5 Ways Wineries Are Leaving Revenue on the Table

Wineries have spent decades perfecting the in-person customer experience. But the way consumers shop has changed dramatically, and the digital experience hasn’t always kept pace.

Customers expect fast websites, easy checkout, personalized experiences, flexible subscriptions, and the ability to buy on their terms. When the online experience makes any of that difficult, it can directly impact how much customers buy and how often they come back.

That’s one of the reasons we’re bringing together HALL Wines, Shopify, CQL, and Klaviyo on October 29 at the HALL Wines property in St. Helena for a conversation about the future of winery ecommerce. We’ll dig into HALL’s move to Shopify, what they learned rebuilding their digital experience, and what other wineries can take from it.

Seating is limited to a small group of winery leaders. Request an invitation here.

Ahead of the event, here are five revenue opportunities we think more wineries should be thinking about.

1. You’re Making It Too Hard to Buy

When someone lands on your website ready to purchase, the hard work is already done. They know your brand, they’re interested in your wine, and they’ve decided to take action. Every additional point of friction puts that purchase at risk.

Slow load times, a clunky mobile experience, complicated account management, and unnecessary checkout steps all create opportunities for customers to abandon a purchase.

This was one of the challenges HALL wanted to solve when rebuilding its ecommerce experience. Across four brands and eight tasting room locations, the team needed a faster, more flexible digital experience that made it easier for customers to shop and manage their accounts.

Moving the brands onto a unified Shopify foundation gave HALL a faster site, improved mobile performance, and a simpler customer experience, all while migrating tens of thousands of customer records and 100% of payment tokens without disrupting the business.

Takeaway: when someone wants to buy wine, make buying the easiest possible next step.

2. Your Wine Club Is Too Rigid

Recurring revenue is incredibly valuable, but it shouldn’t require customers to give up control.

Traditional wine clubs are built around fixed shipments and predetermined schedules. That works for some customers, but modern customers want to choose their wines, swap bottles, adjust quantities, or make changes before an upcoming shipment.

Giving members more flexibility can seem like a churn risk. But allowing someone to swap a bottle, adjust an order, or change a shipment is often far better than forcing them to choose between accepting an order they don't want and leaving the club altogether.

Across Awtomic wineries, roughly 55% of club shipments are customized by members. Those customers are actively shaping an order around what they actually want rather than simply receiving a predetermined shipment.

Takeaway: Flexibility isn't the enemy of recurring revenue, in fact, it can be one of the reasons customers stay.

3. You’re Treating the Club Shipment as the Sale

Getting someone into the wine club is only the beginning.

Wineries tend to think about club revenue as a simple equation: number of members multiplied by the value of each scheduled shipment. But every shipment can also become an opportunity for increased lifetime value.

Can a member add another bottle before their order ships? Can you recommend something based on what they've purchased before? Can they build a bundle, discover a new release, or easily make another purchase between club shipments?

The best direct to consumer ecommerce brands constantly think about how to increase the value of an existing customer relationship. Wineries should approach club members the same way.

Takeaway: Instead of focusing on getting more members, emphasize creating more opportunities for existing members to buy.

4. Your Customer Data Isn’t Working Hard Enough

Wineries have access to an incredible amount of high-quality customer data. They know what someone purchased, what club they joined, when they visited, what they like, how much they spend, and how frequently they buy.

The challenge is turning that information into action.

When ecommerce, membership, marketing, and customer information live across disconnected systems, it becomes much harder to create a cohesive experience.

HALL faced this challenge at a particularly large scale. Four distinct brands needed to operate on one commerce foundation while maintaining the unique experience of each brand. Consolidating them on Shopify created a more unified infrastructure while giving the HALL team greater flexibility and control over how they operate.

Takeaway: Customer data is only valuable if it helps determine what you do next.

5. You’re Building Around the Tasting Room Instead of the Customer

The tasting room remains one of the most powerful tools wineries have for creating customer relationships, but it can't be the only one.

There is an enormous audience of wine drinkers who may love your brand but aren't regularly getting on a plane to Napa. And even for customers who discover you through the tasting room, the majority of their relationship with your winery will happen after they go home.

The opportunity is to extend the experience beyond the visit. Make it easy to reorder, give members reasons to stay engaged, personalize what they see, create benefits they can use from anywhere, and build a digital experience that feels like a continuation of the hospitality they experienced in person.

Takeaway: Your tasting room might start the relationship, but your digital experience determines where it can go next.

Where Do Wineries Go From Here?

These are all opportunities to grow revenue, but taking advantage of them requires the right foundation. Wineries should have the same ability as any modern ecommerce brand to improve the customer experience, test new ideas, connect their data, and adapt as customer expectations change.

Join Shopify, CQL, Klaviyo, and Awtomic at HALL Wines on October 29 for a private winery leadership dinner. We'll go behind the scenes of HALL's move to Shopify, why the team decided it was time for a change, what it took to migrate four brands and tens of thousands of customers, and what the new foundation makes possible going forward.