5 Ways Wineries Can Become More Customer Centric Online

While wineries provide customer centric experiences in the tasting room, it’s important to reflect on how the experience is translating online. The mindset of your tasting room customer is very different from that same customer online.

In the tasting room, your customer is often on vacation, relaxed, wanting to learn more about your story, and tasting your wine. However, that same customer isn’t coming to your website for the same experience and story. Instead, they are there to make a reservation, make a purchase, or edit their wine club.

Keep your customers at the heart of the transaction

With tasting room traffic being down, and the substantial ecommerce growth seen through the year, wineries need to ensure that their customers' online journey revolves around them and their specific needs.

So where do wineries start? We're glad you asked - Here are 5 steps that wineries can take to become more customer centric online.

1. Personalize their experience

In a world of abundance - it’s important to curate experiences that directly relate and speak to your customer. Through our data, we’ve seen personalized product recommendations convert 16 times more often than standard product list pages.

From order history alone, you can learn what type of wine and products your customer is looking for - rather than waiting for them to find it, you can strategically recommend products based on their own preferences. There are many ways to personalize your customers' experience away from the tasting room - we even wrote an entire blog about it.

2. Make your website mobile friendly

In order to keep up with consumer needs, wineries need to consider what their online experience actually looks like when it comes to how efficient their websites are, regardless of what device they are using. 

Did you know that 50% of sales are made on mobile devices? In today's world, consumers are on the go and need the ability to make a purchase whenever, wherever. Regardless of where your customer is making a purchase, their history and cart should transfer from mobile to desktop (and vice-versa) seamlessly, allowing them to pick up where they left off and complete their purchase. 

Consider that mobile friendly isn’t just a responsive design. Mobile friendly means that your site can load fast on a slow connection, limited sizing on images and video, shorter forms (or better yet, no forms,) easier logins through Facebook and Google, and has a one-click checkout. 

3. Allow your members to customize their club shipments

The more flexibility and customization that you provide to your club members, the happier they will be. The shift in the industry from traditional wine clubs, to user choice, and now wine subscriptions prove that the industry is moving more and more towards complete customization. 

Consumer expectations and preferences shifted and wineries need to stay up-to-date in order to keep up with the demand for more flexibility. This includes empowering members to be able to add products and adjust the quantity, choose when they would like to receive their order, and adjust the frequency of shipments, keeping them in control.

At Commerce7 we found that on average, the number of members that will churn within a year is 17.4%, but for members who are able to edit a package, it’s only 12.3%. Customers who customize their shipments feel a deeper affinity to your brand.

4. Let your club members cancel online

This statement alone can be intimidating to many, but allowing your members to pause or cancel their memberships online only creates a better customer experience. Giving them the ability to do so doesn’t push customers to cancel, it just gives them a more efficient and positive way to do it. 

We have all experienced the hassle of having to call and cancel a service and it’s not fun, for anyone. While wineries argue they can incentivize members to stay, or better understand the reason for cancelling, it comes down to how the experience translates for members. 

There are many ways to maintain a positive relationship with members who cancel their club. You can lean on email marketing to frequently check in, provide winery updates, or even offer a special promotion for when they are ready to return.

5. Ask your customers for feedback

Feedback is a great way for businesses to consistently improve and meet customers expectations. Although we can argue whether or not the customer is always right, the type of feedback we are referring to here is the type of information that will help better understand your customer’s overall online experience.

Understanding how your customer interacts with your website is important when you want to consider how easy your website is to navigate, how personalized product recommendations worked, and what the overall experience looked like for them. 

This takes the experience beyond the purchase, and helps build trust and loyalty. A customer centric approach requires customers to feel that their needs are being met.

About Commerce7

Above price and product, the number one reason why a consumer will choose a brand is customer experience. At Commerce7, we make it easy for wineries to create great consumer shopping experiences. We do that, by offering the industry’s most modern and customer centric club management, ecommerce, POS, reservation, and CRM tools.

Learn why over 730 wineries choose Commerce7 as their DtC platform.

Take a tour, or contact us for a demo.