Our ecommerce offering is competitively priced and offers value for money. We also have a track record of launching websites for retailers that are successful and show a productive return on this investment. However, I don’t think you are questioning whether there is value in the product; just stating that your store isn’t generating the cash flow yet to support this investment.

For stores in your position we encourage you to explore alternative approaches to selling wine online using email and social media (see Amanda’s recent column here: http://www.bevsites.com/index.php/2010/10/testing-the-waters-using-email-and-social-media/). Often these tools are free and will give you a sense of the business you can do online with an ecommerce website but without the capital investment. Once your internet sales grow to the point where the investment in ecommerce becomes a more predictable investment you’ll be in a better position to justify the investment and guide the development of your website.

We have plans to present a roadmap for stores in your position with instructions for setting up Facebook pages, twitter accounts, Wine-Searcher feeds and email campaigns. When we have a date for that presentation I’ll post it to this comments thread.