City Hive 101: Launching your liquor store website.

Getting on the platform. We are the number one liquor store agency that specializes in the CityHive website. My name is Margot, director at Intentionally Creative and I have Alden, our founder with over 10 years experience in the bev industry. Alden, I'd love to start off with a question. Can you give me an overview of what it's like using the City Hive website and in general, what are the most important elements? Let's dive right in.

Yeah. So we work with a lot of liquor stores all over the United States, even in Hawaii and we recommend City Hive for everybody. I would say about 95% of the people we work with are on City Hive. The reason being, you gotta think of it this way. If you are going to launch your own website, let's say WordPress and you want to fully build it out, you're going to be a hundred grand deep just on the build app. On top of that you then have to maintain it all. Which developers, what, 100, 150 an hour. And then you have to make sure that you can keep up with all the tech coming out. Right. The beauty of having a VC backed company that's actually really successful and growing is that they're spending the millions a year in all the development. And yes, it's templated so you can't get custom, which is like I think the biggest gripe that we have from a lot of customers. But the fact is that like oh, all of a sudden DoorDash is a native app, right. All of a sudden Vivino reviews are coming in. So for $100 a month, I mean it is an absolute steal because it is like once it can get past like there are like bugs that come up. Right. But then you just have to reach out to customer support. The integrations team is really nice. I love the CS team and honestly everybody that works there, once you get past all the bugs and everything, that it is an incredibly capable platform where you can do your marketing, you can import all your information. The sales themselves work really well. The customization in the industry is top notch. I mean bottle caps is you can't do anything on bottle caps. And that's the beauty of City Hive. And then Wine Fetch is dying so we recommend it. And again the difference why people go to City Hive over bottle caps. Well, the difference between them bottle caps isn't going to take a cut of all of the purchases. They make all of their money off of brand deals, which is why you can't customize it and why you see the national brands promoted. But there it's just a flat rate there, which I think is not worth the trade off with the flexibility and customization that you can do with City I've. And the new features that they're coming out and just the rate of the new features coming out. City I've is taking. Was it two, two and a half, something like that percent of, of all your purchases. But just I think the, the incremental benefits that you get by losing that 2% far outweighs just the limitations that you have with biocaps, which is why City Hive is winning, quite frankly.

So what's the first thing you'd recommend then when someone's starting up with City Hive.

Yeah, so, so those basics right on the left hand side, it's right above the marketing icon. I'm trying to remember what it is, but connecting your Google Business page, the GBP and then just authorizing that, it's literally like three clicks. You just sign into your Google account and it links it and then just activating the Google Merchant center, the gmc, you just do that right off the bat because like when you sign up like nobody really helps you with like any of that stuff. You're kind of like on your own, so nobody will set that up. But you want to set up all the Google platforms because for instance Google Analytics you can't go back in time. So you want to set it up so that you're tracking right from the start like all your visitors. It's, I mean you're already tracking your purchases but it can track the attribution like when people are coming in on the site and all those things. You can see the customer journey, the XYZ sort of thing. So the Google Analytics, Google Business Page, Google Merchant center and the Google Search console. If you go into the add ons and you just click it, then you have the fantastic customer success team reaching out to you saying oh hey like you have to do XYZ step And then honestly actually the first thing I would do, book a meeting with the customer success manager. And this is like it's called virtually hidden. But bottom left there's going to be a gear. It's either a gear or it's the question mark and you hit that and then you're going to see who your customer success manager is and their calendar and just book a 30 minute slot is what I believe that they are. And you can just ask them, hey, I'm new, what should I know? What should I do? They will tell you and walk you through. The CS team is incredible. Monica in charge is incredible. We know like the. But all of them over there and they will just. Yeah, I'd say that's the number one thing that 30 minutes of booking that meeting and show up don't be a no show because those are the worst type of people. That 30 minute meeting is going to save you just years of not doing things, which is a lot of the situation that we see when, when we start working with a liquor store and it's like, okay, you should have set this up years ago when you start the City I've.

So what's something that most merchants may overlook on the City City Hive website? Call it a secret tip.

Yeah, and so, so this is gonna go back to the Google platforms on the Google Merchant center when you get access and that's set up, we want to do is make sure that your local feed is set up. Because when your local feed is set up and this they have to, you have to ask for this, they have to do it. Local feed is set up. Then you're getting the free listings on Google. So imagine like doing like a shopping campaign. You have to pay for those, for the impressions, whatnot. These are just the free listings. And that's really going to base it. If somebody like somebody's close to, if somebody's like effectively it's going to show these free ads to people if they are close to your store. So that's how the free listings show up. And if anybody's running paid ads, then those are going to, those are going to come in front of you. But that's kind of like a secret tip where it's like, oh, I want to do ads. Honestly, do this one free thing in City Hive again handles all of the legwork there. And you're getting those free ads. And that's actually another benefit I want to see at City Hive is that like if you, if you're on any other platform, setting up the Google platforms is a pain. It is a down. It's, it's just a pain. Especially if you have to do it fully custom. And City Hive is just like those few clicks and they just connect it all and you're off to the basis. Again, we're not affiliated City Hive. You should have said that up front. We just recommend it because our job is easier when things are easier to do. And we like to do things easier and more effectively and more efficiently. So that's why we recommend everybody go to City Hive. But again, those cases when we see people go to bottle caps is if they're really really high volume stores. Like let's say you're doing millions, right? I'm just using just an edge case. You're doing millions. 2% of a million is a lot. But again like if you're at that size you like, you get like special treatment from City Hive which then like unlocks the capability to do a lot more with it. So again at that point I still think it's even worth to do to, to use City Hive. But at that point you're also probably building your own WordPress site, which SEO. I'll, I'll mention that a lot of people are asking about SEO. City Hive outperforms any other liquor store ecom provider except for custom WordPress and Shopify sites. Those you can. Those a custom WordPress site built right. Will outperform any City High site downright like without a question. I'll challenge anybody on that. But City Hive, otherwise for you paying for re, City Hive will outperform anybody else on the market, which is awesome.

Yeah, that's great. Now I know liquor store owners have actually said this to me. So let's say I wanted to have a staff featured page or a dedicated news letter page. How would I do this in City Hive?

Yeah. So one of the biggest things that we have when people come in is building custom pages, right. So on your left hand side in the CH dashboard it's going to be the. What is it? I'm forgetting but it's not the pages tab but effectively it's the beaker, the science beaker. And then under that along the top you'll see pages. So you go into pages and you just click make a new page and it's essentially a drag and drop format. Making the pages is actually is quite easy. I know we have a couple tutorials where we do full page builds. One of them was on Gary's one, like their old website, they just redid it which I love their new website but yeah, really drag and drop again, don't overthink it, just get it done and launch it. And then the cool thing, I love when they added this last fall, last year fall, that you can just change your homepages really easily with just that click of a button and the like. Again, if you're an HQ account then you just have to be a little not careful but like if you do it on the individual storefronts that it's going to just change that individual storefront. If you do it on the HQ level then it's going to do it for everybody under that. So that's how you would do a new page. And then just like again like with the block builder. If you have any questions, I mean like we have the agency, like we do this for our merchants and our clients. We like you don't have to do a thing. We do everything. We do the graphics copy xyz. But if you're really an help that you can just again set up a meeting with the CSM and they will, I won't say they'll build it out to you because I know the CM sums are trying to like not do as much work, not like not trying to do as much work, but like they're not a marketing department or anything. They're trying to just like blow through the, blow through the merchants. But they will help you. They're fantastic and they will follow up and they're great.

So I know that not everybody might be aware, but what do they need to know about the app? Just stepping away from the website for a second.

Yeah. So there are a couple of differences. So there are three tiers to City Hive. There's the, and pardon if this is wrong, but it's the 99, the 149, the 500, the. To have the app for that 50 extra. I tell everybody just, just bump up to the 150 because I think it unlocks a bunch of things especially on the marketing front which like is 100% worth it. But to have the app, what we noticed the stores that grow over time and actually build a community and a customer base, they're ones that are using the app because I think what's the split that we usually see about 35, 65%, 35% being on the app. But those are, and we have some word like higher volume stores that 65% are on the app or it's, it's, it's, it's literally flipped. But the app consumers are so loyal, like they have made the decision to download the app. And why we like it from a marketing front is when you send, when you send push notifications, if they have it enabled that it comes up as a separate channel. So like a text message is one channel. But then if you have a bunch of text messages come in that they're grouped. Same with email. If you have a bunch of emails come in, then they're grouped but a push notification stands by itself. And again like marketing is all about just cadence and just hitting people a bunch of times from a bunch of different channels. And so that's the beauty about the app where you have your most loyal customers but then you can market to them and the notification is not going to get grouped with other elements. It stands alone. So what we'll actually do sometimes is we'll send an email and then we'll send a push notification 30 minutes later or an hour later or whatnot. Just like that difference where you have multiple touch points back to back.

So past the initial setup of the City Hive website, what would you recommend as upkeeping?

I love this and I'll tell you why. When we talk to liquor stores just like, like sales discovery or anything it's always, it's always three things. It's social media, they want to customize their website and then if we talk about the website or even unprompted the banners the city. I bet people love the website banners that are at the top. Here's what's annoying about them. So City I've now is doing a bunch of brand deals. So they're throwing up. You might see a McAllen, you might see a Tito's, you might see a Josh, what whatever from the distributors because that's their. That's. They're now selling data which includes. I hate when the automatic emails go out in the SMS to customers without the merchants knowing. It's one of the biggest gripes that we hear from merchants. But those banners you have to constantly turn off all the ones that you don't care about and then you can upload your own. And again like, like we do this for our merchants but again just go into Canva and just. You can stay with the dimensions are and just make your own banners and they don't have to be over complicated but just do those seasonally or if you have a product group, if you have private labels, if you have be barrel picks, gift sets, any sort of like custom sort of creations. But the, the banners I think are great. And what I like to do, I like to keep the new arrivals because a lot of people don't want their site to look like a city. I've site so I mean the easiest way to do that, I mean you're stuck with the header and the footer but everything in between you can change. Get rid of all of the, the, the. The product sliders except for the new arrivals. I love keeping the new arrivals because that's updating with your inventory. And it's not just new arrivals, it's also like what's also back in stock. So like that's why you'll see the national brands in there, the national labels. But just between the banners in the new arrivals. And then you can keep a lot of the other buttons similar and customize it to your brand that those that's a way to just kind of keep it fresh all the time. But again like we do website redesigns. That's the first thing that we do for everybody that comes on and that doesn't have to be complicated as well.

I'd love for you to share even more insight with our viewers. So what does web design do to your website? What's the success behind it and why is it important?

I'll tell you why I love this question. I love this question. Because everyone thinks that by customizing their website it's going to magically increase their sales. More visitors to your website and actually having stock of things that people want to actually buy. That's what's going to increase your sales. Unless you're the only liquor store in town or if you're competing with the chains that building a brand image is important. Again it depends what kind of liquor store and your size and your situation XYZ. But where web design really comes into play is an important is again the long term vision of brand building. That's a lot of people that we work with is there's the upfront, how much money am I going to make off of XYZ ad or this email or whatnot? But then there's the bigger is like okay, we have a brand consistency. We're coming up in the community. People know what we look like. So then the beauty of that is like let's say that you have built over six months to a year. What your website, your emails, you push notifications, just every, every touch point. And again also your voice that let's say you put a flyer up in town just, just random example flyer up in town about an event happening that that people will recognize the colors, the fonts, XYZ even if they don't know exactly what it is. It's like oh yeah that's I'm gonna use Gary's Wine. It's just picking on them. That's Gary's Wine for instance. Cause they have phenomenal events. I love the team behind Gary's is incredible. But it's the larger vision. But then we see the really successful players in the space and the people that are really out competing anybody around them that are actually looking like a bigger vision and a bigger just growing your business.

So we've got the website and we've got the mobile view out. And what's the difference between the two? And from a design point of view as well. What should our viewers know?

Yeah, so little known fact that you can actually adjust the mobile view of any of your pages and overall believe the default that City I've has for homepages, uh, it's pretty good. It's, it's not bad at all. Like when we do it, we actually build a custom mobile page just so like the buttons are bigger, it's organized in a slightly different way, all of those, all those things. But you want to make sure effectively what it is is making sure that it doesn't totally look weird or if you have a bunch of buttons that they don't like, that they actually are fitting in the right way and it's showing the exact vision that you want to have for your users in the mobile view. So like that's why like, like again I'm going to pick on Gary's. Gary's mind. Old design is it was actually optimized for mobile because the buttons were big, it was in a two column format and it just kind of like made sense in that aspect. And then so their desktop actually looked funky because everything was too big. But their mobile is optimized and we see a lot of people where the mobile isn't optimized. You might have like things on separate spacing on separate lines. You might have like if you have like four buttons that are like, like four columns of one ro when they go into mobile that each button is like top down versus let's say like two rows of two buttons which would make a little more sense. So it's not necessary or anything. But again the world is mobile forward and you have to treat it as such. However, what I would say is even if the analytics are showing that like, oh, mobile is important especially for E comm that don't forget about your desktop users because there's a very high conversion rate on desktop users still, especially for liquor stores. What we notice on a lot of the mobile users is they're just browsers, they're people coming in and they're typing in blends for Laser, Pappy, amc, that sort of thing. So that's the, the difference that I would say.

Yeah, awesome. Now I do not want to be negative in this next comment, but I do speak to liquor store owners and after using City Hive they're considering changing. Why City Hive as a platform and not another website solution?

Again, I love City Hive, but we do, we're doing discovery sales calls all the time and we kind of like hear the, the gripes. But again, everyone has gripes with everything on this planet. Right. And I'll say like bottle caps is very limiting on City Hive. They have their elements. What I think people need to remember is I think people going into city hive paying $100 a month are expecting to get a five to $10,000 a month service. That's my issue with store owners. That's my issue with people. It honestly has nothing to do with CityHive. The value that you get from having a city I've subscription far outweighs the cost. You can't even pay for an hour of the developer's time for what you pay or customer success rep time for what you pay. Just having a city I subscription. So it's actually it's not City Eyes fault. It's again, I don't want to going off on a tangent but if you go to bottle caps, I don't know how people don't go crazy on bottle caps but it is far limiting. Honestly we have a lot of people. Margaret, I know you'll back me up on this. That they were on bottle caps or they were even worse Wine Fetch, which that's going to go under any day. They were on those platforms and they move over to City Hive and they literally say my sales jumped 30%. I know we literally had two of these discussions in the last two weeks where literally my sales jumped 30% the first week that my CityHive site launched. That is that it's true story. We're not again, we're not affiliated with City I've at all. I'm just like this is from us doing 10 to 20 discovery calls every single week.

So.

I would say even if there are negatives, it is far better than any other solution on the platform. And then we usually see people come back and again like it is true, like the, the physical sales increase that there is when people go to City Hive. I would honestly say just stick with it and and use it. Do not change honestly because like bottle caps is super limiting. We already hit on that. Wine Fetch is going out of business any day now. So that's just kind of our views.

Yeah, no, definitely. And I do have to agree with you. This is the last question, I promise and then we'll wrap it up. Do you offer assistance with building out the City Hive website? I know you kind of touched on it, but maybe if you can just finish up with that for our viewers.

All right. For anybody that stayed long enough that we're going to do a little promotion on our own front. So yeah, so we're Intentionally creative. We do digital marketing as Margo mentioned, for retail liquor stores in the US City Hive is our specialty. We have literally three full time people that are working in City Hive, building pages, email, push, like xyz, name it. And that's the first thing that we do, especially on our White glove retainer. We don't really offer one off services but our white glove retainer, which is a six month commitment. The first thing that we do, within the first week your new website's going to be up. We redo your branding, redo your voice and we build it out. If you want to do any custom pages, like we have professional like world class designers, you can look at any one of our clients pages. World class designers, they're going to build it out and it's going to be exactly what you want and it's going to work. And the best thing is you don't have to, you don't have to do anything. It's literally we do a one hour discovery call right when you come on where we vet out everything that we need and then we are off to the races. You just approve it and we're up and going. So if you don't want to deal with City Hive, if you don't have the time, if you're busy or if just like if you want marketing overall, because again we do all marketing, you literally don't have to lift a finger, then honestly just hire us. And I'm not, I'm not just saying that just to hire us. We, you put us against anybody on the market, we come in cheaper, we deliver more and we also just have the market credibility. So we talk to people, they may go somewhere else and they come back to us. And again we only. The beauty is we only work with one liquor store in a, in a competitive zone. So you're not going to be competing and overlapping with somebody else. And if you got your area, then we're not going to work with somebody else in your area. So long story short, yes.

Amazing. There's definitely benefits there. That was all for today. So thank you so much for who has joined.