Case Studies: Turning a Winery Website into a Sales Driver

How four wineries with very different business models pulled together software suites that work

Is there a one-stop-shop solution for a winery website? Is it possible to find a software package that seamlessly integrates your content management system, point-of-sale, reservation, email marketing, event management and shopping cart modules, all while providing the functionality at a price that works for your winery? And then, will it integrate data from payroll, accounting and trade sales platforms as well?

Four winery digital marketing managers found that the answer to those questions was a resounding “No,” that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all or all-encompassing solution that fit winery needs.

“We started to look at whether there is a one-stop shop solution. Based on the complexity of our company, we’ve decided no. So, we are looking at replacing certain high ROI components first, which are the customer-facing websites, etc., and we are undergoing that evaluation right now,” said Melissa Lynch, general manager of the Boisset Collection Ambassador Program. “We’re seeing this trend toward needing a lot of functionality that doesn’t really exist today with a lot of the off-the-shelf packages.”

As more wineries look to build their direct-to-consumer platforms by bolstering e-commerce sales, they need a website that does some of the selling for them. It has to tell the brand story, make purchasing easy and entice a viewer to want to make a purchase.

But how do you create that? In a panel at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium held last August, four very differently sized wineries explained how they made the software decisions to allow them to rebuild a website into a more effective sales tool.

The WBM Top 50 Winery: Boisset Collection

Boisset Collection is a family-owned business based in France with a portfolio that spans 25 different wine brands. In the United States, its case production reaches about 800,000 per year, making it the 25th largest winery in the country (Wine Business Monthly, February 2018). Due, in part, to the large case volume, Boisset is required to have a multi-channel sales approach, selling through wholesale as well as direct-to-consumer and e-commerce. Currently, Melissa Lynch estimates that 80 percent of the company’s sales are wholesale—just 20 percent is direct-to-consumer, but that number is growing substantially and it’s the area she thinks provides more opportunity.

Six years ago, Lynch started an ambassador program. “We have recruited about 2,000 of these independent ambassadors over the years. It’s proven to be a great way for us to get outreach beyond the tasting rooms, of course. But they also require quite a bit of support—they’re really powered by technology at the end of the day.”

For her, having a website that supports her ambassadors is crucial, because she’s not just selling wine.

“We are moving into being more of a lifestyle brand,” said Lynch. “Jean-Charles Boisset doesn’t lack for any ideas and innovation—besides making wine, we sell lifestyle products: home décor products, jewelry, as well as gourmet food.”

In addition to 25 wine brands, the company needs to manage sales of the lifestyle products, as well as replicated websites for each individual ambassador, and provide an e-commerce solution for them all.

Boisset’s digital marketing team is in the process of discovering its next-generation of software: currently the company runs its CMS, POS and CRM through Advanced Management Systems (AMS).

“We had to build something that was custom for the ambassador program and, through that, we’ve learned about what we need in this next generation. Not only for that program, but for our tasting rooms and just to grow our e-commerce in general,” Lynch said. “Our goal is to dramatically increase our DTC online sales.”

One way to increase those sales is through the wine club. Each winery has its own wine club, as does the Ambassador Program. Currently, members can customize their shipments with wines from any of the company’s brands, and she noted that this functionality was not readily available with many off-the-shelf software packages; she had to create a custom solution to make it happen.

The Large Winery: HALL Wines

With three brands in three different locations, managing three different websites as effective sales tools is a tall order for Mike Hodgson, e-commerce director at HALL Wines. He manages websites for HALL, WALT and BACA wines. About 65 to 70 percent of the company’s revenue is direct-to-consumer, so the primary goals for their three websites are online sales, driving visitors to the tasting room and growing wine club membership by enhancing value and personalization.

Hodgson implemented live chat through the website mid-year and it turned out to be a highly valuable customer service tool for the company. He reports that the dedicated e-commerce customer coordinator enjoys it because it doesn’t require a lot of effort and she can keep it on in the background as she goes about her day-to-day activities. When a question comes up, she can quickly answer and keep the customer satisfied.

“We’ve talked about Millennials needing immediate gratification and satisfaction, and this is a way to really get engaged with the customer quickly and easily,” Hodgson said. “We use Lucky Orange for live chat. It’s really inexpensive; it starts at $10 a month. It’s a really easy way to get live chat going and it includes all of their other features as well.”

He’s learned quite a bit about what his customers are using the website for. Based on the questions that come in, including asks for more information on wine club memberships, discounts, the wine or even how to reach the property, he was able to determine the most needed information that wasn’t easily available. “It means that we have opportunities across the website to improve the experience and maybe answer those questions in advance. But that’s part of the learning experience as well,” he said.

To help drive e-commerce customers to become wine club members, which is a much more profitable revenue stream, Hodgson came up with an incredibly simple idea: he put the member discount price on the product page. “It shows the value not only for the member, but what you could be paying if you were to join. There’s a value proposition there. We want our members to feel valued and know they’re getting a better price.” He’s also looking to dynamically display the price a customer would pay if logged in (members who have been in the wine club for three years or more receive a larger discount).

While it would take a considerable investment, Hodgson is also looking into building in a wine club customization tool into the website, which would allow customers to go in and switch bottles in a shipment in an “intuitive” process. “We’re looking to emphasize adding bottles rather than switching. Obviously, we want to get units per transaction much higher, and average order value as well,” he said.

All these efforts, Hodgson pointed out, mean nothing if the website is not search engine optimized. He recommended AB testing to check. He uses Optimizly as well as Google Optimize. “We put ‘Join Our Mailing List’ at the bottom of the footer—a really simple thing. We have a mailing list link in the header, but we wanted to add it in the footer as well, because we know a lot of people go to the footer looking to sign up for a mailing list,” he said. “It’s a really simple easy thing you can do without being a developer, and then you can start collecting numbers on who’s clicking on the header and who’s clicking on the footer and you can compare which one’s actually doing more to bring in more people and more acquisition to your site.”

The Mid-sized Winery: Argyle Winery

As one of the larger producers in Oregon, Argyle Winery needed a fresh, cool website to help attract visitors to its Dundee-based tasting room and wines. Tanya Zumach, digital strategy manager, was put in charge of building that site, and knowing that 13 percent of the company’s DTC sales were made online, the consumer purchasing experience was her number one priority. She launched the new argylewinery.com in October 2017—In August 2018 the winery implemented a new ERP system and restructured its wine club offerings (the winery has 4,000 club members).

Because of this, Zumach took the redesign seriously, and wanted to make sure that the site served as an ambassador to the high-end wines Argyle was pouring.

“We are located in downtown Dundee, which is not the prettiest place in the world, so one of my big challenges when I did the website redesign was to try to find some really rich imagery to bring the Willamette Valley to the visitor,” she said.

With a three-member marketing staff (Zumach splits her time between Argyle and MacRostie Winery) and three club and customer service employees, Zumach knew that creating fresh, inviting content would pose some problems.

“My challenge was, because I have such a limited staff and I also had really limited content, I needed to come up with a way that the site would feel fresh and new every time somebody came to visit and would also bring parts of the brand story to life throughout the site, not just on an ‘About Us’ page,” she said.

Zumach came up with a modular content system that a developer created. Different modular blocks form stories, and each modular piece has a different view (short, medium or long) based on the device a consumer is using to reach the website. Zumach can easily place each piece in a different location, turn them on and off, or change the story.

“It really gives me a lot of flexibility to bring a lot of those little pieces together throughout the whole site. I’m able to continue to build it and use it,” she said. “I think it’s probably rare that people say they’re absolutely thrilled with their website, but I am.”

“I found that, as a sales tool, it helps to bring some richness to the story of our vineyards, of the other community projects that we’re working on, into the actual buying process. It was reinforcing the brand and the experience, rather than just our products themselves,” she added.

Once the website redesign was complete, she also went about making other updates. In August 2018, Argyle moved its fulfillment out-of-house, started talks on a new reservation software and went live with WineDirect. She also recently switched reservation software to Tock, primarily for the table management capabilities, but also because it easily integrated with WineDirect to immediately pull members in and bolster in-person customer service when the consumer visits the tasting room.

The Small Winery: Amista Vineyards

On the smallest end of the case production spectrum lies Amista Vineyards, a family owned and operated, 2,500-case winery in California’s Dry Creek Valley. Though proprietor Vicky Farrow spent a good portion of her career working in Silicon Valley, she admits that she knows nothing about technology. She and her husband decided to leave the hustle and bustle of San Francisco’s South Bay and start a winery focused on sparkling wines and Rhône varietals.

Amista has grown since then, not only in production but in popularity and sales. In Farrow’s words: “We had to move into the 21st century. Our system wasn’t even cloud-based.”

She spearheaded a project to build a better direct-to-consumer website platform a year ago. When she started, she did three critical things: she identified the key platforms and needs and spent energy and money on the right solutions for those needs, found vendor partners who would listen to her and help her with the right products for her business, and developed for the consumer, not her back office.

What were her key platforms/needs? Farrow was looking for a single database that had everything included: customer data, product data, content, transactions and more. The majority of Amista’s business is direct-to-consumer at the tasting room, so of course POS and wine club software were critical. While e-commerce isn’t currently a focus, Farrow would like to spend more time building that revenue channel, and so she knew that the software she chose had to fit her needs.

“I wanted one database that had great search and great reporting, and it’s all together. I also wanted it to work for all those three major channels. And obviously they’re smaller ones, but POS, Wine Club and ecommerce were all important to me,” said Farrow. “What I didn’t care so much about was what I call ancillary systems. Some of you have CFOs; well I’m my own CFO. So, I said ‘I don’t really care if QuickBooks is integrated.’ It’s not. I used to have it integrated; now I don’t. I do an upload every morning of the products we sold, and I have complete flexibility.”

“As a small business, there’s no IT person, no web designer—I’m all of that. I needed something that was easy to use and completely integrated for the main platforms,” she said.

Her second requirement was that any vendor she worked with would listen to her concerns and deliver solutions that met her needs—and didn’t try to over-deliver on luxuries.

“For me it’s really important to have a technology partner for the main platforms—I want someone who will listen to me. Not do everything I say or ask for, but really listen,” she said. “I want someone who will also innovate on my behalf, because I am just a small company. I can’t possibly know all the cool things, I need a partner that’s willing to do that.”

Lastly, Farrow also remembered that even though her new software suite would need to, in essence, make her life easier by integrating all systems and incorporating key needs, that wasn’t the main objective.

“You need to optimize for the customer and the customer experience and for selling more wine, and not for your accounting department or your shipping department or your compliance department—although they kind of do matter—but really it’s about optimizing for the customer,” she said. 

This article appeared in the November 2018 issue of Wine Business Monthly.