I’m doing some work for someone who asked me to look into selling wine on line out of their wine shop. When I owned MY shop I used a Bottlenose shopping site and wine-searcher’s smaller retail plan. I just took a look at wine-searcher’s site and it seems as if their only option for “sponsorship” is $4220 a year. At normal margins you’d have to sell a LOT of wine to cover only that cost, let alone other costs. This guy stocks less than 100 facings, and his wines are mostly small-production/winery-direct, but… still. Does searcher no longer offer a program for small merchants?
As I understand wine-searcher, if ANY of their “sponsors” have a specific wine in the database, non-“sponsors” listings won’t show up at all for the vast majority of users (97%?) who are not using the pro version of searcher. Am I getting that right?
Are there any viable search alternatives for a smaller, low volume merchant? I remember some info about Wine Access a few years ago. Is that an option?
We have about 900 facings and can’t justify the outlay to Wine Searcher. We rely on pay per click and key words/wording on very specific items. Nothing general. All our adwords on google go directly to the item, not the storefront. We use Wine Searcher a lot to find wines for people that we don’t have and check pricing. The one bugaboo we find on Wine Searcher is more than half the time you click on a specific product, you get directed to their storefront and have to search their store to see if they really have it.
Wine Searcher will still hit your site and if you are one of only a few stores that have the product, they will list it. Try 2006 Derenoncourt Cabernet.
Any idea if the Derenencourt would show if there were a ‘sponsor’ in the US, though?
Even at $2500 (assuming Matt is right) Searcher is a significant investment for a very small shop.
I use Google adwords for my wine preservation device and I get pretty good visibility for the ads. Not a lot of hits (5-wise), but the product is pretty narrow in audience. I’m thinking you’re probably right for “exclusive” wines, where people will pretty likely Google a very specific name and vintage.
Optimize his product descriptions, URL, category, etc too. I was evaluating a storefront today for a colleague and the product (a shirt) lacked any words describing it as a the kind of shirt it was (very specific type), it wasn’t categorized, etc. I’d also upload stock listings to Google Shopping. I’d be happy to take a look at the site and give you my thoughts… PM me if you’d like me to do that.
$2500 seems pricey, but it depends on average sale price, volume, etc.
Sponsor? Not sure what you mean. WS provides the names those stores who list a particular wine and when it gets down to you and three or four other stores, WS lists you. WS mines data from as many sources as possible to provide the “best service.”
I don’t know. The Searcher site, and the people I contacted there a few years ago, were very specific in explaining that 97%(?) of the searches done there are by people who are not paying for the “pro” version. ONLY “sponsors” (online merchants who PAY to have their items appear) are shown to regular (non-Pro) users UNLESS there are no “sponsor” (paid) listings for that specific wine. I’d be really flabbergasted (old-timers word) if that weren’t the case. The German listings (for Derenencourt), I’m thinking) are showing because they are in a different country than you. Not sure what you mean by “when it gets down to you and three or four other stores, WS lists you”. Why would they list YOU over the others if you weren’t paying for that treatment (except possibly if it’s by country)?
Back when I was a ‘sponsor’, they had two cost levels of “sponsorship” (as Matt says above) based on how many listings you needed. One was half the price of the other. Looking at their site now shows only one level. that I can see. It may be that the lower level is one you have to request.
We have a ‘small’ sponsorship pricing plan for merchants with 500 wines or fewer. You can find further information on this page - http://www.wine-searcher.com/rate-sm.lml or you can email us directly if you have any questions.
I think a key point that I didn’t get from the above is that the 2 and 4 thousand dollar ranges (see links above) are ANNUAL. Obviously one would want to do a shorter term and setup analytics to test out whether a shop was generating enough business to warrant the investment.
Thanks Melissie. I knew I’d remembered that from when I had my shop, but just couldn’t find it on your site. With only about 60 wines in his shop, I’m just trying to sniff out where his trial cost tolerance levels are.
60 wines? Is this a sideline? Or are these high end, high dollar margin wines? Because at that size he really needs every single wine to hit and turn over unless they’re just an addon to another business.
They are only a small percentage of the business done in the shop (in a touristy location) but they are from a region of very high tasting traffic and are all REALLY good. These are mostly very small production, winery-direct wines in the $25 to $75 range. The stock turns VERY quickly (surprising so), for the most part, but I’m thinking that on line sales could add to the volume and give him more profit as well as strengthen relationships with suppliers.
But… the very small number of wines does make the cost of doing this much more critical than it would be for a larger operation. I was really trying to find the least expensive, most cost-effective way to explore on line sales for him.
Hmm… You know Peter… In his place I’d start with a well-optimized site (product pages, categories, etc) and then use social media channels and/or emails. People forget that opt-in email lists are still the most effective online sales tool if done well. That approach will have a slower ramp up if he has to build a list from scratch, but it’s the least upfront money and lays a good foundation in case he does want to do WS or other promos.
Rick, he already has a significant email list and does Constant Contact emails. He also has a website but it is only an informative page with no product listings. My thinking is for him to start with a shopping cart such as Big Cartel (for $20 a month) where he can list his wines simply, use good keywords and product names, then see what happens without searcher. I just know the kind of consumers that use Searcher would be interested in his selections.
Fully agree. Email offers to his current list (even perhaps create a page to get people to tell him their interests). If he does try to get people to give some information on their wine interests he’ll get a better response if he offers a coupon or something for doing it… just make the coupon on the Thank You page after they fill out the Interests form.
I’m not familiar with Big Cartel (cool site, though). If he does use it, use the custom domain feature to have the store on a subdomain like shop.mysite.com so he gets the SEO benefit accruing to his domain. Pay attention to setting up categories and use keyword sensitive product copy. Watch for deuplicate content too. Sometimes a wine will be listed in two or more categories - say under Variety > Pinot Noir and Burgundy. You want one canonical URL for each product. You can control this by using the rel=“canonical” tag. A good cart/store should have features to deal with this too.
Thanks for all the great insight. It seems as if he already does a pretty good job with his email base. Most wines (single case buys) seem to turn in 2-3 weeks or so with just email, regulars, tastings, and walk-ins. I just really think his selections are so unique and good values that a wider audience would increase sales dramatically. The cart seems like a good, inexpensive way to get a feel for that.
You’re welcome. Two things smaller merchant don’t think about sometime…
One, making sure inventory is accurate. Some point of sale systems make this easy, but if he gets 10 cases of Domaine X in then he wil need to decide what to allot to the online store. Let’s say he splits that 5 cases online, 5 in the store. IF he emails out and sells through the 5 in the store and decides to sell 2 more cases via the shop he needs to remember to move those out of the online inventory. Some stores also have ways to deal with a close to sold out status, i.e. not show anything under X bottles.
More importantly, his staff need to all do this or at least let him know. If clerk Smith decides to sell a case of Domaine X that’s in the online inventory to a good customer in the shop that’s fine… unless Smith never tells anyone.
There’s the related issue of where the online inventory wines live - in the above scenario you can’t put all 10 cases on the floor, you need to put the cases being alloted to the online inventory somewhere else - in back, in offsite storage, whatever.
Two, make sure he can get enough of the wines. If he’s selling out that fast via email blasts to his current list what happens if he starts to get real online traction with that wine too? If he can restock, yay, but if not and he can sell through his annual allotment in 3 weeks as is… meh, I’d skip online sales.
Oh and finally… think about how to deal with this situation: He sends an email blast, linking each wine to its product page online. Customer J clicks on that link, orders 6 bottles but wants to pick them up in store. It’s a variation of the above inventory situation but in reverse if the online store inventory isn’t on the premises. BTW, wine links ALWAYS go to the product page, never to the home page. Ever.
Guarantee Period. For the 12 and 6 month sponsorship options, there is a three-week, no quibble, money-back guarantee period allowing you to ensure that Wine-Searcher is of value to your business.
Sounds like it is pretty easy to see if this is a value proposition or not.