Amazing feedback here, especially Patrick’s WOW ideas. If even half of that stuff got done it would be great.
IMHO the best way to optimize future BDs is to work with the 108 sellers to help them sell more stuff. If they sell more then by definition we Berserkers are buying more. And buying makes us happy!!
Do you guys have any idea which producers crushed it and sold a huge amount? Who was disappointed and didn’t sell as much as they hoped? Interviewing some top sellers and most disappointed would be a pretty easy way to gather feedback for creating a best practices seminar for everyone.
I’ll volunteer to do the interviews and gather and organize the feedback (gulp). It would be great to present as a zoom session featuring a top seller. Ofc if others want to help we could create a standard interview script (again, I volunteer) and then assign interviews. Pretty easy to organize around shared Google docs, etc.
Btw reading about all the behind the scenes stuff you do Brig and Todd, wow. Amazing, THANK YOU!
Free shipping.
Sampler cases.
Aggressive pricing.
Activity on WB.
What I learned this time around:
Just because in my mind I think people know me after participating last year, doesn’t mean they do. I should have had a smaller, loss leading, intro sampler package this year to get those who hadn’t heard of me or were on the fence to take a bite.
I backed off slightly on my aggressive pricing from last year (as now, in my mind, they had a little more pedigree), maybe I should have kept the pressure up. I’ll probably return to that model next year. At this point for my winery, it’s still more important that people get to try the wines, than to protect the costs of making it.
Don’t mix in a sweet wine into a package - it might alienate people who would be interested in it otherwise. Next year, if there’s any left, I think I’ll keep that separate.
Get my ducks in a row when it comes to the website, shipping, taxes etc. A couple fo snafus in the beginning that got fixed, but how many turned away because of it?
It is apparent to me that Berserker Day has gotten big enough to start setting deadlines, such as:
Offers must be posted no later than X days prior
Website must be bench tested and ready to go no later than X days prior
As a customer, I seek out and value relationships with small businesses. A smooth transaction helps. Fixing common issues in advance helps. A little bit of standardization helps.
Brig, I think the reason the offers come late, is because there’s still uncertainty about the underlying structure and how it works. I know it was for me. I did not understand fully, that Todd made the thread visible only to ITB people and not Monopole/GCC. So I delayed putting any links there until the day of the 26th, fearful of getting WB’s ire for posting them early. And since I’m not posting the links, I might as well not post the offers either until then. You see the problem?
Perhaps some survey of what sort of packages people ended up buying (aggregated in such a way as to anonymize the data) might be helpful for informing sellers about which offers tend to sell well and which don’t. This in turn will help sellers design their offers for the next BD so that they can maximize their sales.
Some questions that might be helpful to get answers to:
How much does free shipping add to the conversion rate of the offer?
How much does adding a price break for volume (e.g. buying a 12-pack for 5% less per bottle than the 6-pack offer) affect the conversion rate?
How much does adding the regular retail price or the “% off” to the offer affect conversion rate?
Do users prefer sampler packs or verticals or more homogenous offers?
Why did the user decide to purchase from this seller? Testimonials from other users? Name recognition? Perception of a good deal? Etc.
While I’m sure the wineries know their business extremely well and there’s a reason they design their offers the way they do, since I’m someone that rarely buys wine by the case (I know, shame on me), I’m much more likely to buy from a seller that allows me to purchase by the bottle/unit rather than packages that cost hundreds of dollars. Even if I end up buying 6 bottles from one seller, maybe I want 3 bottles each of 2 cuvees instead of a 6 bottle sampler pack. Once again, I’m not trying to claim that fully customizable orders would be better for the sellers, but they certainly make it more approachable for me, especially if I’m taking a leap of faith on something new.
Again with the “need” for structure? Offers “must”…website “must”…how about Berserker Day “must” be fun? I tend to tilt against the windmill of “Fundamentalist” strictures and overwrought walls that “must” be erected and rules that “must” be upheld. No offense intended, by the way.
Aint Broke dont fix It(tweak it)
Communication , better communication, leads to less confusion and or apprehension (clarify confirm)
KISS
Dont work for free, dont give it away: baked in FREE or Flat Rate Shipping was nice for us East Coasters
Its BD , consumer is looking for a deal too
Patrick has lots of great ideas - seriously consider them. I don’t know what Todd, Brig, and others tell the various wineries, but how about sending them a template using those elements (or most) and say “here’s what you should include” but otherwise have fun.
Siun’s point about the name of the winery in the thread first is great, and I agree.
Re #2, I sure found the ordering confusing. So many tranches, and with offers flying out was kind of hard to tell what was new. I’m totally fine with preferential placement, and the idea that threads don’t float all the way to the top for each comment, but is there any way for the forum software to break up the tranches more clearly into (1) newest offers; (2) preferential placement offers; (3) all others?
As to the offers themselves, they’re always enjoyable. But I did feel like at least a couple of wineries were offering up last year’s wines again. I checked some of my favorites to see what I’d thought of previous vintages of the wine and realized - hey, I have that exact wine, with purchase date 1/27/20.
Finally, is there any way to start a new thread on 1/27 for each offer, rather than having what sometimes are a bunch of GCC posts from 1/26? It’s a bit odd to see a “new” offer and then go in to see 25+ responses …
In that case, you can do what many do and just make the ability to order active on your site. I did that - I had the items up a few days before but without the ability to purchase them - in fact, when GCC went live, I was reminded that folks couldn’t order and had to ‘make them live’.
I would push for this as well - I know I was guilty this year of not remembering how to do certain things for my links and needed to reach out to Brig/Todd at the last minute. Not cool of me - and I know that there were many more who did the same.
The ‘challenge’ is to set these rules and stick with them. You would think that Todd, et al can turn folks down who don’t follow them - but then the WB community might miss out on some stuff they really want. Personally, I’m okay with that - set rules and follow them or you can’t take part.
What I don’t think a lot of producers realize is that it is a PRIVILEGE to have your wines for sale on BD, not a RIGHT.
An antidote regarding anyone, including me, that thinks there must be a “must”
Liquid Farm first year - I recruited them for Berserkerday back when, I had Jeff and Nikki at my house for a dinner and everything just clicked and I knew based on the feedback from people at that dinner, all berserkers, that LF would crush it. I spoke with Nikki later about it and she was all in so I gave her some general information and guidance and said “come back with an offer and we’ll work through and make any tweaks”. She sent me a draft and I couldn’t understand WTF was going on, what she was selling or how to order. It had something like 12 offers, it took 10 minutes to read, etc. I gave her tons of recommendations and she made some changes and when BD came around she put that offer in the pre-launch forum and Todd said “WFT is that?”. I said “it’s way better than it was!” LOL
I was confident it was trouble when it went live. So the 27th arrives and the Liquid Farm offer goes live and the FIRST POST in the offer is Todd with “A poll, a book, and a bunch of wine offers…who’s got TIME for all this?” AWESOME It was complete insanity, people were buying and not even sure what they were getting, they were like “screw it, just send me something”. Nikki was right and we were wrong.
I think I’d prefer the threads not bump when a new post is made, though I get why a winery would want that. I like reading them from top to bottom as I try to knock out my ordering in an hour or two that I scrounge up on a busy weekday. It’s challenging when they are moving around on you as you are trying to read them all. I’m sure if you froze them in place that the wineries at the bottom and/or second page would not like it.
I get the feeling I may be in the minority here, but for new wineries to me, my cellar isn’t big enough to justify a 6-12 bottle commitment. A 3-bottle option is generally what I look for, and 99% of the time reds-only.
I know there are a bunch of pinot producers I’d love to try, but we don’t drink chardonnay, or aren’t looking to make a 6-bottle investment when it may not match our preference.
Outside of that feedback for the wineries/offers, I echo the suggestions above regarding some standardization around titles, links to the offer, and standard discount code/method.
That said, the hectic-ness is part of the fun, and helps us connect as people vs just swiping our credit cards with a corporation.
While I think Patrick’s feedback about testing the sites and deals beforehand is on the money, we also have to remember we are dealing directly with regular folk. In most cases these are not at all big operations with budgets to have a web developer on staff and a marketing team to work out kinks. That’s why I don’t sweat those things so much even if it can be bothersome to run into an issue with a discount code working. We will work it out eventually. You’re never going to get an event like this where everyone is ready with everything perfected ahead of time. Dealing directly with operations of only a person or two is why it’s so great. I do hope people would have everything in order at launch but given all of our day-to-day lives I understand why these tiny operations do not have their website retail front perfect.
If I had to ask something it’s that the thread subject lines be a bit more on point as to what to expect inside. Subject lines with “[business name] Special” don’t really let me know anything when I’ve never heard of that business. Even if it were only wineries that would be annoying. With wine retailers and folks dealing in various gourmet foods in the mix I often have no clue what’s inside. And with all going on I just as often skip opening those threads.
That led to my first BD purchase … I was laughing so hard at the craziness and going these folks must make great wine! I get the biggest smile everytime I think of it … and when Nikki appeared this year with her new venture, the smile just got bigger!
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
