, in which states, or whether you're looking for one.
• A named contact who answers in English, with a direct email and your time zone
• A sample request form
• A downloads section with tech sheets, front and back label files, bottle shots and your logo

Be exact about representation. If you already have an importer in some states, list them. A buyer who later finds out a competitor already carries you in their state will feel misled, and the importer you already have won't thank you either.

Tech sheets that answer the buyer's questions

Make one tech sheet per wine, per vintage, as a downloadable PDF and as a normal web page. The web page can be found in search and read on a phone. The PDF gets forwarded to colleagues.

A useful sheet covers:

• Grape varieties, with percentages for blends
• Denomination exactly as it appears on the label, such as DOC, DOCG or IGT
• Vineyard location, altitude and soil
• Harvest timing and vinification
• Ageing vessel and length
• Alcohol, residual sugar and total acidity
• Bottle size, bottles per case, case dimensions and weight
• Pallet configuration
• Barcode, if the bottle has one
• Awards and scores, only if they're real, recent and attributed

Write altitude in metres and feet, temperatures in Celsius and Fahrenheit, and vineyard size in hectares and acres. It's a small courtesy that saves a buyer from doing conversions.

Put high-resolution front and back label files next to each sheet. Your importer will tell you what the US label needs, and having the files ready shortens that exchange.

Make sample requests easy to send

A short form works better than "email us for samples". Ask for:

• Name and company
• Role, such as importer, distributor, retailer or restaurant
• The states they buy for
• The wines they're interested in
• A free-text note

Under the button, say who will reply and roughly when, and pick a promise you can keep. A real name and a realistic reply time beat a generic thank-you.

Shipping samples to the US has its own rules. Agree with your importer, or with a forwarder you trust, how samples will travel before the form goes live. Then the reply can say exactly what happens next.

Translate for the reader

A literal translation of Italian marketing copy tends to read stiffly in English. Have the English version written or edited by a native speaker who knows wine, and let them shorten it. American trade readers want the facts quickly.

Keep the Italian proper nouns as they are. Denominations, vineyard names, grape names and place names stay in Italian, because that's what buyers search for and what will appear on the label. Explain them in English the first time they appear on a page.

The language switch should land on the same page in the other language. A switch that drops readers on the homepage makes them start over.

Search terms US buyers actually use

People in the US searching for Italian wine type in English, mixed with Italian proper nouns. They search for a grape with its region, or for a denomination by name, and trade buyers add words like "importer" or "distributor".

So on each English wine page:

• Put the grape and the denomination in the page title and the main heading
• Mention the region and the nearest well-known town in the first paragraph
• Write a meta description in English, for that page, instead of reusing the Italian one
• Give images English alt text that describes the bottle or the place

Once the site is live, Google Search Console's Performance report shows the queries people typed to find your pages. Check it every few months and adjust titles to match how people really search.

Set up hreflang so each reader lands in the right language

Hreflang tags tell Google that two pages are the same content in different languages. Google's documentation sets out the rules, and a few of them catch sites out:

• Each language version lists itself and every other version.
• The links must point both ways. If the Italian page names the English page but the English page doesn't name the Italian one, Google ignores the tags.
• Language codes use ISO 639-1, such as "it" and "en", with an optional region such as "en-US".
• An "x-default" value can name a fallback page for visitors whose language you don't cover.
• You can declare the tags in the page head, in HTTP headers or in the sitemap. Google treats them the same, so pick one.

Give each language its own URL, for example /it/ and /en/ paths. After launch, open a few pages in each language, view the source and check that the tags are there and point both ways. It takes a few minutes and catches a mistake that's easy to miss.

Don't forget the travellers

The other English reader is planning a trip. Give them opening days and times, how to book a tasting, whether tours run in English, and how to get there from the nearest airport or station. Show booking times in your local time and say so, because they'll be booking from another time zone.

If you'd like us to look at your English site through a US importer's eyes, book a free site audit. We'll review the trade page, tech sheets, sample flow and hreflang setup and send back the fixes we'd make first.

Sources

• TTB, Importing Bottled Alcohol Beverages Into the United States
• Google Search Central, Tell Google about localized versions of your page
• Search Console Help, Performance report (Search results)