Challenge

Selling wine online presents some unique challenges, particularly in Canada. Because the wine industry is regulated by each province, products can’t be shipped outside of British Columbia. Adding to the difficulties, the age of the customer has to be verified both at the time of sale and the time of delivery.

BC Wine Cellar asked Neo Code to help solve these problems for them, and provide a robust, easy to use ecommerce store that had the flexibility to allow the staff to create product mixes without needing to know HTML. 

As well, BC Wine Cellar wanted to create virtual gift baskets online: the staff at BC Wine Cellar chooses a set of wines that compliment each other, and the customer can customize the quantities in the selection.

Solution

The Neo Code designed shopping solution allows the staff to do just that: not only can customers browse the site and purchase wines by the bottle, they can also choose from a variety of mixed selections chosen by the expert staff at BC Wine Cellar.

Tasting Notes
Wine can be confusing: the subtle differences between wines from one vineyard to the next can be daunting for the average consumer.

Each wine is accompanied by tasting notes from the staff of BC Wine Cellar, helping consumers make informed choices about the wines they’re purchasing.

These tasting notes also increase sales by encouraging consumers to try new varieties of wine.

BC Wine Cellar needed to be able to add other content to their site on an ongoing basis, without needing to type complicated.

Results

Using the expertise gained from developing our Publish Button content management system, Neo Code Software was able to provide BC Wine Cellar with the perfect tool to match their requirements.

Custom Shopping Cart & Checkout
Because of regulatory requirements, the BC Wine Cellar’s checkout process wasn’t just an out of the box solution. Neo Code built a custom shopping cart that uses the postal code to make sure that the purchasing and delivery addresses are both in British Columbia.

The checkout also asks for confirmation of the purchaser’s age. Because age is verified at the time of delivery, this information is included in the information used for the delivery.