A website is a powerful digital tool and should be the go-to source for your guests to learn more about your business’s products and upcoming events. What you choose to share and how you choose to share it will shape the public’s ideas about your brewery, your beer, your food program and more—it will shape their image of your brand. With that in mind, here are our top five ways to improve your brewery’s website.
1. Content Is King: Keep It Fresh
Keeping visitors up to date with events and happenings around your brewery is essential. With musical performances on the way and new beers hitting the taps, there is always something to share with guests. Your website should give guests an idea of what to expect when they walk in the door, but it should also position you as the expert you are in the craft-beer arena. This can be accomplished with an engaging blog that’s relevant, fun and informative as it serves to build your brand and your audience. Yuengling’s news is clear and concise; it’s kept up to date in press release-style to keep followers informed.
2. Keep It Simple: Navigation and Layout
A good website should be accessible and easy to navigate—by anyone. Less is more; a clean website with the essential information is more digestible than one with clutter and fluff. Creating a sitemap to plan your pages and layout can be helpful in determining the most important information you want your visitors to see—and how they see it. Visualize the path users will take when they land on your website, and ask if that path feels natural and seamless. If it doesn’t, try editing or restructuring content. Also, test your site on your own mobile device to ensure that it is just as easy to navigate (your Google ranking depends on it!). Spoonwood Brewing Company is a great example of a clean, easy-to-use website.
3. Looks Matter: Show Off Your Brand
You want your brewery to stand out. So while there are many website design templates available, your brand deserves original design to set your site apart. Branding the site with the look of your brewery will communicate the feeling of being there. From the colors to tone of the photography and the font, the site’s aesthetic will impact what potential customers think—and whether they visit your brewery or choose your beer to purchase. Seek an expert’s advice to plan your site’s look-and-feel. It’s also helpful to browse other sites and ask co-workers for valuable feedback. Tröegs does a wonderful job of creating fun and warm artwork that aligns with its brand values.
4. Keep Them Coming Back: Movement and Video
Once your website has a solid backbone, you can get creative with video and movement. Two great examples are Yards and Dock Street. Their sites immediately pull you in with vivid, personable videography that showcases their employees, upbeat company culture and recent news. After a few moments on their website, you have a great impression of what their companies care about, and how you might feel if you visit their brewery or drink their beer.
5. Check Your Work: Analytics and SEO
One final way to improve your website is to monitor views to learn which pages and keywords on your site draw the largest audience. By honing in on what people are searching for, you can modify your site’s content, and even your entire business, to fit the needs of your customers. For example, if you find that many people are coming to your site or your business because they searched for a specific style of beer, then this would be a good indication that you should continue to create content about that style of beer, and produce more of that style of beer.
As the most easily accessible portal to your business, your website must show off everything that makes your brand unique and irresistible. Using tools such as video and augmenting your efforts with social media are a natural way to share your work with your community. Make sure it’s fun—hey, you’re a brewer! At the end of the day, you want your site to communicate the hard work that goes into making beer, as well as the pure enjoyment of drinking it.
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The Brewers of Pennsylvania is a nonprofit trade association that brings together leaders of Pennsylvania-based breweries in order to promote and protect the brewing industry in the state. Established in 2011, the Brewers of Pennsylvania serves the consuming public of Pennsylvania by encouraging brand diversity in the market. We believe in the nobility of brewing and hold dear the great traditions and history of Pennsylvania brewing.
