CT+ WS + Vivino???!!!!

I just noticed that cellar tracker now has 2 options ‘where to buy’ linked to each wine: Wine-Searcher and Vivino.

I’m rather surprised as I would have thought that Vivino was a direct rival to CT and sending users there might end up losing them.

I guess the dollars add up and this is an extra revenue earner for CT, but it wasn’t something I was expecting. Quite the opposite

I was also surprised to see this. I like the update were you see the lowest price on Wine Searcher without clicking through.

Agree it’s a rival in a sense, but Vivino can’t hold a candle to CT. Vivino is like single A ball, CT is the show. And I haven’t thought about the economics or business side but guessing this makes sense for CT (and vice versa for Vivino) otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.

I am not sure that there is much direct competition. First, unless I am mistaken, Vivino does not provide a cellar inventory service. That is what first attracted me, and many others, to CT. Second, there is another thread somewhere (I can’t remember if it is on here or the CT discussion page) comparing CT and Vivino tasting notes. I really do not have enough experience with Vivino to comment on this, but others have observed that the quality of tasting notes (and perhaps accuracy) is higher (or for some much higher), than Vivino. Finally, CT operates mostly on a voluntary pay system that is in fact based on the number of bottles you have in their inventory system. I think it is unlikely that someone who, through the link you mentioned, comes across Vivino for the first time, will drop CT. But perhaps there is a greater risk of that than I think – though I still can’t believe it would be enough to seriously affect CT which, again, is not set up to maximize revenue.

Yes! I like that too! It is only because of this thread that I clicked on Vivino on a wine for which a tasting note just popped up in my feed (another feature that Vivino does not have). There were three tasting notes (this is 1998 Viader), one of which seemed to be from CT, and the others were fine, though not particularly helpful.

Edit. By the way, on that 1998 Viader, the Wine Searcher price that pops up now on CT is $49 (I did not click through). The price when I clicked through to Vivino was $129. Does not make me want to explore Vivino too much more.

Somehow I have started getting emails from Vivino and they take quite a bit of license to establish the pedigree of a wine to the point of sensationalism.

Yes very interesting.

Given the unbelievably detailed knowledge CT has about our purchasing and consumption of wine, I’m sure there will be a lot more developments like this in the future. This data must be gold dust!

Hi all, yes yesterday afternoon we quietly launched a new feature where we are testing some integration with Vivino.

Basically, wherever we used to just render one WHERE TO BUY link to take you to Wine-Searcher, now we potentially will offer two links, one for Wine-Searcher and one for Vivino. We will only offer the Vivino button if they know that they have an offer for that specific wine. If they have the exact vintage, we render a price inside of the Vivino button. If they have an offer for another vintage, we still render the Vivino button but not a price. (If you click through, they have a pretty clear user experience for this latter case.) If Vivino has nothing to offer, we only show a full-width Wine-Searcher button. We also also now experimenting with the Wine-Searcher API to ask them for the price. If they return a price, then we render that inside of their button. It’s pretty cool, because you can arrow down in your cellar and get a quick bit of insight into retail availability and pricing.

As to the commentary about CellarTracker versus Vivino, we are in very, very different businesses. CellarTracker is subscription software. That is the core of our business and is very long-term focused. Call that the CAKE. Our frosting is that we (a) show ads to people who are not registered or logged in and (b) we direct affiliate traffic to Wine-Searcher and now Vivino. Again, this is frosting, a really thin layer of frosting. Our main reason for showing WHERE TO BUY buttons is to make it easy for you to find a wine if you are excited about it after reading tasting notes or want to add more to your cellar etc. I hope you all agree that we are not pushy when it comes to commerce. Vivino meanwhile has announced quite loudly that their goal is to sell a BILLION dollars of wine by 2020. They are in the commerce and lead generation business. So this is a natural area to partner where there is benefit for you and for each Vivino and CellarTracker.

The aforementioned thread on Vivino and CellarTracker is in my forum here: Vivino vs. CT ratings/TNs - what do you think?

By the way, for the privacy minded among you, the calls to the Wine-Searcher and Vivino API are server to server. We never pass them your IP address. Rather, we do our own local GeoIP lookup based on your IP and only pass broad regional parameters to the partner API’s to get locally geared price and availability. Obviously if you click through to their websites, at that point they have their own cookies and intelligence about you.

Let us know what you think!

Agree. It’s marketing all the way, and probably clever marketing at that. I know people who use Vivino. But also at times it can be a little ridiculous. They’ll have a score for a wine they’re trying to sell, of say 96 or 98. Pretty rare air. This must be the best wine ever! The score will be accompanied be a quote that would lead you to believe it’s some wine tasting OG rating the wine. It’s usually attributed to some somm that you wouldn’t have heard of. Now, it’s probably a real person and a real impression, from somebody that probably has training, and has consumed a lot of wine. Or not. But, it’s something I do ignore.

I think I am seeing the Vivino button even if they don’t have something to offer.

Steve, feel free to send us a note with examples to support@cellartracker.com or post in OUR support forum. We call their API and pass them our wine name. They are only supposed to come back if they have a match.

Eric - I just posted it in the support forum. I am not real familiar with Vivino so I might be missing something.

I like this too! Very nice feature. Assuming you get a click-through kickback for purchases which is a good way to capitalize on the good service and product you are providing.

I am all in favor as well. For all the reasons you say Eric it is useful to be able to easily find market availability and price on a wine for possible purchase.

Doesn’t Vivino already provide the label search for CT? Seems like a logical next step

I thought CT only did barcode not label search.

The barcode is a bit finicky, not because of CT but I think I read somewhere because of no central barcode assignment.

I like the price in WS spot

Vivino is pretty useless to me. Prices are always higher than WS anyways. Or sure why I would ever go there?

you can label search with the app, and when you do you get a pop up that tells you its powered by Vivino

We do our own barcode search: About UPC and EAN Barcodes - CellarTracker Support
We added label search, in partnership with Vivino, back in 2015: Label Search - CellarTracker Support