New: VinDashboard Reports

Starting today, you have more ways to access and analyze your data through our partnership with VinDashboard. 

VinDashboard is a reporting service giving you a snapshot view of your key business metrics. It saves you time by combining data from multiple WineDirect reports into one, easy-to-use and flexible interface, helping you drill deeper into your WineDirect data to uncover actionable insights. Here's what's new:

20+ New Reports

• Create custom-tailored promotions, events, and marketing campaigns to target your customers based on their location and purchase history
• Use our actionable maps with drill-down capabilities to view customers stats, demographics, and data by region 
• Enter your goals and automatically track your progress across multiple sales channel and key performance indicators

DTC Knowledge Base for Wineries

• Details of our 70+ reports, where to segment and how to monitor this against your buiness goals
• Quick tips, FAQs and training
• Best practices for wineries using VinDashboard and WineDirect

> Visit our FAQ page to learn more about VinDashboard and request a demo.

New: Redirector Fully Supports HTTPS Connections

We've updated our Smart Redirector so that when a customer forgets to type in the "www" of your website URL, they will now be automatically redirected to your secure HTTPS address. 

There are many different ways that a customer types in your URL to access your website or online store. Our platform automatically redirects them so that they end up at the right spot. Previously, when a customer did not type "www" before your URL - as in https://pinewines.com - they would get a timeout error. Now, they will be redirected to http(s)://www.pinewines.com.

This enhancement enables your customers to easily access your website, and also helps keep your Google ranking high. Keep the suggestions coming in the Ideas Forum!

Looking for more ways to improve your Google Ranking? WineDirect has a setting that allows for SSL everywhere. We've turned on SSL everywhere for our own website - and we are encouraging you to do the same. >Learn more here.

New: Cart Stays Active For One Month

When customers are browsing your website, any items added to their cart are now saved for one month, allowing them more time to come back and complete their purchase. The cart is saved when your customer remains logged in, or if a guest has started the checkout process before dropping off .

This change reduces checkout barriers and improves your customers’ overall experience by allowing them to continue right where they left off. 

Please note: You must be using our New Checkout Tools to take advantage of this feature. 

During OND, you'll want to recover as many abandoned carts as possible. A great way to remind customers that they have abandoned their cart is to send an Abadoned Cart Action Email. You set them up once and they are sent automatically. If you aren't already using the Abandoned Cart Action Email, you can learn how to set it up here. 

 

Updated Tip Flow for POS

To reduce confusion during checkout, and make sure your staff gets the tips they deserve, we've adjusted our tip pop-up screen in the POS. Starting today, the ‘Apply’ button is now right next to the custom tip field at the bottom of the screen, and the 'No Tip' button is in the upper right corner.

Previously, these buttons' locations were reversed. Through our Ideas Forum, you let us know that this was causing confusion among customers who were hitting 'No Tip' when they meant to select 'Apply' after entering a custom tip amount.

This change will cause less confusion for your customers when they enter a tip, plus it gives your hardworking tasting room staff a better chance at the tips they deserve!

To find out more about setting up tips for your Tasting Room staff, read the Documentation page here.

New: Multiple Emails Per Contact

We are excited to announce the arrival of your #1 requested feature: adding multiple email addresses to a single contact. This means you can now seamlessly send communications about orders and club shipments to a customer's spouse or friend, ensuring important transactional information won't be missed.

It's the latest tool we've built to help save you time and deliver top-notch customer service.

How It Works:

• To add an email address, navigate to the contact record on the Admin Panel or POS and click the new "+ Add email address" link. You can add up to 5 secondary email addresses per contact.
• Your customers can add their own secondary email addresses by logging in to their account and going to the Edit Profile page.
• Secondary emails will receive all transactional emails - such as order confirmations and wine club notifications - associated with the primary account holder. For privacy and anti-SPAM reasons, they will not receive marketing emails such as newsletters.

Ways to Use It:

• Allow your customers to add their spouse's email for extra visibility on important notifications regarding purchases, shipping and billing
• Ensure that friends sharing a club membership all receive necessary club communications
• Include both a work and home email address for added convenience and maximum visibility
• Send an email to your wine club members inviting them to add secondary emails through their online account (or add secondary email fields to your physical club sign up form for new members)

Please Note: When you add a secondary email address, an email alert will go out both to the primary account holder as well as the secondary email address. These System Email templates have been auto-created with default copy in your account and you can edit them as desired. They are called: "A New Email Has Been Added to Your Account" (sent to the primary email address) and "Your Email Has Been Added" (sent to the secondary email address).

> Click here to read the full documentation!

We’re so thrilled to release this functionality as it is your most requested feature ever with almost 450 votes from our Ideas forum. Keep the suggestions coming!

New: Submitted Date Will Not Change After Quarantine

We've made an update to our integration with ShipCompliant. Starting today, the Submitted Date on an order will never change - regardless of whether that order is quarantined by ShipCompliant - making your month-end reconciliation process easier.

We made this change based on your feedback that the Submitted Date should always reflect the date the order was originally placed (the same day that the order was originally paid for). Previously when an order was quarantined in ShipCompliant, we would update the Submitted Date when it was released. As a result, the Submitted Date and Payment Date were not the same, which was problematic for your month-end reporting.

This is the latest example of our ongoing commitment to improving our tools, making it easy for you to get the information that you need. Keep the suggestions coming in the Ideas Forum!

New: Filter By User Choice Club Customization

Summer is in full swing - but fall club season is right around the corner. So we're excited to introduce this new - and highly requested - feature that will save you time and make your club runs easier!

After you process your club, you can easily filter your default club orders from customized ones. This will speed up your order picking by giving you the ability to print packing slips and shipping labels. We hope this update will save your team time when boxing up your club shipments next time around.

> Learn more

Year One of Our Tock Integration

On this day last year, we proudly announced our partnership with Tock, a premier reservation and guest management platform tailored to the wine and restaurant industries.

Since then, more than 100 wineries have signed on with WineDirect to leverage Tock's reservation, table management and CRM system offering guests convenient ways to book tours, tastings, and special events.

Together, WineDirect and Tock provide deep customer insights, reduce no-shows, improve your team's efficiency and increase sales. Here are a few ways you can take advantage of our integration to offer the world-class hospitality your customers expect:

• Real-Time Sync between Tock and WineDirect ensures that bookings and club memberships will update across platforms instantaneously.
• Smart Groups pull from WineDirect contact types to allow you to automatically apply special access and pricing to your club members and VIPs, making it easier to run club member events and comp or discount tastings.
• Social integrations with Facebook, Instagram and Google Maps encourage discovery, with prominent "Book Now" buttons giving your winery a leg up in attracting guests. They'll love the option to book their visit in one simple click.
• Event management tools include everything you need to run a successful event, from a guest directory with notes and tags to waitlists to ticket add-ons. 
• Collect guest data and feedback through pre- and post-visit surveys:

  “Tock is like having a receptionist 24 hours a day. We’re now able to book guests around the clock, and in the process, collect important guest details (first-time visitors, celebrations, member referrals, etc). This wasn’t possible when we were manually taking reservations over the phone.”

  - Nicole Roberts, Epoch Estate Wines

We'll continue to collaborate on new and innovative features with Tock to enhance our integrated offering as we strive to create the ultimate reservations management and CRM tool for wineries.

Stay tuned for future updates!

> Learn more about our integration with Tock and request a demo.

New: Updates to New Checkout Tools

We've been working hard on upgrading our New Checkout options to entice you to switch over from our legacy checkout. Starting today, you can further customize your checkout experience because:

All Google Fonts Now Supported

When we first launched our new checkout, we offered a limited amount of Google fonts, however we are now offering the ability to choose from over 900 Google fonts. This allows you to seamlessly match your branding thorughout your entire website.

>Learn More

Ability to Customize Headers in New Checkout

A designer can now add custom HTML and CSS to style your online store's header when using our new checkout tools, offering you more control of your website's look and feel.

>Learn More

 

New: Updated Design for Send Mass Email

Today, under the contacts tab you will see that there is no longer a “Send Mass Email” section and now everything you need to manage and send your email documents lives under “Email Documents”. Besides the button placement (now on the top right of the screen), and an updated design, there are a lot of time-saving benefits that come along with this change that will make your email marketing more streamlined, including:

1. Crafting your email and then sending right from that document, without navigating away from the email.

2. When you send from the current email document, you only need to select your contact list. This reduces sifting through multiple categories and email documents to find your email, a significant reduction in the steps required to send an email.

 

3. Send an email to multiple people in the contacts section without having to leave the contact list.

Read more about these changes on our documentation site.