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Talkin' Tech

Talkin’ Tech is a monthly column in the Beverage Media that discussed issues related to ecommerce for wine stores.

The Arguments Against Allowing Retailers to Ship Interstate

There are two different campaigns being fought that concern the interstate shipping of wine. Wineries have been largely successful in convincing the courts that they deserve the right to ship direct to consumers and will operate in compliance with state laws, whether favorable or not. To date their campaign has yielded 37 states and DC [...]

Different Paths to the Top of Wine Ecommerce

At this time of year we typically run benchmark comparisons for our retailer websites to give stores feedback on how their site is performing. We take statistics for November and compare metrics including total visitors, pageviews, sales, transactions, conversions, and order size. Comparing results across all our stores we see the following categories of websites:

Newcomers: [...]

Remove the Risk from Content that Sells

We have written in the past about how we are on the cusp of a new era whereproduct information is becoming more widely available to consumers who research and purchase wine online. Yet, as I write this a largely unremarkable lawsuit is being heard in NY District Court where a European drinks producer is trying [...]

Testing the Waters using Email and Social Media

If your retail store is brand new to the internet and you’re unsure about what kind of return you would get from being online, social media tools are a great way to test the waters and put your name out there. On the other hand, if you’re an established online retailer looking to grow, social [...]

Sweating the Details Page

A few months ago we talked about design choices that will set your website apart. Among the opportunities for creating a good impression we mentioned the increased expectations for the Item Detail page. The general rule for this page is to provide as much information as possible; however the resulting explosion of content has [...]

Journalists vs. Bloggers: The Debate Continues

There has been a history of unfriendliness between print wine writers and the relatively new world of wine bloggers. Well-established writers such as Robert Parker and Anthony Dias Blue have both attacked bloggers in the past, using the best tools they know: words.
Since speaking out at odds with the blogger community, they have both adjusted [...]

Winery Ecommerce Points to Trends for Retailer Websites

While ecommerce has become a prominent feature of retail wines sales for some years, the scale of retailer sales is probably much smaller than the impact of online sales for wineries, especially in California. According to Whole World Wines 92% of wineries have a website, with 70% of those using a secure shopping cart to [...]

Design Choices that can Set Your Wine Store Apart

Recently a store owner told me all other wine store websites look the same; we want our design to stand out as being different. To be honest this statement made me a little nervous. Unless the store has a very clear idea of what different means, or has experience with a designer [...]

An Ounce of Compliance is worth a Pound of Data Breach Cleanup

For most wine stores their efforts to secure information against possible theft have been driven by banks and the card issuing companies. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) launched its campaign to define security standards in 2006, and has been largely successful in promoting these standards to retailers and their vendors. Now a new source of [...]

Searching for the Intended Result

By now most of us have had the experience of entering a search term into Google only to make a typo that Google has helpfully corrected, stating “Did you mean?” Depending on the merits of your misspell you may find Google is confident you made a mistake and is showing you the corrected results. Other [...]

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