Fine wine e-Commerce is among the fastest-growth segments of the online wine market, principally due to historical under-investment. The shift to wine e-Commerce within fine wine is accelerating as more merchant and retail businesses migrate away from product pages to fully transactional online shops.
There remain five distinct challenges to going digital:
- Managing Stock
- Content
- Omnichannel selling
- Automation and scalability
- Customer engagement
Managing stock and data mastering
Mastering inventory on your business system will guarantee an accurate and up-to-the-minute position of wines for sale on your website, an essential starting point for wine e-Commerce.
How many times have you heard people complain about seeing a wine listed online only to find when they click through that it’s sold out?
Content is (still) king
Building out a complete and comprehensible product taxonomy (how you classify products) helps users come to your website and intuitively know what, and how, to search.
Accurate wine descriptions, with consistent definitions (such as country, region, sub region, type, grape variety, designation etc.) facilitate a good search or browsing experience.
Wine eCommerce and omnichannel
Your wine e-Commerce website sits within a wider channel strategy. Mastering your business processes in a single system serves the needs of all sales and marketing channels you choose to connect with, and ensures that your stock position is up to date everywhere, and at all times.
A single point of control is vital to real-time updating of stock positions, of all types.
Automation and scalability
Dynamic content will drive consumer interest, return visits and purchasing behaviours.
At any point in time, you’ll want to determine what you want to allocate to your online e-commerce channel.
Being able to group products together for a promotion, or a special feature, focuses your visitors on what’s new or hot, and to do that at scale requires appropriate tools.
Fulfilment flexibility
Depending on the types of stock you’re selling, the attributes of that stock may differ. Wines in your own warehouse accounts may be deliverable the following day or the same day. Wines due from local suppliers may take a bit longer, whereas future arrivals could take weeks or years.
Customer expectations need managing, in a number of ways, including logical fulfilment rules.
Customer engagement
A website doesn’t sell itself, so don’t think that you can go live and just let it run. The key to a successful wine e-Commerce website also lies in the trust you build with your customers, and the quality of the offering you’re able to maintain over time.
So how do you craft a relevant and personalised experience for each of your customers?
To read more about how to set up your wine e-commerce for success download our practical guide.
