Many have declared that the web will re-shape the wine industry by providing access to exquisite bottles that normally would take years to find.
The wine industry still faces this problem. Mainly the following elements characterize the lag:
- Bad user experience
- Web 1.0′ish (repository of data)
- Too salesy (feels like a spammy hotmail account)
- Horrible delivery
- When you try purchasing something, many sites say they’ve sold out
Yet, in the past year, certain sites have emerged that have begun countering this poor stigma:
Snooth: By far, my favorite wine site in the past year is snooth. It’s got a light, crisp environment that focuses on uncovering new wines. The layout is great, the user experience is friendly and it’s easy to get set up.
According to the site, “Snooth doesn’t sell wine. Instead, we offer users an engaging and unique shopping experience that lets them interact with wineries, merchants, fellow wine lovers, and wine professionals from all over the globe. When users are ready to make a purchase, we let them compare prices and shop from over 10,000 wine merchants worldwide and offer them opportunities to review the wine and their buying experience to help others in the future.”
I believe with sites like snooth, the online wine movement will evolve at a higher rate than ever before. I’m really looking forward to the value snooth brings to the table. They’ve proven themselves to think ahead and innovate in the sector. They even have an iPhone-focused site, which I’ll be testing out this week.
Wine is only one industry that faces an online lag, perhaps we’ll see more snooth-like sites pop up in the future.
