Industry Eye: Case Study - Turning Wine Into Sales

Problem: Woodland Hills Wine Co., a multichannel seller of vintage wines and spirits, lacked a sophisticated e-commerce site to complement its retail store.

Solution: Redesigned and relaunched its "antique" website.

Results: In the first six months of business following the site's relaunch, online transactions increased 11.4 percent. In the first half of 2009, online visits were up 39.8 percent, with conversion rates 1.5 percent greater than the same time last year.

Frustrated by poor flexibility, content and sales on its website launched during the Clinton administration, San Fernando Valley, Calif.-based Woodland Hills Wine Co. redesigned its old site. After 13 months of planning, the wines and spirits retailer launched a new e-commerce site last year, and the above numbers illustrate its success.

Woodland Hills' website didn't get better with age. It had an unprofessional look and feel, numerous difficulties in navigation, and a general lack of integration with its back-end inventory system. In essence, the site offered little more than a listing of products.

Improved Navigation
"Even customers that liked us when they came into the store … they just didn't trust our website," says Eric Smith, Woodland Hills' operations director. "And for new customers, that's a huge turnoff."

The merchant tapped SysIQ, a San Francisco-based e-commerce service provider, to redo the site.

With nearly 5,000 SKUs online, ease of navigation was central to help users locate and purchase products. Whereas the previous site offered no site search, the redesign includes robust search functionality powered by dynamic navigation that filters by country, region, price, popularity, rating, color, availability and vintage. 
Customers can control the number of products displayed in search results, and see a summary listing of description, price 
and availability.

Woodland Hills' redesign also incorporates customer feedback. A "new offerings" feature, for instance, is automated to display anything that came into inventory in the past 10 days. Other highlights include best buys — typically value-priced wines — staff picks, a clearance bin and best-sellers — another automated functionality.