Top best ecommerce platforms for wine ecommerce and the mistakes your wine business make

Wine industry is a stable business because any country in the world is also a potential market to sell this product. However, selling it successfully in the online space is not easy. In addition to choosing a good ecommerce platform that can enhance your products and brand identity, you also have to avoid common mistakes that wine store owners often make to achieve the highest business efficiency. In this blog, Arrowtheme will bring you as much useful information as you wish in order to have a successful wine ecommerce business. Let’s explore with us right now!

How does wine business require an ecommerce platform?

For a long time, the wine business has always been considered one of the spearhead and fastest growing ones in the global market. By engaging in the ecommerce space, this industry gains a lot of outstanding benefits and numbers. According to projections, the wine ecommerce market will grow at a rapid pace, reaching $5.2 billion by 2022. 

In order to start selling wine products, the first and most crucial step you need to do is to pick a dependable and safe ecommerce platform. The platform you choose should include anything you need to meet all your business’s requirements. Some of the must factors are eye-catching templates, excellent SEO tools as well as advanced features that are suitable with your items. Then, you should refer to the most critical functions you must consider when choosing the ecommerce platform if you wish to sell wine online effectively.

#1. Website builder is simple to use and friendly to users

A complex platform will cause a lot of obstacles, especially for those who are just starting out or do not have too much experience in online business. Hence, you should focus a lot on website builders of platforms to choose the most easy one for you. 

#2. Safe and reliable payment process

Checkout is the most important step in the entire buying process. Therefore, the platform you choose must ensure the credibility and safety of the payment methods offered to your customers. As a result, you can build trustworthiness in your clients’ mind and easily encourage them to make purchases many times. 

#3. Come with a variety of advanced features to assist you drive sales

Moreover, you should seek an ecommerce platform featuring a lot of modern capabilities to help you solve everything. For instance, ​handle wine allocations, inventory management and so much more.

#4. Provide powerful marketing tools

Worth-using ecommerce platforms are those integrated with extra marketing tools such as MailChimp and Drip to help you build effective marketing campaigns. Of course, it must have built-in marketing capabilities.

#5. The ability to create useful and accurate reports

Thanks to comprehensive reports, businesses can identify their traffic sources and then conduct a thorough competitive study.

Top best wine ecommerce platforms for businesses to get success 

1. VineSpring

The first wine ecommerce platform we highly recommend for you to improve your business’s efficiency is VineSpring. There is no doubt that VineSpring is a robust ecommerce solution for wineries and breweries to sell wine online. Because of being designed especially for wine businesses, VineSpring includes anything that can help you distinguish your brand from the rest. In fact, it was built by professionals who understand the wine industry inside and out. Thus, this is not hard to understand why you will get an online store tailored to the demands of large-scale vineyards and breweries.

What’s more, VineSpring is the best method for wineries to promote their products and reach a larger audience. In addition, with the great combination with a number of design studios, VineSpring brings you various appealing and unique winery website templates that promise to help you grab customers’ attention at a first glance. Best of all, this platform is fully responsive and adaptable. As a result, your website will always have a stunning look on any type of modern devices, from mobile phones, tablets, to bigger screen devices. 

In terms of inventory management, it is considered as an obsession for large-scale wineries that experience high-volume sales because it’s incredibly time-consuming. However, VineSpring will make this task a breeze. Since it helps wineries track wine bottle production and gives access to production history to business owners. Therefore, they can easily gain an insight into every detail including bottling, selling, and shipping.

Apart from that, VineSpring has a fantastic POS system that accepts “tap, chip, and swipe” transactions with ease. The personnel can process orders on a fulfill screen with the help of this technology. Additionally, it can be used by business owners to explore their customers’ drinking preferences and purchasing behaviors. 

Support 

In particular, when working with VineSpring, you will receive strong support through email, phone, and live chat. In addition, this great wine ecommerce platform has a fantastic blog where they provide clients with important information about the secrets to wine ecommerce success. Alternatively, it also supplies many other things such as: alternatives for wine administration, wine allocations, and wine club membership. This is also one of the reasons makes this platform become such a powerful and worth-using wine ecommerce solution. Overall, VineSpring is ideal for large-scale wineries with high volume sales and a requirement for dependable customer service.

Pricing

VineSpring offers 4 subscription plans for customers to choose from with the smallest one being $99 per month. 

2. Wine Direct wine ecommerce platform 

In case you are looking for a wonderful wine ecommerce platform for your business, let’s have a glance at Wine Direct. For more details. Wine Direct is a powerful direct-to-consumer platform that allows wineries to handle all aspects of their internet sales. Besides, this wine ecommerce platform makes the process of selling wine online become easier than ever. As a result, it will be the perfect choice for wineries who have no prior experience with ecommerce platforms. What’s more, store owners can use the Wine Direct to manage their wine club membership by receiving email alerts and accessing real-time sales information. 

Aside from that, it also comes with the site prioritizing marketing. Therefore, it will bring wineries a lot of awesome opportunities to retain their members while also reaching a larger new audience. Thanks to its built-in marketing tools, customers are allowed to learn about a wine’s history and production process. Therefore, it will grab their interest and then, assist you to boost sales well.

In addition, it offers useful records that will aid wine merchants in tracking vineyard productivity a little easier. Also, you can easily keep track of customers’ profiles to refer to their order history and beverage preferences. As a result, this will help you come up with personalized offers and discounts for customers, as well as increase your sales effectively. 

Best of all, WineDirect is adaptable and fully mobile-friendly that allows you to manage items and inventory simply, and at the same time, let customers easily make purchases while on the road. Not only that, the feature of supporting wineries to send customized emails and invite customers to tasting facilities is also one of the most outstanding factors that makes this platform worth-using. 

Pricing

3. VinoShipper

Coming to the next wine ecommerce platform you can’t ignore to turn your dream business into reality. With its strong abilities, VinoShipper makes selling wine online easier in the United States. First and foremost, VinoShipper provides shipping permits for over 40 states to companies that work with them. Besides, thanks to VinoShipper, store owners will save a lot of their time and effort because this will help them control all reports, shipments, and orders. Plus, it also does a fantastic job of handling tax payments for wineries. 

Moreover, this platform’s shipping alternatives provide great service to customers. Because thanks to the account managing every order of VinoShipper UPS, clients don’t even need an account to complete the orders. Alternatively, VinoShipper enables wineries to generate their own shipping costs and discounts that can be adjusted at any time utilizing the real-time rate option. 

Pricing

When using VinoShipper, you will not be charged a monthly fee. Following that, clients have to pay a processing fee for each bottle of wine sold on the platform that uses a Pay As You Go system. For a product sold in a state where the customer has a permit, the processing charge is 4.75% of the product’s selling price. Otherwise, in case the client does not have a state’s permit, the transaction fee is 8.75% of the product’s selling price. 

4. WooCommerce 

Another wine ecommerce platform that is always considered as one of the most exceptional choices for driving revenue is WooCommerce. Being built on WordPress, this ecommerce seems no stranger to any ecommerce user. First of all, taking content is the priority makes WooCommerce excellent for wineries that want to develop an active blog platform in addition to selling wine online. Additionally, this flawless platform stands out from the rest because of a totally open-source. Then, it allows store owners to change and customize any aspect of their site as they want. Hence, wineries are able to add a limitless number of goods and users that bring them a huge number of great benefits in order to raise their business’s efficiency. 

In terms of templates, WooCommerce is likened to a treasure trove of unique and eye-catching templates that promise to make your store leave a deep impression on customers’ minds. Best of all, all of them are all mobile-friendly and designed with modern browsers in mind.

Furthermore, with the help of WooCommerce, you can also generate bulk discounts and volume discounts based on the amount of wines ordered in the customer’s shopping basket. In particular, don’t forget to use the Product Table plugin to its full potential that allows wineries to display product attributes, add an unlimited number of images, etc in order to gain the best outcomes. Plus, WooCommerce makes the checkout process a breeze because it provides a variety of payment options such as: Stripe, PayPal, Square and so much more. 

>>> Related post: Top 15 amazing wine shop woocommerce themes for an ecommerce shops

Pricing

Luckily, because of a powerful open-source platform, creating an account on WooCommerce is completely free. However, you must pay extra charges such as domain registration is $15 and hosting is $120 per year. Moreover, on average, shipping costs are around $108 per year with additional fees for payment gateways. 

5. Shopify

When it comes to the list of best wine ecommerce platforms, we can’t help but mention Shopify – one of the biggest and most popular ones in the global market. Not only perfect in selling wine online, but Shopify is also suitable for anything. However, in this article, we only mention wine as the prime example. Firstly, Shopify allows wine businesses to increase sales by providing them with access to numerous sales channels including Facebook, POS, Instagram, etc. Besides, thanks to Shopify, a lot of things such as: sales, fulfillment, orders, and inventory may all be managed efficiently by wine vendors. 

What’s more, Shopify focuses a lot on improving fantastic mobile apps that allow wineries to manage their entire online store while on the go. In particular, this wine ecommerce platform also brings sellers the access to their website’s HTML and CSS code. As a result, store owners can modify their storefront in a variety of ways with ease. 

In addition, when utilizing Shopify, wineries have full access to the profiles and purchasing histories of their clients in order to develop more effective strategies in the future. Best of all, as not inferior to WooCommerce, Shopify also comes with a bunch of appealing templates for you to choose from. Of course, all their designs are perfect and will surely grab customers’ attention at the first glance. 

Furthermore, clients can completely automate their email marketing and send tailored emails thanks to using MailChimp integration of Shopify. Not only that, with the connection with over 100 different payment gateways, Shopify’s checkout process is the best choice for customers. 

>>> Related post: Shopify wine theme: Top 10 best shopify themes for alcohol online stores

Pricing

6. Squarespace

The last wine ecommerce platform that we can’t miss in our list is Squarespace. In reality, Squarespace is a perfect choice for your wine business if you wish to sell wine online successfully and provide an excellent user experience to your clients. First and foremost, Squarespace offers a dozen of outstanding wine themes that can help wineries construct unique wine stores that stand out from the competition. Plus, its designs are 100% responsive. Hence, utilizing this platform will ensure your store always has a perfect look and runs fluently on any modern device. Besides, wineries can use the extensive picture features to exhibit a variety of wine product photographs and present their winery in the best possible light. 

Moreover, Squarespace enables businesses to manage discounts and generate personalized email campaigns, leading to increased sales. In particular, this wine ecommerce also aids you in writing detailed product descriptions, creating gift cards, as well as managing customer accounts. Best of all, unlike other wine ecommerce platforms, Squarespace allows businesses to sell an unlimited amount of wine bottles. 

Alternatively, this wine ecommerce platform hosts all of their websites on their servers, and the fees of hosting are included in their monthly plans. Because self-hosting may be time-consuming, especially for enterprises with high volume sales. Thus, taking advantage of Squarespace will help wineries save time and effort a lot. 

Furthermore, with the goal of assisting store owners to enhance their online store’s functionality, Squarespace integrates with a number of professional third-party plugins. Plus, powerful analytics features for tracking traffic sources, visitor interaction, and revenue are also available in this platform. 

Pricing

The common mistakes your wine ecommerce business can make 

Not fully advantage of the tools and data

Personalizing the message or content that a company delivers or automatically displays to its consumers or potential customers depending on their preferences and past behavior, or where they are in the buyer journey. Unluckily, wineries don’t personalize their digital marketing efforts nearly enough. Then, you can see personalization options that are frequently underutilized by wineries below.

#1. Email list segmentation and personalization

Distributing numerous types of emails and campaigns to a lot of different groups of individuals. For instance, various emails for wine club and non-wine club subscribers, a specific campaign to send to high-end customers [insert any group here], and so on. 

#2. Automated email series

Depending on certain actions of each customer segmentation, automated email will be sent to them. For example, the Welcome Email series is sent to subscribers immediately after they subscribe to the business’s email list. Besides, those who have left items in the shopping cart without purchasing will receive Abandoned Cart emails. Moreover, the First Purchase emails will be delivered to clients after their first purchase. 

#3. Websites with personalized automated content

Popups appear based on what page a person visits or is on. Simply speaking, email signup popups that appear automatically to those who spend more than x seconds on a business’s site. Besides, popups that appear while a customer is on the shopping cart page to remind them that if they spend x$ more they will get free shipping. Additionally, depending on the buying and browsing history of customers, items will be differently organised with the purpose of introducing them to the products they are most likely to buy. 

Maybe you don’t know, personalized and relevant emails generate 18 times more income than non-personalized ads, according to wine industry email marketing platforms. 

For instance, personalized content ‘blocks’ will display specific products these customers are most likely to purchase based on past behavior as well as personalised messaging shown to those users, according to Andrew Kamphuis of Commerce7. Then, they have also seen their customised content convert 16 times as well as normal product list pages and 4.4 times as well as conventional product description pages.

Slow to change

Unlike another industry, the wine industry is frequently hesitant to adapt to changing technological requirements and customer buying preferences. Unfortunately, many businesses in this industry wait until the world is on fire before beginning to consider the changes that should have been implemented years ago. And, while many businesses have quickly adapted or pivoted to recover lost tasting room and DTC sales since mid-March and the start of SIP, many businesses are still standing still or even lagging behind. 

There is a sad reality that wineries have always had a tendency to wait until other retail industries have been using a technology for many years before seeing the need to implement it. In general, whatever the technology, wine businesses are always behind the times. The slow change of the wine industry has forced companies to almost certainly have to work longer and harder to get the same or inferior results as if they had made these sooner.

Hiring the wrong people or outsourcing when it’s necessary

If a wine ecommerce business does not hire or outsource to personnel with the proper expertise or skill set, this will be extremely difficult for them to implement advanced digital strategies and marketing approaches. According to the findings of Rob McMillan after surveying 800+ wineries in the most recent State of the US Wine Industry 2020 Silicon Valley Bank annual study, only 18% of the wineries studied have a full-time employee in charge of monitoring their client database and analyzing consumer data. 

Not leveraging current customers and contacts

Wineries tend to express what they hope consumers are most interested in rather than what those are most likely looking for. In fact, most consumers visit a winery’s website with the purpose of finding contact information, hours of operation, seeking tasting opportunities or purchasing wines. However, in too many cases, when a customer visits a winery’s website, what they can find most easily is the brand story of wineries or details on how to join their wine club instead of providing the right information customers want. 

Moreover, wine ecommerce business’s desire to boost sales to wine club members or customers who have bought a lot in the past put pressure on the initial post-SIP marketing problem. As a result, it will easily make customers disappointed with their inboxes fast filling with overly promotional. 

In addition, when implementing email marketing campaigns, most wineries only reach around 25% of their email subscribers. Not only do aggressive sales tactics and repetitively similar content fail to achieve the targeted result, but they can also harm a company’s long-term sales and many other things.

Lack of high-skilled talent

The reason why so few wineries focused their efforts on reaching out to more customers is a lack of qualified marketing personnel. Thus, the lack of any single person responsible for focusing on and implementing strategies that will not only profit a business in the short term, but will also facilitate continued, consistent results and growth. Then, the consequences are significant when firms interact with their customers and contacts in the ways that they want to be contacted with, and market to them in a variety of ways to ensure that they reach as many as possible. 

Wine clubs sign up

Since the inception of wine clubs, wineries have focused a tremendous amount of emphasis on attracting people to join them. Quarterly or bi-annual shipments ensured regular and stable capital inputs, which wineries eventually came to rely on. However, as with anything, if a company focuses too heavily on one sales strategy or channel at the expense of others, it can have a detrimental influence over time. Signing up as many people as possible to a business’s club leads to a decreased focus on the rest of a winery’s customer base. Besides, because the apparent effectiveness of these techniques makes it easier to overlook the ever-increasing necessity to advance technologically and digitally, as well as strategize on how to expand sales beyond the tasting room. 

Not focus a lot on long-term Digital and Marketing strategy

As you probably know, marketing and digital strategy are considered as critical in other businesses, and expenditures are provided accordingly. Not only are proper resources not always allotted in the wine sector, but it’s also typical to find tiny vineyards without a marketing plan or budget.

Wonderfully, in recent times, the wine business has accomplished more in a short amount of time in terms of adapting and adopting new and necessary technology and digital tactics. However, these early triumphs do not ensure sustained easy success. Therefore, as a wine store owner, you should be constantly on the cutting edge of new technologies and techniques to continue to grow your business. 

In conclusion

To sum up, this article delivers you a comprehensive overview of the wine industry and also the best wine ecommerce platforms you should know in order to build your own unique and stunning online store. Aside from these, we also indicate some common mistakes that many wine businesses make for you to avoid. Moreover, if you have any question on this topic, don’t hesitate to CONTACT US to be clearer.