Nexternal and The Wine Industry

We actually interviewed a wide range of providers for almost three years, and each time, Nexternal came up as the best possible solution in terms of cost, security, flexibility and power.
— Dagan Rose-Stockwell, Peter Michael Winery


Nexternal provides a web based ecommerce platform to over 250 wineries and wine retailers. The wineries vary in size from behemoth brands such as Chandon and Chateau Ste. Michelle to smaller boutique wineries such as Lewis Cellars and Schrader Cellars. Direct sales are an increasingly critical source of profit for wineries with online sales as the fastest growing component. Wine sales through Nexternal's software are increasing significantly every year. Wineries and online wine retailers choose Nexternal's ecommerce platform for many reasons including:

Compliance Tools

  • Shipping restriction tool enabling wineries to control which states they will and will not ship wine to, allowing them to comply with legal issues.
  • Wineries can specify limits on the amount of wine shipped to customers in states that impose volume restrictions.
  • Age verification integration with IDology to ensure customers are at least 21 years of age. Merchants can also use a legal disclaimer feature forcing customers to agree that the person receiving shipment is at least 21 years of age at the time of order submission.
  • Wineries are able to charge sales tax down to the lowest level jurisdiction for states that require it.
  • The ShipCompliant web interface makes it easy to pull order data directly into ShipCompliant. This is ideal for compliance reporting purposes. Wineries using both systems can also "push" data to ShipCompliant for real time compliance checks at the time the order is placed.

Wine Club Management

  • A bulk order feature enabling wineries to create and efficiently manage wine club shipments (wine club best practices).
  • Wine Club Members can login to change their preferred shipping address and credit card.
  • Capture new wine club sign-ups.

Product Management

  • A flexible pricing structure to accommodate mixed case and wine club member discounts.
  • An allocation tool to limit wine purchases by customer type if needed.
  • Built in inventory control tools to prevent over-selling of wines.

Customer Management

  • Customer order history is stored and searchable.
  • Optional password protected access to online store/wines for specific customer types.
  • Unlimited customer tiers/types for preferred pricing and/or product allocation purposes.
  • Customer data import capabilities.
  • Automatic email notifications to winery when a customer updates their profile online.

Marketing Tools

  • Nexternal's latest storefront software, Nexternal.NET is designed from the ground up to be search engine friendly, helping rank the winery's online store high in the search engines driving qualified traffic to a winery's website for those searching for their specific wines.
  • Product data from a Nexternal online store is picked up and indexed daily by Wine-Searcher.com and Snooth.com.
  • Integrated email marketing tool enabling wineries to communicate and announce new releases or special promotions to their customers to encourage online shopping.
  • Flexible coupon feature allows for creative marketing campaigns.
  • Nexternal's Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest integrations allow customers to endorse and share your products on four of today's most popular online social platforms. These buttons not only equip your product evangelists with tools to spread the word, but they can drive traffic back to your site, increase your overall web presence, and since popular search engines have revealed that they are incorporating social media data into their algorithms, these buttons can also increase your overall search engine rankings.

Streamline Order Fulfillment

  • Integrated shipping tools with FedEx, and UPS enabling wineries to print shipping labels directly from the Nexternal Order Management System along with “Adult Signature Required” on the label, as well as pull tracking numbers which are sent to customers for their records.
  • Integration with major payment gateways enabling efficient online credit card processing.
  • Batch process all outstanding orders at once (credit cards and shipping labels).

Other Highlights

  • An always on screen shopping cart is easy to use from a customer perspective ensuring a high visitor to customer conversion rate resulting in higher sales revenues.
  • Several third party wine companies have built applications that interface with Nexternal including ShipCompliant, AMS, New Vine Logistics, Vintage Logistics, and Bacchus Distribution. Nexternal also offers an XML toolset that can be used to integrate with other systems.
  • QuickBooks export capabilities eliminating manual data transfer.
  • More than 10 years experience working in the wine industry, resulting in a clear understanding of the complexities of selling wine online.
  • A knowledgeable Account Executive dedicated to each client to help optimize their online sales channel.
  • Gift cards which may be redeemed in the online store or offline in a tasting room.
  • Wineries can self-update wines information, customers, orders, and more.

    • If you are interested in learning more about how your winery can utilize Nexternal's award winning shopping cart software to sell wine online, please call 800-914-6161 ext 707. We would be more than happy to talk you through our online demonstration located at www.surfsidecellars.com. Please also read our winery testimonials.