Background

Established in 1985, Wye Valley Brewery is based in the heart of the UK’s primary hop growing county, Herefordshire. Over the years, they have grown to the dizzying heights of selling over 12 million pints a year and have gained themselves many prestigious awards for their beers and lager along the way.

As they gained more market awareness, Wye Valley Brewery needed an updated e-commerce website that promotes their selection of beers and lager and combines the buying and marketing efforts while still being easy to manage by the internal marketing team.

Challenge

There were many familiar challenges with their existing marketing and e-commerce websites which they were managing separately. This lack of cohesion resulted in a disjointed user journey and was cumbersome to manage as it often required technical know-how to change page content.

Further, it was felt that the lack of marketing features, such as voucher codes, and the inadequate mobile experience, were severely impacting sales and marketing opportunities around key calendar events.

Solution

Our UK partner, The Site Doctor, was approached with a blank canvas to redesign, develop, and support the new Wye Valley Brewery website. After a brief consultation period, Umbraco and Ucommerce were identified as the ideal combination of function, flexibility, and feature set.

Following industry best practices and guidelines, the website was designed from the ground up with visitors on mobile devices at the forefront of the decision process. The friendly and welcoming nature of Wye Valley Brewery was maintained through the use of bold colourscolors and enticing graphics and video.

Discount voucher codes and automated multi-buy discounts across the store using Ucommerce’s marketing foundation stimulate sales and encourage users to add more items to their cart while the built-in stock control limits lines overselling.

Results

The new website was launched in time for the Christmas period and was an instant hit with consumers achieving a boost in sales of over 180% in the first three months compared to the previous year.

Combining the two sites has had a very positive effect on search engine ranking as the search engines now have a single portal to focus on. Management is now much easier thanks to content and product editing being centralized in one admin portal.

The seamless integration of online marketing tools such as emailing software has given Wye Valley Brewery a springboard to further increase sales and build their market presence.

Ucommerce and Umbraco together have also enabled Wye Valley Brewery to continue trading during the challenging times of COVID-19. Better yet, it was able to handle the unbelievable 9,000% increase in sales achieved during this period.