As a digital experience agency that designs, builds, and supports wine industry websites, we’re monitoring market trends that help vineyards, wineries, and retail wine sellers grow and keep a portfolio of loyal customers. That includes website design strategies to attract new generations of wine buyers and smart, cost-effective ways to leverage websites to expand direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales and encourage wine club membership.
One of the most important digital tools you can leverage in the process of extending your DTC footprint is an ecommerce platform that integrates seamlessly into your wine industry website, making it easier to shop online than at a physical location. Culture Foundry has experience working with a variety of ecommerce platforms, including a collection designed specifically for wine industry websites. We’ll highlight our go-to platform in a moment. First, here’s a look at the leading ecommerce platforms to consider if you want a software solution purposely created to facilitate DTC wine sales.
Ecommerce Platforms for Wine Industry Websites
Overview: Celebrating more than 25 years in the industry, eCELLAR offers an integrated ecommerce, point of sale, digital marketing, inventory and customer relationship management platform dedicated to serving the wine industry’s unique challenges and opportunities.
Special Features: The platform provides tools for reservation management, club management, and multi-location inventory management. It also offers an API-driven design tool (Designer Widgets) to help create a consistent user experience across different devices and screen sizes. eCELLAR offers additional, fee-based services, including data migration, onsite and remote training, and enterprise-level CRM support for multiple brands sharing the same customer database.
Pricing: Pro plans start at $450 per month for annual sales under $500,000. Plan pricing goes up from there, depending on your annual sales. Note: eCELLAR’s Pricing Page includes a helpful evaluation tool you can use to compare eCELLAR’s monthly fees and commissions to its competitors.
Overview: Commerce7 is a modern commerce platform tailored for wineries, offering integrated solutions for point of sale, ecommerce, customer relationship management, club memberships, and reservations.
Special Features: It focuses on enhancing the customer experience by providing personalized interactions across all channels and allows sellers to capture sales anywhere/anyplace through a cloud-connected system.
Pricing: Pricing starts at $149 per month for the Basic plan, which includes all features and a 1.5% transaction fee. More expensive Pro, Experience, and Enterprise plans are available that offer higher monthly fees in exchange for lower – or customized – transaction fees.
Overview: Corksy positions itself as a “digital growth ecosystem” for wine industry clients, marrying technology solutions to digital sales and marketing strategies that support logical growth channels for wineries, including content channels, exclusive partnerships, and product advertising.
Special Features: Featured solutions include end-to-end ecommerce, retail point of sale, reservations and bookings, club subscriptions, marketing automations, website building tools, and platform analytics and insights.
Pricing: The platform offers customized transaction and subscription fees. Contact the Corksy directly for a pricing quotation.
Overview: VinoShipper is an all-in-one compliance and ecommerce platform that simplifies DTC sales across the United States. Unlike competitors, the platform offers comprehensive pricing without a monthly subscription fee or any start-up fees.
Special Features: In addition to online store, point of sale, and club management, and website integration tools, the software provides shipping permits for over 40 states, manages reports, shipments, and orders, and handles tax payments on behalf of wineries.
Pricing: VinoShipper operates on a commission basis (1.85% per sale), also charging a processing fee per bottle sold (from $.15 to $.75 per item) with no monthly subscription fees.
Overview: WineDirect is an all-in-one platform designed to help wineries start, manage, and grow their direct-to-consumer business through all steps of the customer journey. The platform supports more than 2,000 wineries of various sizes globally.
Special Features: The platform offers an online store, tasting room point-of-sale system, wine club management, and fulfillment services.
Pricing: Starter-level subscriptions are available for $79 per month with a 2% transaction fee. Pro- and Advanced-Level subscription packages are tailored for wineries with higher annual sales and escalate in price based on annual sales. All three package options include one-time onboarding fees.
Culture Foundry’s Preferred Ecommerce Partner for Wine Industry Websites
Our go-to partner for wine industry websites is eCELLAR, which is incorporated into the websites for Pride Mountain Vineyards, Lombardi Wines, Bell Wine Cellars, and Bell’s The Scoundrel microsite.
Our preference for eCELLAR comes from the all-encompassing nature of the software, the scope of services it provides wine industry clients, and the amount of control eCELLAR’s design features, including its Designer Widgets, offer wine websites. These widgets are fully customizable and can be crafted to match your site’s existing theming and your company’s visual identity, making consistent online branding easy to achieve and maintain.
We also have a long-standing relationship with eCELLAR founder and chief innovator, Paul Thienes, and provide him feedback on our clients’ experiences with the platform. That direct access to Paul and his platform managers translates into excellent customer service for our clients and our design and development teams when we work on sites that use the software.
Conclusion
When evaluating an ecommerce platform for your wine industry website, remember to factor ease of use, scalability, compliance support, and integration capabilities – along with features and pricing – into your consideration set. You want your chosen ecommerce solution to help you run the backend of your online store in a secure, compliant fashion, while meeting the front-end user expectations of your clients and website managers.
If you need guidance in choosing an ecommerce platform for your wine industry website, we’re here to offer our expertise and be a sounding board. Complete the form below to schedule a consultation.