Snooth Manual Part III

posted by mark in Snooth, Snooth User Manual

It’s a great time for Snoothers to be thinking more locally. We’re constantly improving the site and recently have added the ability to search by zip code. Now you can get recommendations from stores in your area. I thought it would be a good time to go through the search features in a bit more depth to get a better idea of what’s possible. I hope you’ll tell us how you’re using Snooth in the comments!

1. Start big and refine. Snooth works for finding very specific wines, but let’s assume you’re in a store looking for a recommendation. I know that I would probably start with a general idea about what I’d like, and ask someone to help me narrow it down. Snooth can function much the same way. For example, let’s say I’d like to buy a White Wine.

2. What’s your price range? Going back to my store example, the clerk would probably then ask you to select a price range. Generally I like to stick around 8-20 dollars so let’s use the slider to create that.

3. Food pairing? Are you going to have this wine with food? Sometimes that can change the recommendation, so let’s go ahead and say that we’re going to have this white wine with cheese. Here I went ahead and typed “with cheese” directly in the search box. Simple.

4. Location, location, location. At the time of this writing I’m now looking at thousands of results for White wines good with cheese between 8 and 20 dollars. Whew! Now it’s time to buy. First, I need to know which wines are available for me to purchase because some stores might not ship to me. To do that, I need to log in. Once I do that, I’ll see a link at the top of the screen where I can click to “Add a Merchant”.

Here I can select specific merchants I want to buy from. But for now, I want all merchants that can ship to me in the US, so I’ll select USA in the dropdown and rerun my search. Now I can read reviews, choose wines I would like to buy, and click through to a merchant to make the purchase.

5. But I want it now! If you’re not in a rush, I’d recommend the above method. But sometimes, you need to get the product this moment and from a store close to you. Luckily, Snooth has the ability to search around a specific zip code. Simply find the dropdown in the refine tools, add the zip code and re-search.

I hope this has been helpful. Happy Snoothing!

Snooth Manual Part II

posted by mark in Snooth, Snooth User Manual

So now you’re searching, rating, reviewing, and wishlisting wines like a Snooth pro — what’s next? Wine is a social product, and Snooth provides a good complement of social networking features you can use to communicate with like-minded oenophiles.

5. Find your friends.

The quickest way to find your friends who are already on Snooth is to use your email address book. If you log in and head on over to the contacts importer page you’ll be able to use the email addresses in your Gmail, MSN Live, AOL, or Yahoo mail. If your friend has already signed up, we’ll let you know that, too.

6. See what your friends are up to.

Once you add a few friends on Snooth you can keep up with what they’re doing by taking a look at the Grapevine on your profile page (log in and visit http://www.snooth.com/).

Here I can quickly see what my friends have been drinking, who their new friends are, the messages that are being posted, and what everyone is talking about in Snooth Talk. You can use the tabs to filter by the type of update you want to see. Wines will show you what your friends have wishlisted, rated or reviewed. Messages is for site messages and social recommendations. And notifications will tell you when your friends add friends or when they post in Snooth Talk.

7. Message your friends.

Whenever you are viewing a Snoother’s profile you will see a link to send them a message. Click that and you’ll see the messaging form. Send them a public or private message!

8. Share wines with friends or the community.

A relatively new feature of Snooth is the ability to share wines directly into Snooth Talk or in a message to a friend.

a) Find the wine you’re going to share. Here I’ll use the Bernardus Chardonnay 2005.

b) Click under the picture to share the wine.

c) Choose the friend you want to share the wine with and add a message.

d) The message will show up on your grapevine and theirs, too! There will be a link directly back to the wine details page so your friend can read all about the wine.

Snooth Manual Part I

posted by mark in Snooth, Snooth User Manual

Snooth is getting quite big now — there’s a lot of code and a lot of features to play with. Any application is bound to have a learning curve. The speed of beating that curve is a function of application usability, but also of the amount of time spent playing around. I like to think of a learning curve as more of a learning hill with a steep slope. To help you climb that learning slope, I’ll point out a few of the things you can do on Snooth, and give some helpful tips for Snoothers old and new.

1. Search for wines.
When you’re looking for prices, or want to read reviews, or want to see when to open that bottle you’ve been saving, this will be your place to start. You can be pretty flexible with your language. Whether you’re searching for a fruity merlot or a crisp Chablis, or a wine from Far Niente Winery, or you simply want a chardonnay under 20 dollars, type it in and see what you get.
Bonus: Does Snooth do something wacky with what you searched for? Send it to us! We’re always looking for ways to improve the Snooth search.

2. Review wines.
So you tried that Far Niente Chardonnay 2004? What did you think? On the detail page you can leave a review and a rating for the wine. It looks like this:

It doesn’t get much simpler than my review, but the next part is where it gets interesting. Let’s say I want to buy a wine I know I really liked in the past.

3. Search your wine.

In seconds, I searched through my tasting notes for all of the chardonnays that I rated 4.5 or above. Here’s what that looks like, on the my wines page. The sidebar tools make that a snap. They look like this:

4. Keep track of what you want.
If you’re like me, you’ve got wines you want to try. Snooth’s wishlist feature allows you to save those wishlisted wines for later. Here’s a step by step:a) Find the wine you want to wishlist. I’ll use the Trio Vintners Sangiovese 2006.b) Look for the +MyWines button. This button will “bookmark” the wine, putting it in your My Wines page.

c) Click that button to bookmark the wine. A hidden section of the page will slide down, revealing more options.

d) Click the “Add to my Wishlist” button.

e) Search through your wishlist by price, any rating you’ve left, and the text. Here’s a link to my wishlisted wines under 20 dollars. The My Wines page is an incredibly powerful tool. Maybe someone will buy me something on my next birthday!There you have the Snooth basics. Now that I’ve covered those I can get into some of the other parts of the site that might not be so obvious. We’ve only scratched the surface.