Sour Grapes is a wine distribution company in Asheville, North Carolina. Wine is a historically relationship-based business. Roughly, out of the $330 billion global industry, only 8% of wine sales represent online ordering.

My goal was to bridge the gap between the experience of e-commerce without taking away from the strength of relationships between sales reps and customers.

Distribution is the 3rd step in the supply chain before wine reaches a customer’s hands. They tend to be regional dealers that focus on selling to merchants, restaurants, and hotels in their part of the country. Every single step of the purchasing process with a distributor goes through an assigned sales rep.

This is what makes wine a unique purchasing experience; the distributor has a very hands-on approach to every sale.

To get a better understanding on how to structure the information presented, I conducted user interviews with existing customers of Sour Grapes. Clients included wine store owners, hotel managers, and restaurant bar managers.

I discovered that the biggest pain point for customers was knowledge.

In order to tackle the two platforms: Website and Client Portal, I discovered two parameters that would define the difference between the two experiences. The website would need to be simple to encourage exploration while the client portal would need to be highly flexible to allow the customer to consider all factors when making the decision to purchase the wine.

With the 2 platforms in mind, I consolidated my research and created my artifacts with my client persona in mind.

For the new customer, I discovered that the most common decision points for at a high level were: Country, Region, and Producer. Filters were limited to those 3 parameters to give potential customers a high-level view of Sour Grapes' portfolio.

For customers who decided to purchase wine once they knew it was in stock, there was a lengthy exchange of emails that stretched over 1-3 weeks. I targeted an opportunity to eliminate the number of steps by focusing on automation in all aspects of design solutions in the client portal.

For the existing customer, the client portal would have to be more complex. Because they would be making a financial decision in this portal, they would need as much information as possible in the filters.

I added in the additional toggles that addressed the client pain point of knowledge: Allocated and Available Now. This would allow customers to browse for the present and plan for the future.

Additionally, we would need to make re-ordering wines very simple. Wine is incredibly seasonal, so I proposed a chronological structure to place re-order requests.

A tab for saved wines allows the customer to sign up for email notifications for wines that are unavailable. Finally, the check out provides a request invoice pop up that alerts your sales rep via email.

Initially I was unfamiliar with the incredibly human process of wine distribution. I was brought on to simply redesign the website, but as we discussed the pain points of the website, I realized that the greater need would be for a client portal. The greatest challenge I faced was "How do I design an e-commerce experience without actual e-commerce?"

I came to the conclusion that the client portal was a gateway for customers to see a lay of the land- to gather their vast resources in order to make an informed decision. This made the client portal function differently than most e-commerce websites. Instead of designing for check-out, I designed by creating an intuitive database that would help guide customers to ask questions and flexibly adapt to the changing availabilities of wine purchasing.