Business and Marketing

Unlike wine, marketing strategies don't necessarily get finer with age. So, marketers should continually ferment and test new ones. That's the approach 16-year-old online retailer Wine.com is taking as it infuses digital into its full-bodied marketing mix. The goal is to simplify the shopping process and remain at the top of customers' minds.

A site for the senses

Wine.com's target audience consists of wine enthusiasts and connoisseurs who typically consume higher-priced wines, often several times per week. These wine lovers tend to search for more regionally diverse selections than what's typically available at the grocery store, says Peter Elarde, CMO of Wine.com. The e-tailer responds to this in part by providing content about its wines and winemaking.



Indeed, the art of making and tasting wine is complex and vast, which Wine.com uses to its advantage, Elarde says. The wine seller provides content to educate and engage customers and prospects about its various products and regions. Elarde explains that while this content is a rich resource for customers, it also made Wine.com feel “utilitarian.” So when Elarde joined the company this past December to help with its six-month site redesign, he set out to transform a purely perfunctory experience to a more inspirational one. He was also tasked with streamlining the shopping process and creating a design that better represents the brand's image.

The transformation began with Wine.com reducing the amount of text on the site and enhancing the visual elements on its homepage and product pages. Elarde says this gave Wine.com more room to highlight the brand's key messages, such as its vast offerings of wines and its shipping destinations. The imagery also helped Wine.com convey sensations associated with wine drinking, which can be difficult to portray through text alone, he adds.

Besides enriching the visual flavor, Wine.com improved its site navigation by organizing its products and offerings into three main tabs: Wine, Gifts, and Discover. The Discover tab includes Wine.com's shopping tools, which educate customers and help them uncover new wines. For instance, customers can click to chat with wine experts or try the “Recommended for You” tool, which, although isn't a new tool, tracks shoppers' browsing histories, past purchases, and community trends to make product suggestions. Elarde sees “strong” conversions from these recommendations.

Many of the website's transformations derived from customer feedback, which Wine.com acquires through customer surveys, usability testing, call centers, and customer advisory boards. “We want to get out there and let people who may have seen us in the past retake a visit at Wine.com,” Elarde says. “And for existing customers, [we want] to let them know that we're listening to the feedback that they're giving us and continuing to improve the service.”