Wine.com voted best online retailer

Wine.com has been named the world’s best online wine retailer, with Laithwaites Wine scooping second place.

The San Francisco-based site came top with a ranking of 16 out of 20 in a survey that asked 3,000 wine drinkers to test the user-friendliness of 29 wine websites around the world.

In addition to offering a wide range of vintages for all budgets, the site topped the poll for telling the story behind the wine: who made it, with what grapes and where it was bottled, as well as providing consumer and expert reviews and boasting a virtual cellar where buyers can keep track of past purchases and make tasting notes.

The results of the e-Performance Barometer survey, now in its third year, were unveiled at Vinexpo last week.

Volunteers were asked to buy wine with a budget of €250 and report back on aspects of the site such as information, products, design, navigation, secure payment options and interactivity.

The report identified the online wine buyer as mostly male (79%), aged 35 and over (69%), and earning an annual net income of between €30,000 and €60,000 a year (80%).

Of the 3,000 participants, 45% said they had visited a wine website before, while 20% had purchased a bottle online.

The report also revealed that online wine sales had grown by 33% since 2007, equal to €3.4 billion in global sales.

Meanwhile, 83% of online wine retailers were found to have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, with half of them having more than 500 Facebook fans.

Lucy Shaw, 27.06.2011