The WS feed automatically removes out of stock items from our site.
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I think what scares me is that W-S asks you to list the states that you ship to.
RNDC is proactively trying to shut down shipping in all the states they operate.
I sincerely hope that the information that W-S collects on shipping does not become a weapon.
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This confirms what I speculated above. Google maintains more info about your business than WS does. I donāt think listing OOS items is inherently bad. A store could easily use that listing to offer a waitlist / notify (as K&L does) and even mine that search data for trends, and as I noted above, other offers.
I speculate that there will be multiple offerings since this conflict is obvious.
Retailer Offer 1: Flaviar checkout for businesses that have installed the software in their POS and can accommodate real-time inventory. These listings will be prioritized in search results as they should generate the most income for wine-searcher. Because W-S is likely to command some sort of commission, these listings will probably not be the best prices as retailers will have to account for additional costs. But they will offer the convenience and certainty that some customers will prioritize. Think of it like the Buy It Now button on eBay - not the best price, certainly, but you are going to get what you want.
Retailer Offer 2: The traditional pay-for-placement model that wine-searcher already uses. Stores with pre-arrivals, ghost inventory, low margins. They wonāt be able to deliver the Wine-Searcher checkout model logistically or in terms of margin. Wine-Searcher will still get their fees the traditional way, but their placement will now be below any Flaviar checkout listings (presumably - they might be mixed together, but I would still think that Flaviar listings would be grouped towards the top).
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Iāve been concerned about that for a while.
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Is there a Ships To: pull down? I only ever see the one that shows Shops Location.
neither of these scenarios seem that great for retailers. unless iām missing the inherent lift.
Yes.
If you live in Michigan, and select retailers from your state, or ones that ship into your state. (and so on)
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Iād guess that the point is to not rely on retailers for their primary revenue stream any longer and to focus on turning the web traffic from consumers into revenue.
They have 33,000 vendors, Iām not sure what percentage of them are sponsored. But that number must be dwarfed by the amount of monthly visitors the site gets - which they say is 5 million.
Plus if youāre a company with things to sell, like Flaviar is, having consumers stop and pay you rather than the retailer is a great way to capture all their customers payment information and sales behavior if you decide to someday market your own wine offering in addition to your spirits samplers/clubs/private labels/what have you.
If I was a retailer, I would be seriously bummed out. I would probably also be looking at moving my business online-only instead of brick and mortar in order to compensate for what are sure to be diminishing margins.
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Got it now, I never used it because thereās no need to see what Ohio retailers have on their shelves. Lol
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It is possible to get around this but I donāt think it is a good business strategy.
I agree with the raw seo perspective but again I donāt think this is good business strategy. In Germany if you put Ulysse Collin in google you get a lot of offers. Go to the site and nothing is available. For me I have no interest in exploring futher which in turn is not good for the sites bounce rate.
What strikes me with googe and with the seo analytics, from our perspective is how much searchs are for educational purposes rather than transactional purposes. The art is turning educational searchs into transactional searches.
In terms of this thread, there is a lot of speculation, the text on wine searcher is very vague. Where are all of these theories coming from?
Rampant speculation, where else? Thatās what we do best here? Please visit more often
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I donāt know how long this pseudo-advertisement has been popping up on the Wine-Searcher website, but I only just noticed it tonight:
It suggests to me that Flaviar has very large plans for Wine-Searcher [and that Flaviar will be paying massive fees to federal politicians & state regulatory bodies in order to see their plans through to fruition].
In fact, itās quite easy to imagine an anti-trust lawsuit in the near future.
Or at least it would have been easy to have imagined, back in the day, when we still had anti-trust law in this country.
Itās certainly a very bold move on the part of Flaviar.
Flaviar is still advertising hard liquor on the Wine-Searcher website.
One would think that moving hard liquor across state lines would be a tremendous legalistic challenge.
I think the work around is doing it through a licensed partner in the state.
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not sure the mechanics but smws has been shipping with no issues ( that i am aware of) for years
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Lately Iāve noticed some oddity with the W-S links on CT. While the CT button used to show a relatively reliable price, that is no longer the case. The button displays a price that may be related to listings from Europe or to other vintages of the wine, even where there are listings for that vintage available. Is this something which can be addressed in W-S settings?
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In CT display settings you can tweak your WHERE TO BUY location.
https://www.cellartracker.com/displayoptions.asp
Settings UNITED STATES instead of USE MY CURRENT LOCATION runs down a different path.
The underlying W-S API will āautoexpandā scope at times based upon availability. It is ā¦ complex.
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Thanks Eric. Though I wonder why theyāre showing me a price for different vintages, even though there are retailers offering the vintage in question. That goes for both the price displayed on the button on CT and the prices shown in the pop up window when I click the button. It has only started doing this in the past week or so. Before that it showed, with relative reliability, correct price and vintage. I say relative only because there were times no price would appear in the button even for widely available wines, but clicking through always brought up the correct information.
Feel free to send a note with specific wines to support@cellartracker.com
W-S makes changes to their APIās, and we have made some changes on CT (for the popup window).
Also curious if you have OAuth linked your accounts here: My Subscriptions - CellarTracker
That is useful if you are a PRO subscriber, as then we are able to honor that.
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Iāve also noticed this happening. (Just to provide another data point.)
@Eric_LeVine The next time I see it for a specific wine, Iāll be sure to email support.
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