10 top tips for marketing your wine business online

Growing and producing is a labour of love, utilising farming, science and experience. Once your products are ready to go, it’s time for sales and distribution.

We live in a digitally led world. When potential customers see or try your products, they expect to be able to find you online at the touch of a button. In fact, 93% of consumers expect the online experience to be at least equal to, if not better than, shopping in-store (Coveo, 2022). Your online presence needs to convey your brand accurately and provide visitors with an easy, intuitive and positive experience.

1. Tell your story

Customers want to know who they are buying from and why. Telling the story of your brand is more important than ever as people are more cautious of spending their money. They want to see and feel your authenticity in order to relate to you and choose your brand over others.

2. Keep it clean and simple

A website needs to be easy to navigate from the second a visitor arrives. Whether it’s a first-time visitor or a returning customer, they need to get a sense of who you are and what you stand for in an instant. Avoid bombarding people with information, pop-ups and offers as it can be pressurising and irritating.

3. Mobile first

Businesses are now primarily ranked on Google on the quality and speed of their mobile sites. Web visitors are now browsing more often from their mobiles too, so if your site doesn’t work properly or is hard to read on phones people will not bother using it.

4. Website speed

According to industry research, 47% of customers expect a website to load in two seconds at the very most, and 40% will abandon it altogether if it takes longer than three (thedrum.com). With search engines penalising slow websites and analytics showing that it leads to high bounce rates, it is vital to assess the performance of your website. You should focus on improving your metrics to attract and retain users and get those extra sales.

5. Keep it real

Consider including some sort of personal message or jokes that match your brand’s tone of voice. Be sure that everything you write on your website sounds human. Imagine you are talking to your customer directly, rather than just writing down bland information.

6. Merchandising

The way you display your products online is key. Product names and photography needs to be simple and clean, with additional information available to customers if they need it. Product listings need to contain allergy, dietary and sustainability information – if you don’t communicate these, customers will have no way of finding this out.

7. Analytics

Whilst your analytics are a goldmine of information, it can be hard to know what to do with it all. With a FoodE website you get a live dashboard of key information and statistics which will be directly useful to your sales and marketing strategies. Quick-glance visuals will show you where your customers are arriving from, which products are selling well and numerous other purchasing habits. You can then tailor your online merchandising and marketing accordingly in order to perfect the entire shopping experience.

8. Social media for reach and sales

Not only is social media a great tool for marketing your brand, you can also use it to sell instantly via the Instagram and TikTok shops. This means people don’t even need to leave their social media scrolling in order to buy from you. This is a fantastic way to catch them in the moment and convert interest into a sale. Focus your efforts on channels relevant to your brand.

9. Digital marketing

Always keep an eye on where your website traffic is coming from. If you are paying for digital advertising, you can tell if those campaigns are successful if you have high traffic from paid search. If you’re using social media then you’ll be able to attribute spikes in sales to certain posts. If you have great links from other sites, the traffic is labelled ‘direct’. Keep these in constant review and make adjustments based on the insights you get.

10. Continuous improvement

Your website is your sales tool and you will need to review it, appraise it and update it frequently to get the most from it. A mindset of continuous improvement, including split-testing and small edits along the way will improve functionality and sales.

FoodE was thought up, designed and built by design agency, Oak Creative, in response to seeing a trend in customers’ needs for a reliable food and drink e-commerce platform. Oak Creative has built sites for award-winning clients such as Biddenden Vineyards, Kingcott Dairy, Slow Richie’s and Touchays. If you’re looking for creative know-how and online sales expertise, and would like to find out more, visit getfoode.com