The Best Wine Buys website was commissioned by the Fine Wine Delivery Company of Auckland New Zealand. In the seven years the company has been in business they have concentrated on delivering quality wines, initially though in house tasting?s and later in their own premises. The business grew rapidly and in the 2005 they launched Best Wine Buys online, aimed at providing the best quality wines for under $15.
Fine Wine Delivery Company approached Gruden in 2006 to review their Best Wines site which had developed some usability and branding issues as a result of its staggered growth and development.
Gruden worked closely with the client to help design a site that more accurately reflected the values of the Best Wine Buys brand, which included an appraisal of the logo, as well as helping to create a more instinctive workflow for product searching and purchasing.
A review of the online marketing strategy confirmed that improvements were required to the weekly newsletter process; this was given priority since the sales channel was being negatively affected. As a result, new user friendly functionality and a redevelopment of the workflow were implemented.
The CMS also underwent major modifications to help improve a number of the issues identified. Logistically, this was a complex task since the CMS was integrated with a third party retail point of sales/stock system and Gruden had to work remotely with the database and stock system.
The site was launched three months following the start of development and was a huge success both for site users and internally for the Fine Wine Delivery Company. Four weeks after launch the site improved sales dramatically and also increased the maximum purchase rate per average user. These successes have been credited to the increased usability of the site and the ease of purchase for all site users.
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