Winning With DTC In 2016

Fresh from the Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium in Concord last week and off to the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium next week in Sacramento - I'd thought we should take a look at some stats from 2015 and why 2016 is going to be the year of DTC.

1. Vin65 processed over $772 million DTC sales through the platform in 2015. This is 46% increase in DTC sales from 2014.

2. Mobile traffic is sitting at 35% across the platform. This means that over 1/3 of winery website views are originating from a mobile phone. You've got to optimise mobile and make it easier for visitors to buy wine with their smartphone.

3. General retail statistics show a general ecommerce increase of 14% in 2015, while mobile ecommerce increased a whopping 32%. This was the first year in history that Black Friday sales on mobile overtook desktop sales. Wine has a long way to come (only 5% of wine sales are currently completed on a mobile phone), but this shows huge opportunity to sell more wine if wineries can get the experience right.

4. Email is still the best way to sell more wine online. Email conversion is up, while search conversion is dropping (email conversion increased from 2.4% to 2.75% in 2015). Wineries that are sending great emails are definitely getting better conversion rates - and are selling more wine.

5. Shipping is the #1 deterrent to buying wine online. Wineries that pass on the carrier rates and/or view shipping as a revenue booster aren't nearly as successful selling wine online as those using shipping as a marketing strategy. Flat rate shipping is winning - and those that are using shipping incentives to get their average order value (AOV) up per order are killing it. 

DTC is growing. Your winery should focus on creating targeted and personal emails, getting the mobile experience right and making your shipping strategies work to increase your AOV on every order.

Let's #sellmorewine in 2016!