How did wine consumer's mindset change and what should your wine product page contain?
Wine Sales
Wine sales in the US are growing every year for the last 20 years and now that has become an undoubtful fact. Although there was a drop in 2020 due to the Covid crisis, in 2021 wine sales jumped back up and demonstrated how stable the wine industry is. However, 2020 is more important than 2021 and I see it as a turning point in wine sales. Online wine sales became an inevitable sales channel since people even after Covid continued purchasing wine online and reduced their wine store visits.
New Purchasing Mindset
The mindset of a wine consumer while buying wine online seems to be the same as buying wine in a local wine shop. Consumer either buys wine suggested by shop's sommelier/website or explores wine offer on its own. So what is the difference?
Time pressure. Nobody feels comfortable being in any store for over an hour and buying one item. No matter how pleasant the staff is in a wine store, a consumer feels the expectation that he/she should buy something. Just because they are time-pressured, people end up buying mismatched wines. While if you are sitting in the comfort of your home, you have all the time you need to pick a wine. A consumer can explore and surf several shops/ various wine websites at the same time. The decision-making process is not time-framed anymore. People can Google about wines for a whole week and buy them on Sunday.
Who benefits new situation?
As we concluded above, wine lovers spend more time analyzing the wines they buy. Therefore, storytelling and winery's approach to winemaking became even more important attention-grabbers. Producers of organic, natural, and biodynamic wines benefited from this with their new, fresh and unique stories. They have a lot to say, their wines are unconventional in every possible way. Their branding is not just how they feel about winemaking, but they mirror their life principles in the art of making wine.
Organic Wines
Wine lover does not just enjoy the quality of these natural wines but the status of a responsible nature-aware person that comes with it. Moreover, organic tag/icon on wine product pages attracts a lot of attention, there are no tags in online wine stores saying "2-century old winery", "Argentina's best winemaker", or "First Aglianico from California"... I am not saying that organic wines definitely win over conventional ones in the battle of selling wine online, but it is much easier to notice an organic tag on an online store than on a wine shelf. This is a good initial step to getting a wine consumer's attention.
Wine Product Page
Wine with a poorly updated product page will be bought only by someone who has already tried that wine and is familiar with its characteristics. In the situation of exploring and choosing a wine to buy the ones with full descriptions win over the consumer. Having your wine product pages updated on your wine e-commerce will make you look trustworthy to consumers. Although they are not time-limited when buying wine, you will save them time surfing the internet to find info on this particular wine. The goal is always to render a purchase process as smooth as possible.
Wine product page should contain:
Wine Info (color, type, variety, origin, vintage, alcohol...)
Labels/Bottle Shots
Tasting Notes and Ratings
Food pairing
1. Wine Info
There is a long list of reasons why it is unquestionably necessary to have all of the wine info listed above. We forget that not all customers are wine experts and even wine enthusiasts who usually know more about wine forget grapes characteristic for the specific region on vice versa. Vintage is just a 4-digit number that you might be missing on your wine product that will be enough for wine consumers not to click add to cart.
2. Labels/Bottle Shots
have to be up-to-date. If the vintage on the label does not match the vintage in the description, a consumer does not know which one is correct. This is again enough not to click add to cart.
3. Tasting Notes and Ratings
this is probably the most important piece of a wine product page. A page will look empty and there will be hardly any consumer engagement without having at least short Tasting Notes or one Review/Rating.
4. Food Pairing
90% of the wine bought online is bought to have at home and 90% of it is to have those wines with food. Try to be creative with this section, not just writing overused food-paring phrases "good with red meat".
Moreover, if you want to be competitive on wine platforms that crawl wine offers and connect their users to numerous online wine stores. Your wine product page has to be complete because it will be parallelly compared with other stores offering the same wine. If you want to win this game you have to earn consumers' trust. Also, wine platforms will not take you seriously if your wine database is not completed. Having only Wine name + Price does not do the work nowadays.
Conclusion
Fortunately for wine retailers, people still google them more than the actual wines or wineries. Even if you haven't done any digital marketing people will try to find your online shop. Your goals are to try to rank higher in Google and keep website visitors engaged. You will achieve them by having your website well-structured and your wine product pages up-to-date constantly.
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