Wine and eCommerce

It’s so strange to think back and remember that about twenty years ago the internet was just a shadow of what it has become in the modern age. During the days of dial-up modems that cut their connections whenever somebody used the phone, it was hard to imagine a world where the internet would be the massively pervasive force that it has evolved into.

For the wine lover, it is very good news that it has. The early days of the internet gave rise to the idea of eCommerce. Many people had the idea to sell their wares online. However, slow connection speeds and worries about security prevented many potential buyers from using the web as a resource in the early days. That is not the case anymore. eCommerce competes handily with physical sales and there we will be nobody reading this who hasn’t bought something online at some point in their lives. After all, you’re on a wine eCommerce website, so we hope you have purchased from us in the past.

But what is it that makes buying online so desirable to so many people? There have to be reasons for why shopping online is so popular and for why wine and eCommerce is the perfect mix. Here we have just a few of the many reasons.

Convenience is King

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. There are few things as convenient as shopping online. In the space of a few clicks of a mouse or taps on a smartphone, you can have an item ordered and on its way to you. There is no filling the car up with gas and driving your way to the store. You won’t need to fight past tons of people to get to the item that you want. There are no additional costs involved. It’s just you, an internet connection, and the convenience of shopping for whatever you want, no matter where you might be.

Variety is the Spice of Life

We’ve all heard that saying before, right? eCommerce is what makes that phrase come to life. Imagine going to the store. You look at the shelves and you can’t find what you want. That’s because a store can only keep a limited amount of stock on hand. Worse still, a store can only sell so many different items. Limited shelf space means that what you want may not even be available at the store in the first place.

eCommerce sites don’t have to worry about that at all. A website can host so many more products that the average store and the site’s owners can make every single one of them available to you. There’s no more scouring the shelves in the hope of finding that special something. A quick Google search will take you to a store and you’ll find what you are looking for in a matter of minutes. Of course, anybody who loves wine will definitely want to take a better look around the Xtrawine website.

Greater Security

We mentioned earlier in the article about how security concerns were a major barrier for people during the early days of shopping online. It was understandable too. There weren’t many good payment processors around and the threat of somebody taking your details and using them for something that you never intended was quite a lot larger than many people were comfortable with.

Times have changed and they have changed enormously. Shopping online is now extremely safe and the vast majority of eCommerce websites go to great pains to ensure their customers and the information they receive have the best protection possible. Encryption is standard on an eCommerce website, with many also offering extra protection as detailed in the site’s privacy policy. Payment processor, such as PayPal, offer extra protection, too.

Information About Everything

Though not often seen as a direct benefit of an eCommerce website, you will find that good sites provide you with so much more information than you are liable to find at your local store. Take Xtrawine as an example. We give you all of the details about the wines you want to buy, including their designations, the grapes used to make them, and what they work well with when it comes to food. We go much further than that too, as we offer information about specific producers and maintains this blog to give even more information to our visitors.

This is not something you are going to find in any physical store. At best, a clerk may be able to tell you a thing or two about an item. An eCommerce store can be as in-depth as it wants to be, so you will always know exactly what you are buying before you commit yourself.

Get Anything in the World From Anywhere in the World

This is another of the really big ones. The internet and eCommerce has completely done away with the idea that you can only buy certain things from stores that are local to where you live. In essence, the web is one huge marketplace that offers you access to shops from all over the world. Want to buy a great bottle of Italian wine? You can get it shipped to your door using this site. You don’t have to travel to Italy and you don’t need to hope a store owner will get the item in stock. You can just buy from anywhere.

The Final Word

eCommerce has been huge for so many different industries. In Italian wine, eCommerce has opened up the industry to a huge audience that may never have been breached were it not for the internet. One only needs to look at the amazing strides being made in China, India, and other countries that have traditionally not been seen as big markets for wine to see that.

What’s exciting is that there is always room to go. As yet more technologies get introduced into the internet, we are sure that eCommerce will evolve. The future looks bright because it is online.