The challenges posed by this range of businesses have been unrecognisable from one another, so whilst all have been ecommerce based, each one has been vastly different. I have worked with businesses ranging from those with 1 single product, to those with literally millions of products. Bother are ecommerce, in some cases they are using the same technology, but the issues they face are worlds apart.

SME and Small Product Catalogue SEO

For start ups, or SMEs with a small product catalogue, the technical challenges are much less. So long as the website is built on a solid ecommerce platform (e.g. Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce etc) then with some tweaks and amends you wont go far wrong technically.

Internal linking too, a mainstay of some ecommerce strategies, is not the same challenge on a smaller website. And as for topic clusters, if the pages aren’t there what are you clustering?

With an SME or small ecommerce website, the focus typically needs to be on the content of the pages you do have, and finding the niche areas you can “win” against the competition. Question based content or blog posts add depth to a smaller website, and advisory pieces within the product page or a blog bring people to your brand earlier up the decision making process.

Small wins can reap huge results for these businesses, finding them, building on them and reinvesting is key for small businesses in the SEO space.

Enterprise and Larger Site Ecommerce SEO

Whilst a lot of what works for SMEs and small ecommerce sites should not be discounted for enterprise businesses and large sites, there are typically bigger issues to deal with.

Can Google find and index your site properly? Are products available at multiple different URLs and if so, are you managing this correctly? What technical SEO challenges does you site face?

Content drops down the list of priorities because the first issue tends to be making sure Google can find and index what you have before you want to add to it. Addressing crawling and indexing problems will reap rewards before any typically SEO suggestions which are content based if you are in charge of a large website.

With enterprise SEO you also regularly face the challenge of internationalisation. A single or multiple websites for different countries, many using the same language. Wrestling with hreflang, canonicals and Google’s handling of this challenge can be a full time job in itself.

But the difference is not just about size. Enterprise SEO involves more stakeholder management, communication, convincing and gaining buy in from those you are going to be putting more work towards. Coming to the recommendation is often the easy part in this scenario. With small businesses and start ups, there’s rarely a legal department getting in the way…

Common ecommerce SEO problems

Differences aside, there are also many similarities, which once understood can make your life slightly easier. Especially when one day you can be working on a goliath of a website, the next on a 5 page minnow.

Ecommerce businesses large and small fall foul of using supplier product content on their websites. You and 5,000 other websites describe the product in exactly the same terms, so tell me why Google should decide to show your website first?

Neglecting internal linking is another common one. Even for the smallest catalogues, if you have product categories with multiple products, you need to spend some time on internal linking.

The SEO basics apply regardless of your website size. Having a page title template which reads Product Name | Site Name is unlikely to get you very far unless you are the only website selling that product.

Every Ecommerce Site is Different

Even for all of the similarities, the variety of ecommerce sites you end up reviewing and working on in the SEO space keeps everything interesting. Whether it is their size, the platform they are built on, how the business operates, or simply the products they sell working in ecommerce is anything but boring. And solving problems is what I love to do, so working on ecommerce SEO fits very nicely with that.

If you have an ecommerce site and are struggling with your SEO challenges, get in touch and let’s see how I can help.

Precisely 2 years ago myself and 2 business partners bought a wine business. I written a bit about this before, but for those that don’t know, this was a combination of my desire to grow something of my own, and coincidence in some old friends owning a number of pubs. Bring together the ecommerce and digital marketing side of the wine business, and some guaranteed wholesale trade, and we had the bones of a plan.

2 years down the line that plan is in place. Turnover has grown 5X and the business is profitable, largely down to a low cost base. We’ve learned a lot, rode numerous waves thrown at the wine industry, and held our nerve. No doubt there is more ahead which will present both threat and opportunity, but we are in a stable position to make plans.

Our business is build solely on ecommerce trade, no costly sales, minimal marketing expenditure, just organic reach and resulting business. So why now a pub?

Well, my main active partner in the business, and a friend for over 20 years lives in the world of the physical. He struggles to conceptualise things unless they have a physical presence. A website isn’t a business to him, it is a website. Unless you can touch it, see it, walk into it, he struggles to see it.

Since day one he has raised ideas about making it physical. Concessions in his existing pubs, shops attached to his units/offices, anything that gives it a physical face and presence. It has been talked about for a while, but it never quite materialised.

Then coincidence reared its head once again. Back when we originally talked about buying the business, he rang me out of the blue after 6 months of not really having much contact. No reason, no agenda, just called. Right at the time I was looking at a wine business. Coincidence was back again.

We were chatting on the phone about the wine businesses, and his growing pub group which had added 3 venues in the last 18 months. He mentioned one he had just taken a call about he thought had promises. Good country pub, popular with walkers, a number of obvious ways to grow turnover. He was keen. I was being bought by a group he had 2 pubs through already and a favourable relationship. It was a bit far out from his base though, some place called Tockhouse? Tockhome? Tockles?

After we finished chatting I looked it up out of interest, they would be a new wine customer if he got it so worth having a look. Tockholes was the name he was looking for, and as coincidence would have it, 15 minutes from where I live. I text him, “you do know that’s 15 mins from me?”, “really? fancy running a pub?” I responded with an emphatic “No!” But that started a chain of conversations that ended with use taking on the pub together, with a view to growing its traditional base, but also as a test bed for creation of a wine focussed venue.

The pub (The Royal Arms) will be run by his staff, with a newly appointed Landlord. I certainly don’t expect to be serving behind the bar any time soon. There a re big plans, but all in good time. Traditional pub things like better food, theme nights, live music, and of course an excellent wine list…It is just the start of the journey.

Much like I have always said with BonCru Wines, I don’t know where it’s heading, I don’t know the end goal, but whatever happens it’s going to be an enjoyable journey.

When I first started out in PPC, we didn’t disclose true costs or advertising, that was our IP. We told our clients to focus on performance and the cost and (our) margins were ours to manage. Google forced the industries hand on this by publicly announcing the end to agency rebates, and allowing clients to gain ownership of Ad accounts promoting their business. All of a sudden the curtain was pulled and revealed the true cost of Google Ads and the margins being made.

When I moved into Programmatic Display I chuckled to myself that the same methods that had been managed out of PPC were prevalent there still, and even facilitated by the tech providers such as Google. Manually applied, large margins being added to advertising costs by agencies unbeknownst to the client and masked in reports and business structures.

Over both these cases, and in many other areas I could list, transparency eventually comes. And typically it is the advertisers themselves that benefit. Over time this leads to greater understanding on performance, greater control of their advertising, and better decision making for the business. But somebody loses out. Typically an agency or technology provider.

And despite the fact it was Google that initiated the move to transparency in PPC with their disclosure of changes and desire to deal directly with advertisers, it seems they have decided full disclosure was not in their best interests after all. Performance Max, their latest campaign type aimed at dumbing down the PPC process, removes all transparency that the industry has been moving towards. Asking its advertisers to simply “trust the platform” to deliver them results and not worry about where they come from.

Much akin to the Criteo’s of the world, advertisers have to be comfortable with reporting results without any visibility on how or where they were delivered. Some digital marketers and advertisers are happy with that (we are a results driven business after all) but it seems like such a backward step to the direction of travel digital advertising has been headed in for some time.

History tells us that “trusting the technology” rarely ends well. Whether that adverts appearing on porn and hate websites, serious allegations of fraud, or simply just the incentive to chase the last click at all odds, there are not many outcomes which look favourable to brands. It doesn’t take a genius to come to the conclusion that this is the latest in Google’s attempts to monetise the poorer quality areas of its network, and also take control of tactics such as brand bidding which many companies have moved away from.

With their sales machine behind them, and enough advertisers who are only interested in reporting some top level results, I have no doubt the Performance Max will be a success for Google. Certainly when they view it through their internal lens of monetising underutilised channels and driving up advertiser spend. It is a backwards step for digital advertising as an industry, and one which history has proven is unlikely to end well.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 for Chat) is an artificial intelligence (AI) language model developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT-3 architecture, which was trained on a large corpus of text data and has the ability to generate human-like text in response to a given prompt.

ChatGPT is specifically designed for natural language conversation and can engage in conversations with users in a wide range of topics. It can generate text that is contextually relevant, coherent, and grammatically correct, making it an ideal tool for various applications such as customer service, education, and personal assistants.

ChatGPT is trained on a massive dataset of text, including books, articles, and web pages, which has enabled it to learn a vast range of language patterns and styles. It can generate text in multiple languages and has the ability to understand and respond to complex questions.

Overall, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with computers and AI systems. It represents a significant breakthrough in natural language processing and has the potential to enable more advanced and personalized interactions between humans and machines.

How was ChatGPT Born?

ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by OpenAI, an AI research organization founded in 2015 by a group of prominent scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman.

The development of ChatGPT is based on the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) language model architecture, which is a deep learning model that uses unsupervised learning to generate natural language text. GPT-3 was created by OpenAI to be one of the largest and most powerful language models in the world, with a massive number of parameters and a sophisticated architecture.

OpenAI trained the GPT-3 model on a massive amount of data from the internet, including books, articles, and websites. This training enabled the model to generate coherent and natural-sounding responses to a wide variety of prompts.

ChatGPT was born out of the need for a conversational AI that could understand and respond to human language in a natural and intuitive way. OpenAI recognized the potential of the GPT-3 model to be adapted for use in conversational interfaces and chatbots, and thus ChatGPT was developed as a way to bring the power of GPT-3 to everyday users who need assistance with a wide range of tasks and questions.

How Does ChatGPT Work?

ChatGPT works by using a large neural network to generate text in response to a given prompt. The neural network is pre-trained on a massive dataset of text, including books, articles, and web pages, allowing it to learn a wide range of language patterns and styles.

When a user inputs a prompt or question into ChatGPT, the neural network uses the prompt as input and generates a response based on the patterns and styles it has learned from the training data. The response is generated by predicting the next word or sequence of words that are most likely to follow the input prompt, based on the patterns learned from the training data.

The process of generating responses is iterative, with the output from each step serving as input to the next step, allowing the model to generate longer and more complex responses. ChatGPT uses attention mechanisms to focus on relevant parts of the input prompt and adjust the importance of each word in generating the response.

To improve the accuracy and relevance of the generated responses, ChatGPT can also be fine-tuned on specific datasets or domains. For example, if ChatGPT is being used for customer service, it can be fine-tuned on a dataset of customer inquiries and responses to better understand the language patterns and terminology used in that specific domain.

Overall, ChatGPT’s ability to generate contextually relevant and coherent responses is based on its ability to learn from a vast amount of text data and use that knowledge to predict the next word or sequence of words that is most likely to follow a given prompt.

How do I get the most out of ChatGPT?

As an AI language model, I am designed to provide assistance and answer your queries to the best of my abilities. Here are some tips to get the most out of me:

• Be clear and specific in your questions: Try to be as precise as possible when asking a question so that I can provide you with the most relevant and accurate information.
• Use natural language: You can interact with me in a conversational manner using natural language. This will help me better understand your needs and provide a more accurate response.
• Provide context: Giving additional context to your questions can help me understand the context of your query and provide a more tailored response.
• Ask follow-up questions: Don’t be afraid to ask follow-up questions to clarify any points or delve deeper into a topic.
• Experiment: Use different formats, ask different types of questions, and try different keywords to see what kind of responses you can get. You may find that I can do much more than you originally thought.
• Keep learning: I am always learning and improving, so feel free to give feedback and let me know how I can better assist you.

Remember that while I can provide information and answer your questions, I am not a substitute for professional advice or guidance.

How do I get started with ChatGPT?

Getting started with ChatGPT is easy and straightforward. Here are a few steps to help you get started:

1. Choose a platform: ChatGPT is available on various platforms, including the OpenAI website, Microsoft Teams, and Discord. Choose the platform that you are most comfortable with and where you plan to use ChatGPT.
2. Create an account: Some platforms may require you to create an account to use ChatGPT. Follow the registration process to create an account if necessary.
3. Initiate a conversation: Once you have access to ChatGPT, initiate a conversation with a simple prompt or question. For example, you could start with “Hello, can you tell me about artificial intelligence?” or “What is the weather like today?”
4. Provide context: To get the most accurate and relevant response from ChatGPT, provide context for your question or prompt. This could include details about your interests, location, or specific topic you want to know about.
5. Ask follow-up questions: ChatGPT is designed to engage in a natural and intuitive conversation. If you are not satisfied with the initial response, ask follow-up questions or rephrase your prompt to get a more accurate response.
6. Experiment with different prompts: ChatGPT is trained on a wide range of data and can generate responses to a variety of prompts. Experiment with different types of prompts to see what kinds of responses you can get from the AI.

Remember, ChatGPT is an AI language model that is constantly learning and updating with new data. The more you use it, the better it will become at generating accurate and relevant responses. Have fun and explore the capabilities of this powerful AI tool.

What are the different ways to construct ChatGPT Prompts?

There are various ways to construct prompts for ChatGPT to get the desired responses. Here are a few examples:

• Open-ended questions: You can ask open-ended questions that allow for a wide range of responses. For example, “Can you tell me more about artificial intelligence?”
• Specific questions: You can ask specific questions that require a more direct response. For example, “What is the difference between machine learning and deep learning?”
• Prompt completion: You can provide a partial sentence or phrase and let ChatGPT complete it. For example, “The best way to learn a new language is to…”
• Multiple-choice questions: You can provide a list of options for ChatGPT to choose from. For example, “Which programming language is best for beginners? A) Python B) Java C) C++ D) Ruby”
• Sentiment analysis: You can ask ChatGPT to analyze a particular text or statement for its sentiment. For example, “What is the sentiment of the following sentence: ‘I am excited about my upcoming vacation.'”
• Personalization: You can customize prompts by providing specific information about yourself or your interests. For example, “Can you recommend some good vegan recipes for me?”

Remember to provide context and be clear in your prompts to get the most accurate and relevant responses from ChatGPT.

What are the best current applications of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT has a wide range of applications, including but not limited to:

1. Customer service: ChatGPT can be used in customer service applications to provide automated responses to customer inquiries and support requests. This can help companies to handle a high volume of customer inquiries and improve response times.
2. Personal assistants: ChatGPT can be used as a personal assistant to help with tasks such as scheduling, reminders, and recommendations for restaurants, movies, or books.
3. Education: ChatGPT can be used in education to provide instant feedback to students, answer questions, and generate study materials.
4. Mental health support: ChatGPT can be used in mental health applications to provide support and guidance to people struggling with mental health issues. ChatGPT can provide an anonymous and non-judgmental source of support and guidance.
5. Language translation: ChatGPT can be used for language translation applications, helping users to translate text in real-time across different languages.
6. Writing assistance: ChatGPT can be used to provide writing assistance, including generating ideas, proofreading, and suggesting alternative phrasing.
7. Entertainment: ChatGPT can be used in entertainment applications, such as chat-based games or interactive storytelling experiences.

These are just a few examples of the many applications for ChatGPT. As the technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more exciting applications for this powerful AI tool.

In the Future What Will ChatGPT Be Able to Do?

ChatGPT has already demonstrated remarkable capabilities in generating human-like text and engaging in natural language conversations. In the future, we can expect ChatGPT to become even more advanced, with the potential to do the following:

• Better understand context: ChatGPT could improve its ability to understand context, enabling it to provide more accurate and relevant responses to users.
• Personalization: ChatGPT could become more personalized, using information about a user’s interests and preferences to generate more tailored responses.
• Emotional intelligence: ChatGPT could develop the ability to recognize and respond to emotions in human users, allowing it to provide more empathetic and supportive conversations.
• Multi-modal communication: ChatGPT could be enhanced to engage in multi-modal communication, such as integrating with video or audio chat platforms, allowing users to engage in more immersive conversations.
• Assist in more complex tasks: ChatGPT could be trained to provide more advanced support for complex tasks, such as providing legal or medical advice.
• Improve collaboration: ChatGPT could be used to enhance collaboration between teams, providing real-time feedback and suggestions during brainstorming sessions or project meetings.
• Improve accessibility: ChatGPT could be used to improve accessibility for people with disabilities, such as providing text-to-speech capabilities or generating visual descriptions.

As the technology behind ChatGPT continues to advance, we can expect to see even more exciting applications and capabilities in the future.

What are the Future Applications of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT has the potential to be applied to many fields and industries in the future, including:

• Healthcare: ChatGPT could be used to provide personalized health advice, reminders, and support to patients, improving access to healthcare and reducing costs.
• Finance: ChatGPT could be used in financial services to assist with tasks such as portfolio management, investment advice, and fraud detection.
• Virtual assistants: ChatGPT could be integrated into virtual assistants to provide more human-like and natural language interactions with users.
• Gaming: ChatGPT could be used in gaming to create more engaging and immersive chat-based games and experiences.
• Advertising and marketing: ChatGPT could be used in advertising and marketing to generate more personalized and engaging content and chatbots.
• Education: ChatGPT could be used in education to create virtual tutoring and personalized learning experiences.
• News and journalism: ChatGPT could be used to generate news articles, summaries, and personalized news feeds based on users’ interests and preferences.
• Virtual reality and augmented reality: ChatGPT could be used to provide more human-like interactions with virtual and augmented reality environments.

These are just a few examples of the many future applications of ChatGPT. As the technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more exciting and innovative uses for this powerful AI tool.

And finally…is ChatGPT an evolution of Clippy?

ChatGPT is not an evolution of Clippy. Clippy, also known as the Microsoft Office Assistant, was a digital assistant introduced by Microsoft in 1997 to provide help and guidance to users of Microsoft Office software. Clippy was designed to be a cartoonish character that would pop up on the screen and offer assistance with tasks such as formatting documents or creating spreadsheets.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, is a conversational AI language model that is trained to understand and respond to natural language text. It is not designed to have a physical presence on a computer screen like Clippy, but rather to provide assistance through text-based interactions.

While both Clippy and ChatGPT are designed to assist users with tasks and questions, they are fundamentally different in their approach and capabilities. ChatGPT is based on advanced deep learning algorithms and is capable of generating coherent and natural-sounding responses to a wide variety of prompts, while Clippy was a simple animated character with limited functionality.

What Type of Update Is This?

If you have been running a website, or working in SEO for any length of time, you will be aware that Google is constantly updating its search engine algorithm and how it assesses site quality. Most changes they make are not announced, they simply roll out changes on a regular basis to improve the quality of the search results they present.

However every so often the make specific updates to address particular query sets, or they make core algorithm updates. The Helpful Content Update falls under the former of these two options. It is not a core algorithm update which fundamentally changes how Google ranks pages, it is a specific update aimed at a specific type of query or content.

The official announcement of of the update words its purpose as “to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.” But what does that mean?

In simple terms, they want a user to find what they are looking for. I am sure we have all done a search for information and ended up on a Advert dominated abomination of a website which does not give us the information we were looking for. If you follow the news sites, you will also have seen them publish content such as “Anthony Joshua vs Usyk Stream” which obviously contains no links to streams (that would be illegal!) but exists purely to try and get traffic from people looking for it. Or maybe you have looked a product or service, only to end up on a website which serves no purpose other than to try and get you to click a link to get to your destination, from a page containing 2000 words of barely legible content. This is the type of poor user experience Google claims to be going after.

When Is the Update Happening?

A week after the announcement, today (25th August 2022) Google have confirmed the Helpful Content update is officially starting its roll out. It is anticipated to take around 2 weeks before it is fully complete and the impact is known across the search landscape.

As always the repercussions may continue beyond this period as Google itself has always said, as they see the impact of changes they can roll back or expand as they see fit. You will also undoubtedly see businesses and individuals making changes to their website which could mean that fluctuations in rankings and traffic continue beyond this period as websites jostle for their eventual position.

What Should You Be Doing and Should You Be Worried?

Unless you have been intentionally creating poor content to gain search traffic, or using poorly built AI to generate your website content, right now I don’t suggest you do anything. I have seen many SEO’s recommending everything from auditing your content in full, to culling large swathes of pages from your site. 99% of website owners do not need to do this. At best it is a waste of time and effort, at worse it could be harmful to your website.

What you should be doing right now is checking on your stats regularly, aswell as any key rankings you hold. Also keep an eye on the competition around you and any changes there. For most businesses I don’t envisage huge changes to the SERP landscape. That is only my opinion, but based on the purpose of the update and the main sectors businesses operate in. The majority of ecommerce websites are focussed on the quality of their traffic and so wouldn’t engage in the types of activities this update is aimed at. Likewise service businesses are unlikely to have thin content as it is a reflection of them as a company to anybody that views it.

Could This Be a Good Thing For Me?

I would say only if you are surrounded by websites with lesser quality content but outranking you. And it doesn’t if you think your content is better, it is how Google sees it in the eyes of this update.

As the update rolls out and more is known, I will attempt to add to this post on any initial findings on the signals Google is using to determine what is “helpful” or not. For now the official announcement from them can be found at this link: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update

As with anything you are deep in the weeds with, on a day to day basis progress feels slow. But every now and then, when you lift your head up, you realise just how far you’ve come. I made a list of 2022 “things to do” on the business and I had ticked off 70% of them by June. Not bad going when this is officially a “side gig”.

The Rebrand

I was never bother by the Affordable Wine brand. I saw it as a bit Ronseal, in the same way as Appliance Online used to be. Plus as a reseller of other peoples products do people care where they buy from if the price and the service is good?

But in the end I had to bow to pressure from my business partner in the trade. In his opinion it would be preventing us selling into other pubs/venues as it didn’t give off the right impression. Plus when asked they want to be able to tell their customers where they source their wines, and it needed to sound right.

So after a little debate, some heavy use of online translators, and then me finally just making something up everybody thought sounded OK, BonCru Wines was born. Loosely translated it means Good Vintage. But remove the “Wines” and it doesn’t sound out of place to sell spirits and other alcohol (in the pipeline…)

The website remains at www.affordablewine.co.uk though, I put my foot down there!

Moving into Trade

Last time I update we hadn’t yet done any trade business. This was always on the horizon as my business partners own a number of venues, but getting wholesale approval, and making sure we were set up to service them was trickier than we imagined. Now we are fully AWRS approved and selling through 6 pubs/eateries. This has transformed our cashflow position. It has also made our stock ordering far smoother as we know we can order 80% which is guaranteed for sale within a month, and it has allowed us to secure payment terms with suppliers.

This year we will look to add a few additional trade clients to the business but we will be selective. They need to be customers we can work with to shape their range, and who will likewise work with us to get everything right. Anybody treating us like a commodity supplier wouldn’t work out and would drain our limited resources.

Stock and Suppliers

We have a wine list of circa 160 lines which I dont think we will exceed. Some wines will be sold through and go out of stock, and we will replace them with others, but 150-160 is where we will continue to be. We have ample room to store this many lines, it provides us with an adequate breadth of range, and it means we can cycle lines which need selling through.

We are buying primarily through 3 UK based importers. This enables us to build closer relations with a small number, whilst also meeting minimum orders. Previously the business had traded with as many as 8, that is unsustainable for us. It can be frustrating as it sometimes means we can’t secure specific wines we know we could sell, but that is a small price to pay for the benefits.

Website and Functionality

At some point in 2023 the website will need an overhaul. For now we continue to bolt on and amend as we can to have it evolve as we want. This is mostly tinkering, but that is fine for now.

Subscriptions are now live on site with small but growing take up. when I look at our orders I feel like more people should subscribe and save themselves 10%, but there is no allowing for peoples behaviour. I guess our frequent customers tell themselves each month they wont be back for a while…

We launched a blog last month, but I want a few more post live before I push that too much. Over time I think this could be a major source of traffic as a lot of people look for advice and guidance. Growing this over the next 12 months is a major focus.

I want to overhaul our product pages, but that might have to wait a while.

Marketing

Our marketing is now more consistent. Our social media is in the hands of somebody far more creative than I, and our emails go out on a regular basis. These are our primary marketing channels and continue to drive good revenue. I would like our following to be bigger than it is (hint, hint!) but if we remain consistent I know this will come.

Our promotions are regular and strong. The industry is heavily price sensitive and even our loyal customers wait for the next deal to make their purchases. This is only going to increase as the cost of living issues grow.

Organic Traffic remains our main visitor source and delivers a large number of new customers to us. This has grown steadily since we took over the website and I have done a lot of work around it. There is still a lot to be done here, as in the very generic areas such as grape types and single phrase searches such as “wine” we are nowhere to be found. It is important we broaden our reach as we are heavily reliant on “cheap” keywords. And when Google decides that a map listing is the best result for a search for “cheap wine” or puts Amazon above us, we notice it.

What’s Next?

Our industry is facing a perfect storm in terms of challenges. Poor harvests have affected supply. Brexit has made importing tough for our suppliers. The war in Ukraine has made bottles hard to come by. Fuel increases have made our delivery charges rise. And now demand is in doubt due to cost of living challenges facing everyone.

There is so much we could continue to do, it all comes down to time and priorities. A website overhaul will come in 2023. Until then we need to continue to evolve our marketing efforts and see what that brings us, it doesnt feel like the right time to be doing anything significant due to the state of the world.

It will be our first Q4 with trade customers so we have that to contend with, and I remain convinced we will have a strong November/December on the retail side based on our website growth. If we do better than last year, plus trade on top, we will be in great shape.

We do have plans to introduce craft gins to the site via a local supplier which will add something new, whether that happens in 2022 we will have to see.

For now, the learning curve remains steep but we are still enjoying the ride!

To say it has been a journey would be an understatement. Literally everything we have done has been for the first time, with no prior knowledge or experience. In the early days when my business partner sent me a photo of some orders to be sent out, my response on text was “f*cking hell, we almost look like we know what we are doing!” The learning curve has been steep in every area of the business. Not just not knowing too much about the wine itself, but down to packaging, postage, breakages, tape, boxes, licenses, VAT…every day has been a school day.

But we have made it work somehow. Everybody has got their wine, and mostly in perfect condition within 2 days of the order. We have now done pretty much everything at least more than once. Bought stock, delivered large orders, delivered small orders, had breakages, sent the wrong items, run discounts, given refunds, had quiet times, done a Christmas period, and everything in between. So as we enter into 2022 I feel far more comfortable in our understanding of what it is going to take to grow from here.

There have been times where I have been tearing my (limited) hair out, wondering why sales weren’t coming. Still to this day I have no idea why October was so quiet. But then things changed, and in December we managed to do twice the sales in both volume and value than the previous owner. Still not quite where we want to be, but considering our previous experience of running an ecommerce operation I’m happy with that. There is a temptation when you are watching something every day to be too focussed in short term performance.

We now have a solid set of suppliers we can work with without spreading ourselves too thin. A process between us which means things don’t fall through the gaps. And a growing customer base that we just need to keep coming back.

We haven’t done any sales to the on trade (pubs/restaurants etc) yet due to delays in our licensing (got to love HMRC!) and once we are that will really grease the gears. Our suppliers have minimum order values which makes cash flow a constant consideration. Trade business will be lower margin, but regular and consistent. It will allow us to keep stock moving and have ongoing revenue we can predict.

In 2022 we will start to get more advanced with our ecommerce too. Subscriptions will be on our roadmap which will hopefully increase our customer lifetime value and stickiness.

We also always said from the start there needs to be other reasons to keep people coming back, something extra. In the modern world of ecommerce doing a ‘good job’ is not enough when you have competitors both online and offline competing for your customers. There needs to be something more to it. We will start to try and find this in 2022 although we have not quite cemented our thinking on what it will be.

The journey so far has been challenging and enjoyable in equal measures. I have even started drinking a little wine myself! If I can look back in January 2023 and say we have double December sales and revenue again, I will be a very happy man.

Firstly, I should point out, this business won’t be my day job for a long time, if ever. I will continue consulting on a full time basis. But it is a bonafide business and a genuine acquisition. A good sum of money changed hands and we have to put in place proper business plans for growth. Exciting and scary in equal part.

How did I come to buying a business?

Buying a business wasn’t on the cards, it wasn’t part of my immediate plans, nor was it really in my long term thinking. But sometimes these things just come about.

It started over the Christmas period. I was working but things were quiet. So rather than open another box of mice pies I was daydreaming and thinking about work, income, plans etc. I started looking for websites for sale. This is something I have done in the past. Bought a relatively cheap website with potential, grown its traffic to generate affiliate income or just for fun. I have never been heavy into affiliate marketing but have dabbled, made a few hundred pounds here and there, and on the odd occasion sold a site or a domain on. I came across a few apparel websites in different niches, I was genuinely looking at a Fortnite apparel website with interest for a little while. In some cases these websites would require holding a small amount of stock and managing fulfilment.

One thing led to another with the thinking. Firstly it evolved to looking into other ecommerce sites. The bulk of my work in recent times has been on ecommerce businesses, helping them grow sales online through multiple channels. Having my own ecommerce site would surely help me hone my craft whilst also applying my skills to something I reaped the rewards for. Then we were back to the stock conundrum, “Well if I am going to be holding stock, it is more like a genuine business than a website purchase, so maybe I should look for others….”

The chain of thought led me to be browsing the internet for ecommerce businesses for sale, with a number of criteria. The site and domain had to have potential. I knew I didn’t have the appetite or time to start something from nothing, so there needed to be something there to build on. The products needed to be something with consistent demand, and ideally in an area I could see growing in the future.

That is when I came across a wine business for sale…

Do you believe in fate?

I am not a believer in fate. But sometimes strange coincidences lead us to where we are, and this was definitely the case here.

The problem with the wine business was two fold:

1. The business had too much stock. The price of the stock was more than the price of the business list price. To make it viable in the short term a large chunk of that stock needed to be turned into cash quickly, and this wasn’t going to happen through the site alone. It also needed to be stored somewhere.
2. To make it viable it needed both trade and direct customers. Higher gross margins on direct, more volume on trade.

In short it was too much to take on with no clear sign to return for me on the face of it. Which was a massive shame as the website is what I was looking for. Aged domain, good base rankings, underdeveloped for what it could possibly be.

I was also of a strong opinion it was an area of ecommerce which had been accelerate by the pandemic. A product that most people bought offline, but were forced to do so online in the first lockdown. I was (and still am) sure that a portion of these new customers to the market would remain and the habit of buying online would continue as long as the experience was good.

Then one day over Christmas I was out walking my dog and my phone rang. It was a good friend of mine from school/rugby days. I hadn’t spoken to him in 6 months at least, and prior to that I can’t recall the last time he rang me. We chatted for a while, caught up on family etc and then I brought up the wine business. The thing is, this friend owns 5 pubs/bars in my old home town, and is well known and respected in the trade around that area and beyond. As it turns out he had been looking at getting into wholesale before the Coronavirus hit his industry hard.

A few days and phone calls later and we were in serious discussions. We needed more information but it felt like we potentially make this work between us. With me driving the online side, and him the trade as well as providing some staff for fulfilment. What’s more, his other business partner owned a storage facility we could use. It was starting to get real.

8 months in the making

What should have been the most simplest acquisition in history – essentially a website and some stock – ended up taking 8 months to complete. Along the way there were a few intentional delays while people needed to wait for other events to unfold, and some frustrating ones (Solicitors, sigh…) But last week we finally completed the formalities and took delivery of the stock. A surreal moment unloading it from the truck into storage, and then panicking when the first order cam through the website and we didn’t yet have a courier arranged. We really weren’t expecting any in the first week at all.

It was a strange feeling knowing we were finally the owners of the business we had talked about hypothetically for so long, but we are now a few orders down the line and learning every step of the way.

Where can it go?

One of the most exciting parts is I really don’t know where this will head in the future. I have a strong belief it has big potential, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought it. But precisely how far it can go is a bit of an unknown for everybody involved. We haven’t set lofty ambitions, We haven’t overpromised anything to anybody, we are just happy to be having a go. If it never becomes anything more than a business we keep running and enjoy on the side, nobody will be disappointed. If it becomes something bigger which we can take on an accelerate further, that will obviously be great for everyone involved. For now we will just enjoy the journey and see where it takes us.

And regarding the not liking wine part. None of the 3 business partners are huge wine fans. I don’t mind a glass or two with a good meal, but would rarely choose it over a cold lager. We are all of the opinion however this could work in our favour. A lot of business owners are supremely passionate about their area, to the point of becoming snobbish about quality. This can blind them from the realities of what the customer really wants. Our approach will be demand driven, if it sells we will stock it. And if we need wine expertise to support us, we can buy that skillset in. What is less easier for others to replicate is our 40+ years combined of ecommerce capabilities and industry knowledge. At least that is what we hope…

If you want to check out our wines you can see them at our website https://www.affordablewine.co.uk and if you do place an order, give us a bit of slack, we are new to this!

That was in 1995 and was at a time when AOL was at the forefront of growing Internet connectivity and use. A couple of years later and I set up my first email address, whead4@yahoo.com. It still exists, although I have no idea what the password is.

When I entered the world of work and was managing PPC campaigns for the early financial adopters, our key partner was Overture and their prime asset was Yahoo search. We spent more with Overture in a given month than we did with Google, more than twice as much.

AOL and Yahoo are OG’s of the Internet. Many people’s first experience of being ‘online’, or their first email accounts will have been with one of these two companies. This week AOL and Yahoo have been sold by Verizon Media for $5B, having been bought for a combined $9.9B less than 6 years ago. Whilst $5B dollars is hardly loose change, it is quite a fall from grace. Especially when judged against the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook who are juvenile in comparison yet continue to post astronomical growth figures.

Rather than focus on what went wrong, the bigger question is can they be brought back to life? The Private Equity company that bought them clearly think so, but what in reality have they bought?

Verizon Media Ad Revenue

Verizon Media, the arm of Verizon’s business sold, reporting $1.9B in revenue in the first quarter of 2021. Up more than 10% year on year. Allowing for a seasonal spike in Q4 and the return of travel advertisers they must be aiming for around $10B as a stretch target. Not too shabby even if it is not in the same ballpark as their competitors.

Verizon Media Employees

Verizon Media reports over 10,000 people are employed across its 55 offices in 24 countries. Whilst it has a heavy US bias, it’s offices have a good coverage across the globe allowing them to have on the ground representatives localised workforce which makes them a truly global prospect.

Email Accounts

2020 statistics suggest Yahoo has 225 million email users. This seems a small number compared to Googles 1.5B but again a worthwhile user base to work with. Active email account users are important as they typically visit your site with every browser session, provide useful data on interests and purchase behaviour, and if you’re lucky dont sign out often so give you more browser based knowledge on your user base.

Traffic

SimilarWeb stats suggest Yahoo.com receives between 3 and 4 Billion visits a month which is a big number. Considering there will be multiple page vies per visit that is a lot of monetisation potential. AOL.com by comparison averages 200-300M monthly visits so less than 10% of Yahoo’s total.

So combined they are looking at 4 Billion monthly visits, mostly US based, which represents a good opportunity for revenue generation.

1st Party Data

Probably the biggest factor in the purchase, is the first party data both sites hold on their email users. In light of changes in the world of tracking and cookies, holders of first party data will feel they hold a huge advantage in the future of advertising. Email providers, especially those who are publishers too, hold a great advantage in this regard. They have first party data and they can use it for anybody consuming content in their domain. So when you combine 225 million+ email accounts with 4 Billion monthly visits you have a powerful machine if you can grow it and get the advertisers on board.

What the plan is for Yahoo and AOL, only their new acquirers will know. But they have some tools in their armoury especially when it comes to 1st party data and advertising targeting in a cookie-less world. Lets see if they can once again become Internet powershouses and take on the might of Google, Facebook and Amazon.

The value exchange in digital advertising, specifically programmatic advertising, is something I have talked about for a long time. Back in 2011 I recall speaking on a panel at a conference discussing how models and technology needed to evolve to allow users to control their data sharing. And a few years back I was fortunate enough to be a guest on BBC Radio 5Live discussing cookie use in programmatic and the value exchange between data and content. So the Gener8 model (which I hadn’t come across before the programme) is very interesting to me. I strongly believe this type of model is one which will shape the future of the advertising and data world. Granting specific permissions to share your data with known companies, not blanket permissions based on t&cs that are never read, where data is shared from one party to potentially hundreds of others.

Gener8 rewards users for sharing their date, by giving them points in exchange for the data they share. If a user opts into their rewards mode, the advertising revenue is split between the user and Gener8 in a 80/20 split. With 80% being rewarded back to the user in the form of points to be redeemed against products, vouchers or charity donations. According to Sam users are ‘earning £5-£25 per month through using Gener8 as well as being experiencing advertising more relevant to them and their interests.

As mentioned above, I believe this type of model is going to become part of the advertising ecosystem of the future, but is Gener8 the one to lead the way? I think they have some pretty significant hurdles to overcome if that is going to be the case.

Browser Choice and User Adoption

Gener8’s current technology comes in the form of a browser. Meaning a user has to download new software and change their behaviour to participate in the programme. Browser choice and the browser industry is a very tough one to influence. Users typically choose a browser based on their device and preinstalled software, or through a personal preference based on usability.

Safari use is driven by Apples device dominance, specifically in mobile. Google has Android devices driving its adoption, and (in my opinion) the superior browser from a usability perspective which drives download regardless of device. Microsoft has its strength in pre-installation on many personal computers and being part of the office suite.

To achieve significant take up Gener8 has to change a lot of habitual behaviour and cut into established market share, this wont be easy to do. A browser plugin may be a better route to adoption in the desktop market. They would still face challenges, but less significant in terms of changing user behaviour.

Mobile Readiness

The Gener8 browser is currently available for Windows and MacOS devices. With mobile the dominant device for Internet use in their early markets, they need to change this and broaden mobile availability.

Many people on social media were quick to point out an app might be the better way to drive adoption. Users are now very used to utilising apps for specific purposes, and in a mobile sense it would significantly reduce friction to adoption. I have no doubt that this will be high on Gener8’s agenda.

Google and Existing Advertising Platforms

We didn’t hear too much on the show about “how” the technology interacts with traditional advertising platforms. Does it block them and overlay its own ads? Or utilise existing platforms and only share the selected data. I am going to assume the first option, which makes them by all intents and purposes an ad blocker. Many sites have already found ways of identifying and blocking ad blocker usage to protect their revenues, and could do the same for Gener8 visitors.

And Google is very unlikely to play ball with Gener8 in any way. They are a competitor in terms of the browser market, and a threat to advertising revenues. With Google being such a huge part of the programmatic advertising ecosystem.

Native Platforms & Walled Gardens

What I wasn’t clear on from the presentation was how Gener8 would deal with Facebook and other more native platforms, specifically social ones. It is pretty straight forward to identify ad scripts that are from 3rd party sources, but less so in native platforms. And there is certainly no way of making the ads within such platforms more relevant as that would require pushing data in dynamically, something they wouldnt be able to do.

So if it doesn’t work for where people will spend a lot of their time, how wide reaching and therefore usable is it for people?

Value vs Cost

If users are facing a scenario where content is made inaccessible, and they have to change their habits and behaviours to benefit, is the payback worth it? This is going to be key for Gener8 to balance off. At £5 per month would you adopt a new browser if it had drawbacks? I doubt it. At £25 per month maybe.

And then there is the fact they will have to make sure the vouchers/products on offer are appealing too as this is the real pay off for the user. It is in effect a points system, which is only as valuable as what you can redeem them on.

Can Gener8 Dominate?

Sam described Gener8 as a movement, and that is precisely what it will need to be. Without significant investment and rapid user adoption the danger is it fizzles out to nothing. The £60,000 he secured is nothing when you consider the amount of investment it is going to take, but Sam will have known that. The benefit of the show is the exposure, and the challenge now is to turn that into adoption.

I doubt anything I have written here will come as news to Sam. And I would imagine they are in the tech roadmap. The challenge is being able to move quickly enough to capitalise on this initial burst of exposure.

I wish him and the team luck, and am willing them to succeed. Because even if they don’t, they may still pave the way for a better value exchange in digital advertising.

Sams full pitch can be seen on the BBC YouTube Channel here Gener8 Dragons Den Pitch