Feature 1: is NOT
What is this??? This feature allow clients to create a more powerful and targeted lists by excluding groups. Here is an example of where you might use this. What if you wanted to find everyone who has bought from your store, but isn't a newsletter subscriber, now you can.

Feature 2: Location specific parameter
Now you can search for members in a specific area by entering a zip code or postal code and then specifying a distance from that zip code. This is a great tool if you are hosting an event and want to invite everyone from that area. Another great way to use this tool is if your wine has been picked up in a restaurant or wine store, you can then email your members in that area and let them know that a local store or restaurant now carries your wines.

If you have any questions about our winery ecommerce platform, or would like to see a demo give us a call at 604-852-8140 or send Brent an email.

Here are five points to consider in your checkout process:  

1) Make it easy for customers to get to the checkout area. Once items have been added to the cart, the "checkout" button should be clearly marked and visible to the customer. This button should be the largest button on the cart page. (Also ensure that when a customer clicks the checkout button, they are taken to the checkout page.)

2) Keep the customer focused. Once inside the checkout area, don't lead the customer away to other sales or promotions. The checkout process should be fully enclosed and devoid of almost all navigational elements. (Have you noticed that most large ecommerce stores switch their navigation or remove their navigation in the checkout area.)

3) Only capture the information required. This seems obvious, but how many times in the checkout process have you been asked for buying preferences, newsletter signups, or even to select a username and password. Gathering extraneous information can easily be done after the customer checks out. (Use contact points such as the confirmation page and order confirmation emails to request the user signup for your newsletter, create an account, etc)

4) Assure the customer about the trustworthiness and security of the checkout process. Trustworthiness can be communicated through a security assurance message and having an SSL certificate. Trustworthiness is also communicated by posting contact information, delivery charges and by having a smooth checkout process.

5) Use Customer Friendly Forms. There are a large number eye tracking studies with regards to forms and labels. It's accepted that the form fields should fit the information that is to be entered and should be clearly labelled. Studies also show clear advantages when the label is placed directly above the form field.  Form fields are not a great place to show off creativity.

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Is customer experience costing you sales? Visit the recent store we launched for Cuvaison and tell us what you think of the customer experience. We would love to hear your opinion.

Image if the offline world behaved the same way. You walk through the grocery store, picked up an item, looked at it, and then when you added it to your shopping cart you are whisked away to a different part of the store and all you can see are the items in your cart.

One of the big ways to improve a user experience on the web is to not take users out of the context they are in. In a site we launched last week, Twisted Oak does this 'Add to Cart' experience well. If you are on a product list page and click 'Add to Cart' (or Add To Sack in this case), you stay on the same product list page and a little 'modal' cart drops in to let you know the item was added. If you are on a product drilldown page, and click 'Add to Cart', the same modal effect. The user is never whisked away to another part of the site.

From a user perspective this "modal cart" becomes more like the real world shopping experience where you add something to your cart, and continue down the same isle.

What do you think?
 

Some reasons they might not be checking out.

1. They are just comparison shopping or window shopping.
2. They were scared off by the shipping costs.
3. They had technical issues checking out.
4. There was a lack of direction or some confusion.
5. Maybe the website didn't give them the correct assurances.

And there are a lot of reasons not listed here.

How intrusive do you want to be?
Visitors on the internet are hardly anonymous. If a visitor has been to your store before and given you personal information, there is a good chance that you know who they are as soon as they come back to your website. If a visitor has entered personal information in the checkout area, but does not complete the checkout, you should definitely know who this visitor is.

Do you want to survey them about why they didn't complete the checkout? Perhaps with a popup survey? Or spamming them with an email survey? How about sending them an email coupon for the items in their cart that they didn't purchase?

How intrusive should you be with contacting this visitor? Maybe you just want to send an email asking them about their recent shopping experience?

Taking a hint from the offline world.
There is a great article at Future Now about gorilla marketing. To quote the opening line "In the offline world, have you ever been chased by retail staff because you opted not to buy something at their store?"

My Opinion
Nobody likes intrusive or pushy people. If a person abandons your website in the pre-checkout area (on a product page or cart page) you shouldn't contact them (via email, popup survey, phone, etc). In an offline world, if someone entered your store, and then left, you would never chase them. Having a feedback button on your site and a clear phone number for customer support are both good ideas to get this visitor to contact you. Look at ways to improve your conversion via A/B tests is also a good idea.

How about if a visitor enters the checkout area, completes their peronal information and shipping information, but fails to enter their payment information? Here it gets a little more interesting. Having a tactful phone call from customer service might be good idea to try. (In an offline world, if someone entered the checkout area, and then decided to leave, a good clerk would ask them if they could assist in anyway - without being pushy). I would side with a tactful phone call more than an automated generic email, or any kind of spam email. Take a hint from some of the ideas in this article.

• Use the welcome message to ask questions to ensure future emails are relevant.
• Use the welcome message to tell the new subscriber about current relevant promotions.
• Use the welecome message to link to highlights from your past emails.

And one last tip - don't hide your unsubscribe link - even in your welcome message. Make it easy for people to join your email list. Make it just as easy to get off your email list.
 

I was reading through the 'Usability Study: Men Need Speed' talking about gender differences in web.  While the study's sampling size is small, 'Ease of Use' trumps Download Speed, Navigation, Accessibility, and Customization for both men and women.

I found this interesting as it conflicts with what I feel is an almost natural tendency for website owners to request more and more features. (Can we add multiple ship-tos, multiple payment methods, and a few more options inside the checkout process - or perhaps we should just make it really simple and easy to use)

Inward Facing: This type of person asked operational type questions about how the website could make their operations easier. Questions like: Does our platform integrate with their POS system? How can they get UPS shipping labels out of our platform? Almost all of the questions centered around the operations at the winery and how we could make it easier.

Outward Facing: This type of person asked sales type questions about how the website could sell more, how customers interact with it, and how they could go to market better or more efficiently with a website.

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I'm not arguing against either of these camps. There is a need for both.  I was just really intrigued by how some people really tended to lean one way.  For myself, when I look at personality types, I typically like to know where I fit in so I can realize that other people think different than me.

So are you inward or outward?

I agree with most of the suggestions in the article. Over the last few months we have been asked similar questions about what makes a website successful. If you asked for my personal top 5 recommendations for a wine store wanting to do ecommerce on the web...

1. The most important factor online is user experience. How your website feels and operates will directly affect how much you sell.
2. Provide a true e-commerce experience using a platform dedicated to wine sales (our platform, Inertia Beverage, Beverage Media, etc).
3. Have a well defined information architecture, intuitive navigation, and clearly labeled categories and products.
4. Focus attention on your products by keeping distractions to a minimum.
5. Build trust and credibility. Providing highly visible support options, shipping policies, privacy policies, and phone numbers will also build trust.

If you are looking for more resources to improve your wine based website, try this series on '7 Habits of Highly Effective Winery Websites'

Here are three specific examples of how they listen:

1. Inside the store on a wall near the counter you can see some "proposed" designs of some upcoming shoes and you can write feedback on the designs. (There was lots of good feedback from customers on there, and I'm sure they take it to heart).
2. The shoes that we ended up buying were inspired by a customer, and then the shoe was named after that customer. How cool is that!
3. On Saturday morning when I 'twitted' that I was going to be visiting Fluevog, I immediately received a a follow. (Anyone on twitter will probably know what that means)

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So how does this relate to you? At Vin|65, I want to model the company around a "customer engaging" experience. It's not always easy (we have local customers, and we have customers on the other side of both oceans) but it's always right.

I personally have a google doc with features and changes that customers have recommended. Some of the best features are coming from clients who who use our products every day.  We are constantly look to our customers for ways we can improve their website and ultimately improve our product... so keep the requests coming.  If you have a great idea, send it to me (or your account rep).

Thanks

Providing reassurances to the customer through the checkout process does lead to less cart abandonment and encourages conversions.

So what kind of messages make you feel "safe". It's not just one thing. Trust arises out of lots of small trust-producing features.

• Start with your full postal address and telephone number of your company.  Put your phone number large on the page.
• Be up front about all charges (delivery charges, handling, etc).
• Offer clear signs of server security, SSL locks, security icons, etc. (The McAfee/Hacker Safe logo reported increases sales by 14%).
• Use Opt-in options rather than opt out schemes (nobody likes to feel they are being scammed into signing up for a newsletter)
• Include links to privacy policy, security policy, etc.
• Build trust by ensuring that the entire checkout is a smooth process and error free (nothing destroys trust like a broken process).

So what is the perfect assurance message? No one message is going to work for everyone. Start with some of the basics, and then use Google Website Optimizer to test it over time.

Brian joins are team in a programming and development role.  For the first few months he will be working on some custom development projects. Brian has a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems and has a strong background in webservices, C#, and database development.

If you end up talking to him, seeing him in the office, or seeing him at the gym with us make sure you say hi.

It seems that wineries are hesitant to use reviews and ratings on their websites because they fear the bad or negative reviews that their wine might get. Research from BazaarVoice, a leading ratings and review marketing specialist, indicates that negative reviews can increase the product conversion rate. People realize products are not perfect and that everyone has a different pallet.

User Reviews vs. Critic Reviews

Who would you trust more when buying wine, a wine critic’s review or user generated reviews? The results from marketing surveys done by Market Sherpa are totally one-sided. 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friends’ recommendation over a review by a critic, and 83.8% said they would trust a user review over a critics review.

So here is what to think about when you’re putting your review section up on your site:

• Placement (above the fold)
• Size
• Stars or other graphics
• Ease of reading
• Sorting
• Rate Distribution
• Use across the site
• Rate wine attributes or individual wines.

Rating and reviews are a great way to increase your visitor’s activity on your site and you can offer incentives for them to come back and write reviews and rate your wine. Send out an email 10 days after their purchase asking them if they liked it. You could offer free shipping on their next purchase once they write a review.

1) Close the disconnect between the website and the webstore. On his website (and you see this on lots of sites) you click on 'Wine' on the main navigation, and see a list of the wine, read about the wine, but when the time comes to order the wine, you have to click 'store' on the main navigation, remember the title of the product and go purchase it in a seperate area on the site. It should be as simple as possible for someone to purchase from you. This means having the 'Add to Cart' button right there with the tasting notes, product photography, etc. Your wine page and your store should be one.

2) More details on the actual wine. There is no limit to the amount of information you can put on a website. A large part of the buying population are methodical people or humanistic type people who enjoy reading a lot of detail. This includes tasting notes, ratings and reviews, etc. More detail will see more wine.

3) No forced account on checkout. When a customer wants to checkout, they want to give you their credit card, not come up with a unique username and password to create an account. Forcing a person to create an account on checkout will result in lost sales.

4) Own the search for your own label. If I have a wine at a restuarant, at a friend's house or somewhere else, and now I go search Google for that product. That brand should come up number one on the search. Not coming up number one (or in this case not showing up at all) will cost sales.

5) Have an environment of monitoring and testing. Google analytics is free and pretty easy for a web developer or designer to setup. On the website in question I noticed that google analytics was running on part of the site, but not on the store part of the site. You really want to get a solid connection on analytics between your website, your store, blog, etc. Without strong analytics it's really hard to gauge the performance of a website.

And a few bonus ideas...

1) Provide assurances in the checkout. The right security assurance message will increase the number of people completing the checkout form.

2) Make sure the website on your current business cards is redirected to your live website. (Again this was specifically directed at this prospect, but if you're not building your own website, ensure that the domain on your marketing material is your domain)

It's clear that social media is here to stay. So how much social media should you put on your site? Will adding these buttons to your blog, to your content, or to your store bring you more visitors? More traffic? More sales?

Leading usability researches such as FutureNow, e-Consultancy, and others have done endless research on usability and e-commerce shopping. We've also done research in the wine industry.

As far as social media links, I've yet to see an research on the effectiveness of these links and I personally feel that the jury is still out but that studies are coming (and perhaps in the works right now)