print pageThe Fine Wine Delivery Company
The team at the Fine Wine Delivery Company (Fine Wine) are passionate about wine. This affection has seen the business grow in less than 7 years from operating out of the family''s Auckland home to occupying a 3 floor central city commercial building. The operation now comprises an extensive retail store, a state of the art wine storage facility, and the staging of regular wine-maker hosted events. Innovation has been a key to the company''s success. In 1998 Fine Wine commissioned New Zealand''s first comprehensive wine website. This site now forms an integral part of their business.
At a Glance
Business Challenges
Create an integrated e-commerce site that will leverage existing IT investments including accounting and stock systems. Create a scalable site that will support growth going forward.
Solution
Shado CMS Content Management System and Shado CMS eStore.
Business Benefits
Effective online-store comprising the most up-to-date e-commerce functionality. Increased online sale, increased customer satisfaction levels.
Challenge
Fine Wine had an existing website that was productive but operated from an outdated platform and was no longer supported by their provider. Despite possessing a very effective business tool they needed to convert their stand-alone application into an integrated one which they could extend and manage more easily going forward.
They also wanted to integrate the site with their internal accounting and stock system so they could manage products in one place on the internal stock system and flag them for web availability.
Solution
Shado CMS Content Management System and Shado CMS eStore.
The site was redeveloped using Shado CMS to provide the Content Management functions and Shado CMS eStore to provide the product and online store functionality.
Results
Online Store. Shado CMS eStore works on the basis of a product and product instance relationship where the "product" holds the core general data and a general image and the "product instance" holds the pricing, specific image and any additional details such as stock on hand.
An upload of product occurs daily to update the web database, including stock levels. If a product is below its stated buffer level it will not appear on the front end of the site. At the time of purchase then a stock check occurs for standard products but is excluded from any sale products as they are deemed to be available, irrespective of actual stock levels.
When an order is placed it updates the order table in their internal system and the order is then completed in-store. This allows Fine Wine to adjust orders or change items for the customer. For example, staff can place 13 bottles in a case (where possible) and charge the client a lesser freight value.
All users are required to register as members in order to purchase online. This is a simple process and membership enables order histories to be retained, a service many customers find helpful as they can review past orders to find wines they particularly enjoyed.
Email Function. A key factor contributing to the success of the site has been the classification and regular use of specials. Fine Wine offer 7 day, monthly, and mixed dozen specials. These are displayed on the site and emailed to clients who have registered for updates.
These emails used to be manually created with an HTML editing package but the email function is now fully integrated within Shado CMS. The application allows Fine Wine to select a template, create product groups, select products to be placed in the product groups, and add personalized text against each of the products. Personalized text can also be added to the email itself if required.
The new site's internal system tracks member's preferences and purchase histories enabling Fine Wine to select clients to mail to on an infinite number of preferences.
Efficiency. Fine Wine already had a successful website, but they lacked the ability to manage the daily content and product availability themselves. The new integrated system has saved them time by only needing to enter a product once. They can now use this time in other areas to more effectively promote the business.
The full integration ensures a seamless experience for their customers and the mass-mail provides an easy means to create personalized mail based on a variety of factors.
"Because of Shado CMS our customers get their wine delivered a whole lot faster. The fully integrated site simplifies the whole ordering process. We just load products into the system once and any new information is live on the site within minutes. It’s eased our workload and keeps our customers happy."
Jeff Poole, The Fine Wine Delivery Company.
