I look at two more types of wine retailers’ eCommerce requirements: small-medium, and medium-large. I then showed how the two different size wine retailers have a different, though similar, set of requirements based off different objectives.
Wine eCommerce
Two Very Different Wine Retailer eCommerce Websites
I’ve talked about whether you should have a custom built wine eCommerce website or one “Off-the-Shelf”. In short I said pretty much everyone actually uses off-the-shelf software and the question really is what are your requirements before deciding which software or service provider to go with. In this post I set out what those requirements are in an “eCommerce Requirements Document”.
Wine eCommerce website: Custom Built or Off-the-Shelf?
Will an “off-the-shelf” eCommerce website be right for me? Or should I get a custom built eCommerce website? Here’s what you consider.
Conversion analysis of the shopping cart leads to 34% increase in sales
Fairfield undertook some conversion analysis of the shopping cart page (not the following checkout process). This indicated a number of obstacles to checkout: * Confusing, hidden business rules, * Long form, with most content below the fold, * Unnecessary information requested, * Absence of persuasion motivators * Low apparent trust value
The Profit of an Online Wine Store: some Financials
But here’s the problem, many websites look fantastic and fail to make a return on investment. The frustrated wine retailer then writes off the internet as useless. And yet research shows that 4-6% of a retailer’s business is now over the internet. So let’s do the financial numbers to assess ROI
An affliction known as eCommerce “featuritis”
I’ll admit it, I love Apple products. I was forced for so long to use Microsoft products and “wintel” laptops that when I went out on my own account the first thing I purchased was an Apple MacBook Pro. Apple products are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out. So I show how wine eCommerce and marketing simplicity, not “featuritis”,
This will make you cry – shopping cart abandonment
I’ve always found shopping cart abandonment dispiriting! But don’t worry it’s not just you, it’s every other merchant as well. Charles Nicholls of SeeWhy says (in 2009/10), the shopping cart abandonment rate averaged 73 percent in the first two weeks of January, some 12 percent higher than the low of 61 percent recorded on December 16…
There’s a well known story of two naked rowers
It’s going to take a while for me to get to my point in this post, but I promise I will get there. Anyhow – it’s great story!
In fact it’s such a great story it’s been turned into a book. The point I’ll make is about what matters the most for a wine retailer selling wine online.
I was caught up in a frenzy of techno love
My learning from this experience was that you focus on the 20% of things that your customers really demonstrably value. That might be technology or it might not. The technology is very sexy, it can automate the most simple of things extremely well. But if the customer doesn’t want it, or it’s too expensive then don’t use it.
What’s the Best Wine eCommerce store?
I try to help out on various networks I’m involved with for free. Not all to do with wine retail, marketing and the internet – here’s my response to do with retail ecommerce. Jonathan Poston a member of the LinkedIn group Shop.org asked the following question, “What’s the best e-commerce store? I’m betting on Yahoo, as our FastPivot.com developers say it’s the most affordable and in general easiest to work with…agree or disagree? Why or why not?” Here’s my response: “I looked at this for myself last year…