How to sell Wine Online Practical Tips coming from experience vinoshopping.com Table of Contents How to sell Wine Online............................................................................1 Devote your time........................................................................................3 Choose your product..................................................................................3 What about the content..............................................................................3 Be different................................................................................................3 Keep it simple, stupid!...............................................................................3 Know the law.............................................................................................4 Invest in Marketing....................................................................................4 Be Agile.....................................................................................................5 Trust in professionals.................................................................................5 And last......................................................................................................5 Devote your time Running a business, as you may know, requires a lot of time. Nobody become rich just sitting in a sofa and waiting. It's the same for a virtual shop. You can't think that a virtual shopping is an auto running business and when you wake up in the morning your inbox is full of orders. That's a myth A virtual shop requieres a lot of work before launch and, even then, you will need to devote your time to it.Internet businesses never rest. If you don't have the willing to a daily improvement your rivals will beat you. Choose your product What are you going to sell? Yes, of course WINE but wich one? What about the terms? The first step is thinking about the selling strategy. It's not the same a Wine Club for goumets or a Low-Cost Wine Shop. Think about it. What do you want to offer to your customers? Think about the minimun order, think about the boxing policy, singles bottle, 6 bottles box...Will you clients be ready for a 12 bottles box? Will they run away if you add shipping to the final cost? Are you going to include accesories in your catalogue? Corkscrews? Just wine? Why not beer or gourmet products that will increase your wine experience? What about the content. Once you have decided what to sell the moment to collect content arrives: pictures, descriptions, tasting comments, prizes etc... That's not easy. The process can last a bit. Maybe you have to digitalize content or hire a professional photographer. Maybe you will need to recover catalogue texts from your publishing editor or recover your logo picture in a vectorial format. Content is the King!!!!. It's true. Take care of it. It's your company cover letter. Customers always want to know everything about your products, bottle size, how the box looks like etc.. and they are going to pay for it If you do a good job you will soon realize that your products are widespread all along Internet. Be different There are tons of Wine Virtual Shops. If you want to take yours into focus, if you really want to attract customers attention, you MUST BE DIFFERENT. Take a look around. Visit your rivals' websites, write down what you like and what you dislikes but don't copy, improve what you have seen Be creative, don't set boundaries. You can make any idea real with enough money or resources. Imagine or, at the end, your site will be just another one. Run away from “built in 5 minutes shops” or you will be like many others. We are not saying that you must start from scracth, technology will help you to reduce costs. Customize your shop, give it and unique look. Keep it simple, stupid! “Keep it simple, stupid”(KISS) is one of the main design principles There's no need to make your website overloaded with a lot of options. Customer will get lost. Stay focused on your target: Selling Wine Graphical Design must be as simple as possible. Try to focus customers' attention on your products. Avoid moving or blinking elements, they are annoying and doesn't help to keep customers focused. Product Sheet also needs simplicity. Give the users all the information in an easy to use way.Devote your time to it, it's like a wine label. If a client arrives at your website,he is interested in buying, don't waste this chance. Your buying proccess must stay as easy as possible. This is the most risky moment and if you don't take it seriously your clients will fly away. Shipping and pricing policies must be crystal clear. It's very important to keep customers aware of all the costs involved in the order. Customers hate surprises!!!! and once they are surprised with additional costs they propably won't be your clients anymore. Know the law Find out about wich laws are related with wine selling in all the countries belonging to your target market. If you are overtaken with all this information hire an expert and listen to his advice. Remember that there are special taxes applied to alcoholic beverages and, in some countries, selling has a lot of constraints and can be, even forbidden. Problably the best choice is starting in your own country and, once you gain experience, expand to other countries. If your company is in the Europena Union, is quite easy to work within all the countries who signed the european agreement. But, even in that situation, there's a lot information about the process and constraints that you'll need to know Your shop must be ready to apply different taxes depending in the customer's origin. Each country is different, different laws, different taxes...take this into account at the time you calculate the final price. It's difficult, the same advice again, hire an expert. Take also care of advertising constraints, in most countries, alcoholic beverages can't be related to success or popularity and it's compulsory warning about alcohol effects on human body. Invest in Marketing There are just few auto-selling products. You need to invest some money in marketing (look...we are talking about investing not about spendind) Start calculating how valuable a client is . If the cost of is less than the client attraction cost, at the end the business will be profitable. Measure evertyhing. There are a lot of tools out there that will help you in this task.Learn how to use them. Advertise your shop through different media (always taking care of the budget). You never know where your clients can come from. Add your products to third party services like: Google Shopping, eBay, Wine-Searcher.com, WineBid.com,... Don't sell just wine, sell moments and experiences: For example “The best wine for a romantic dinner” Create special offers like “Wine of the Week”. This kind of strategies usually have good results with customers with no time to browse your huge catalogue and, if you are looking for loyalty, create a suscription service “Our best wine selection each 3 months”. Be Agile Things move fast in e-business. You must be ready to change quickly. Once you realize that something is not working just change it, and think about another approach. Be extremely careful with customers service, answer fast and kindly. As soon as you receive and order, ship it!!!. If it arrives before expected date it's good for you and your company. Trust in professionals. You have an holistic view of your business, for sure!!!. But at some points, specially with tech related issues it's better to get help from experts Don't waste your time with things like coding, positioning, social media, graphical design, logistics and legislation...Be worried about them and supervise. Trust in professional in these fields and stay focused on selling wine. And last... And last but not least, If you want to own a virtual wine shop and you don't know how, let us help you. More information at http://vinoshopping.com/.