First, let me say that this week’s featured image, above, is in contention for my favorite visualization of the year… It shows a winery’s ecommerce sales from the time they started tracking it, back in 2006. That’s where you start to read the chart, at the center of the wheel, and work your way outward concentrically. Each year is coded in a different color, and the thickness of the line reflects the volume of wine sold. You can see when their club shipments go out. Can you also see the impact of COVID on sales, shown in the green segment of the outermost circle, which is 2020? Can you also see the impact of this year’s California wildfires on this winery’s tasting room sales, and maybe the fires a few years before that?

Second, in anticipation of this year (finally!) coming to a close, let me reveal Enolytics’ words of the year for 2021. DATA LITERACY. It’s a thing, and we can’t wait to tell you what it means for this community and wine, beer and spirits in general. Please stay tuned.

For now, it’s on to this week’s focus on the WHAT details in the story of data for wine, specifically as it relates to DTC/ecommerce.

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Last week I introduced the six-part series we’ll use to close out this year’s Enolytics 101 content: the who-what-where-when-why and how-much that tell the full story of an ecommerce program. Starting with “How much?” and this lookbook of visualizations, you can start to get the picture of how much money you’re gaining or losing in terms of net sales, Average Order Value (AOV), unique customers and profit margin to name a few.

This week we’re turning to “What.” As in, what varietal or wine makes me the most money at the highest margin? And, what landmines should I be watching out for? And, what is an easy way to see the channel distribution for my entire portfolio?

This week’s new lookbook collects some images that visualize the most significant what-related questions.*** Links to the individual images are also embedded in the text below.

What, for example, are my top wines right now? See them by cases sold and net sales.

What are my top wines relative to last year? See them by specific wines and cases sold.

What are some areas that I should pay attention to right now, that might give me trouble in the future? We’re particularly excited about this feature, because our algorithms detect potential trouble spots as often as the data is refreshed. Which is usually on a daily basis.

What varietals give me the highest profit margin?

What is the relationship between the attributes of all of my wines?

What wines are selling the best, shown within the varietal groupings in my portfolio? See them by net sales and cases sold.

What wines am I selling through which channels?

And etc.

All of that is very valuable information, and we’ve only visualized a few of the most obvious questions you’d likely be asking about “What” and “How much.” This is also only a portion of what is possible for you to know about your business, and we’ve got four more weeks – Who, Where, When, Why – to go.

It’s getting interesting.

Are you ready to get serious about accessing the insights that live inside the data you already have? I hope so. I’m seeing what wine businesses do with this information, and I’m encouraged by how much it can help.

Please be in touch, and thank you as always for reading and viewing –

Cathy

*** Note that the lookbook contains anonymized images that are derived from real ecommerce data. We use a wine business’ data to populate a dashboard that is interactive and updated daily, so that users can segment or filter by the variables or “threads” of the data story that they most need to know now.