Migration: Butcombe Brewery

The Client: Butcombe Brewing Co.

Butcombe Brewery will be a familiar name for many! This Bristol-based brewery has been gracing taps up and down the country with its high-quality premium beers, since 1978. 

But they’re more than just beer makers – the Butcombe Brewing Co. also runs a range of pubs and inns across the UK, while their products enjoy wide distribution and appear in some of the nation’s top retailers, such as Tesco. 

This is a mainstream brand with a historic reputation, so we knew that Inspira would need to bring our A-game to this project.

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The Challenge: Create a Modern Ecommerce Platform for Online Beverage Sales

Butcombe Brewing Co. already had a website. It promoted their tours, their pubs and inns, and also had an ecommerce element allowing customers to purchase drinks online. However, that latter section of the site was very limited, with the online shop feeling like something of an afterthought.

Butcombe did not want to replace their entire brewery website – they just wanted to take that shop feature and bring it fully up-to-date with a powerful, modern ecommerce store. 

If the new beer store could operate as a separate website, so much the better: this would free up the main brewery site, which had previously faced tougher restrictions and advertising regulations due to also selling alcoholic products. So instead of one website operating under limitations, the brewery would instead have one company site, and one store site, both working at maximum potential.

In terms of store features, much like any modern retailer, Butcombe Brewing Co. was looking for:

• A beautiful, on-brand website with a seamless customer purchase journey
• A high-converting checkout
• Full mobile compatibility 
• A system allowing easy management of products, ranges and offers
• Integration with Klaviyo for streamlined email marketing

Fortunately, these are all features that Shopify excels at! That is, when the service is delivered by a team well-versed in getting the most out of the platform. 

So let’s take a look now at what we did.

The Solution: A Stylish and Highly-Functional Modern Store

The first stage in any Inspira project is the workshop. We worked closely with the client to build a detailed map of their requirements. Ultimately, for the kind of dynamic, modern store that Butcombe Brewery needed, we knew that Shopify was going to deliver the best quality results.

Here are some of the features that we were able to deliver:

Slick and professional storefront 

Working with a brand that was almost half-a-century old, it was important that the store design could adapt to their image and identity – rather than forcing anything that didn’t feel right for them. But when it comes to unique customisation, this is where Shopify excels.

As a starting point, our design team opted to use the ‘Concept’ theme in Shop 2.0 – then we modified and transformed this into something truly one-of-a-kind. 

We worked closely with the team at Butcombe Brewing Co. to create a gorgeous and on-brand storefront. A store that would not only grab attention – but that also reflected the brand values of Butcombe Brewery and their beloved beers.

Site structure & product discoverability

While Butcombe Brewery only offers a relatively small range of products through its online store, there was still a surprising range of variables we had to consider. For example, their beers are offered in cans, in bottles, in mini-kegs or in casks. They also have a lot of interest in their popular ranges of alcohol-free and gluten-free beers. And then there’s the selection of Butcombe merch: such as branded glasses, T-shirts and socks!

We wanted to make sure that the customer could get to any product in the store, intuitively, in just a few clicks.

To this end we designed a very logical site navigation structure, which took advantage of clearly-defined categories, and filtering options – making it easy for customers to find exactly what they were looking for on the store. 

Rich product data

Our tailored Shopify theme for Butcombe included space for the brewery to include rich and detailed product descriptions. 

This would help customers to pick the perfect beer for their tastes. We also included a fun section on each beer listing, that suggested perfect food pairings! For example, did you know that Butcombe’s Tall Tales Pale Ale will go down a treat with spicy dishes? 

Other features

Shopify comes packed full of apps and features, and we used a range of different built-in tools as we brought the new Butcombe store to life. For example, for a brand selling alcoholic beverages, an age verification screen was a must. 

We also added automated offers, which would help the brewery to boost their conversion rates using irresistible deals. For example, a pop-up offers visitors 10% off their first order when signing up for the Butcombe Brewing Co. newsletter.

Key partners 

In addition to making the most of all Shopify’s powerful built-in features, we also introduce a number of tech partnerships via carefully-deployed app integrations. 

For example, we included:

• GetBetter – allowing for seamless integration with Klaviyo, and setting up a perfect streamlined system for running intelligent email marketing campaigns.
• Yotpo – to allow users to leave product reviews, bringing some valuable social proof into the user journey. 
• Backups by Rewind – a little insurance policy, a smart backup system to protect Butcombe against any potential loss of data.

We also think this could be the perfect time for Butcombe Brewing Co. to take a look at the Alvio collaborative ecommerce platform. 

An Alvio integration could massively boost sales for a brewery store like Butcombe’s. For example, just picture Butcombe beers available to buy online in the same digital shopping cart as a Boom Kitchen Curry Kit! Now that sounds like a great night in… 

The Result: An Online Beer Revolution

The new Butcombe Brewing Co. website has been a smash hit. It has triggered a real revolution for the brand online, with a modern new storefront now delivering D2C beverage sales for their fans – while the main company website can be run entirely independently, and free from licensing regulations.