In ecommerce, too often we end up in our own information silos. Too often, what one company does in an industry is simply copied over and over again. A better ecommerce plan would be to copy another niche and see if it works in your own. Who knows, you might be surprised! Here are some ecommerce lessons from wine clubs.
Long Form Reviews:
One challenge about selling wine: people can’t try it, before they buy it. One way that wine clubs have started to fight this issue, after all ecommerce players are not eligible for Yelp or TripAdvisor reviews, is to find long form reviews. Having a functional affiliate program helps to create these type of reviews. A good example site is wine club reviews. These long form reviews help your ecommerce site, by increasing your conversion rates.
Marketing Funnels:
We’ve all heard the terminology right? Have a good marketing funnel. But, do you? Most ecommerce businesses focus exclusively on converting customers the first time they end up on their website. Is that the best process for your business long term though? Other wine clubs are now focused on gaining your email. What’s the advantage to email you might ask. Well, the main advantage is that the wine club can market to you basically at their leisure. So as an ecommerce business, make sure you have a marketing funnel and figure out the most effective point to input people. It might not be your website!
Pretty Pictures Don’t Matter:
One of the interesting things about selling wine online is that online wine clubs have one method and wineries have another. Wineries tend to have great, beautiful pictures of their facility, their vineyards and more. The only problem? Nobody cares. Those types of beautiful images don’t convert. Wine clubs tend to not even have pictures of wine bottles any longer. They either keep it even simpler than that, or they have pictures of people enjoying their wine. That enjoyment and spending time with friends and family is what they’re really selling.
Shipping Times, Seriously
One part of every ecommerce business, you have to get your products into people’s hands. Amazon has continued to change the game in terms of shipping time frames. A decade ago, your ecommerce business could ship once a week and be above average. Then Amazon started delivering every order from their website within 2 days. Now, Amazon is working on delivering some shipments on the same day. Do you really think that, within the hour isn’t next? Can you imagine drones flying around San Francisco to delivery your order? A decade ago, that would have been science fiction, but as I watch self driving cars below me today, is it any longer?
If you’re ready to learn a bit more about wine clubs and why they’ve made some of the changes that they have, check out this list of wine clubs to know. Moving forward, will we continue to see how they’re changing, innovating and more importantly, what is happening under the hood. Thanks for reading.
