Turning a passion for wine into a boutique business

Mark Pradun once owned a single bottle shop in the suburbs of Adelaide. He found many of his customers often called to ask if he could “put a dozen red together for me and can you drop it off on your way home?” Fast forward two decades and Mark’s proud to serve the same customers through his online business, winedirect.com.au.

Today, the company sells speciality wine and curates packs for its members, serving retail and corporate clients across Australia. They differentiate themselves by sourcing and selecting wine for members, serviced by a passionate team of experts who foster a community feel. In its own words, “they put their livers on the line” to ensure top quality and excellent value.

Preparing for a bumper harvest

The wine retailer’s history with Adobe Commerce goes back to 2011 when it first launched with Magento OpenSource. They chose the open-source platform for its low cost, ability to customise to suit business needs, rich library of extensions and robust community of Adobe Commerce partners and developers.

As an ambitious player in a competitive space, winedirect.com.au wanted to develop an omnichannel experience for their customers that would set them apart from big players. To maintain their edge, they aimed to reboot their website for a mobile market, create a tailored wine club experience and introduce a high-value advocacy programme. Winedirect.com.au also needed to free up resources by automating back-office tasks.

Winedirect.com.au decided that Adobe Commerce, hosted in the cloud, would give them the best of both worlds: a flexible, scalable solution and unprecedented customisation and functionality. “Winedirect.com.au was looking for a solution that will help them scale and grow for the next three to five years, empowering them to automate businesses processes, deliver an exceptional mobile experience for fellow wine lovers and expand their marketing automation and personalisation,” says Tanuj Rastogi, founder of 18th Digitech.

The taste of success: cultivating customer experience

Partnering with 18th Digitech, winedirect.com.au completely redesigned their mobile experience, customised to deliver “app-like” intuitiveness and a seamless search and check-out. The mobile-optimised site yielded a 47% increase in conversion rates along with a whopping 172% boost in mobile revenue.

Beyond mobile, the site reboot accommodated existing customers, comprised primarily of 25-plus-year-old loyal wine connoisseurs who prefer simple website navigation, while stack menus were added to attract millennial sippers. As a result of the refreshed look and functionality, new users surged by 20% post launch, along with a 15% improvement in traffic to winedirect.com.au.

To drive customer retention and further grow business, 18th Digitech built the “the best and most flexible Wine Club in the history of the entire universe.” Most wine clubs are known for locking-in members to passively receive a pre-set batch of wines at a set interval. Winedirect.com.au flipped that model and instead wanted to empower its members to tailor a wine club service to their own tastes.

Account settings offer customers more control to adjust their preferences through the new site. “Our customers now have much more control over how they interact with the website and the people behind it,” says Adam Hollinshead, Chief Digital Officer at winedirect.com.au. “They can customise numerous options, from delivery instructions to payment methods, to frequency of receiving marketing material."

Winedirect.com.au takes pride in maintaining their lifelong customers. To further reward their perennial fans, winedirect.com.au expanded and automated their referral programme to offer lifetime rewards. Dubbed the Wine Enthusiasts Programme, members receive discounts and bonuses when they refer new customers on an ongoing basis. This approach has helped deliver a 90% increase in overall online revenue as well as a 11.4% boost in the average order value.

A growth strategy only works when a business is prepared

As part of the implementation, 18th Digitech added and customised extensions to automate several manual tasks. This included sales and commission tracking from the company’s phone-based sales team. The new build also leveraged an API to connect its inventory system to its delivery partner, Australia Post. With their new strategy and platform in place, winedirect.com.au’s focus is back to their brand purpose - discovering exceptional wine - and delivering the best of it to their customers. “The results speak for themselves. We couldn’t be happier with our decision to invest in the move to Adobe Commerce and work with 18th Digitech to help deliver our vision,” says Hollinshead.

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