Avery Brewing
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Beer drinkers unite (with Avery!)
Avery Brewing Co. is a Colorado-based brewery with a devoted following of craft beer enthusiasts. They are viewed in the brewing world as a brand that is high quality, consistent, and a little pricey. In 2022 ,the Avery marketing team was looking for ways to introduce their brews to the more casual beer drinker without alienating their craft fan base. They needed help revamping their website to reflect this new brand goal. In addition to updated aesthetics and messaging, it was important to them that their new site offered flexibility in terms of page layout and content, a pain point with their current CMS.
Discovery Process
- Interviewing key stakeholders from the Avery marketing, sales, tap room and brand teams to identify pain points and gather insights
- Analysis of Google Analytics on Avery's current site
- Analysis of averybrewing.com's current site structure and content to identify opportunity areas based on stakeholder feedback
- Comparing and analyzing competitor sites, including New Belgium, Breckenridge Brewery, Odell Brewing Company, and Blue Moon
- Gaining familiarity with the current Avery Brewing brand guidelines
Target Audiences and Their Goals
Insights Gained
- Avery has a large portfolio of brews and wants the website to be a tool that helps consumers find the correct beer for them, for every occasion.
- The website needs to seamlessly guide visitors from learning about products to purchasing.
- Avery's stark packaging helps them stand out on a store shelf, but the same design treatment on their website feels pretentious and closed off.
- The page templates on their current site are limiting and tedious to keep updated.
Opportunity Areas Identified
- Add a 'you might like' feature on each beer page that suggests similar brews
- Build a more user-friendly beer finder
- Add 'buy it now' CTAs for Drizly and Instacart
- Better integrate the online store to promote swag and increase brand loyalty
- Use the site to tell a story about Avery—not just with words but with imagery.
- Implement an intuitive CMS template system that makes it easy to update content
Architecture
The Avery website consists of approximately 400 pages of content, the majority of which are product pages. My tasks in terms of site architecture included:
- Revising the sitemap to help visitors navigate Avery's beer porfolio more easily
- Refactoring the sort/filter functionality of their beer finder to be more intuitive
- Helping to create a taxonomy of 'similar brews' for contextual product recommendations
- Planning for future scalability of the taproom section
- Integration of one-click purchasing opportunities through Drizly and Instacart
Wireframes
One of Avery's biggest complaints about their current website was the design limitations of the CMS. Most of their internal pages followed a strict, two-column template that didn't allow for much variation in content presentation.
My primary task in the wireframing stage was to design a robust series of page templates for the team to work with. Special attention was paid to the homepage, which would be updated most frequently. This consisted of a set of horizontal content blocks that could be rearranged, added, or removed via the CMS for ultimate design flexibility.
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Visual Language
In a sea of technicolor beer packaging, Avery's stark white can is a beacon that immediately draws the eye on store shelves. Unfortunately, that aesthetic didn't work very well on their website. The pages were coming across as cold, technical, and unwelcoming.
My task was to warm up their online presence without deviating too far from their core brand. Stakeholders were presented with three style tiles, each conveying a different tone. They selected the option that they felt reflected the feeling of their taproom —a warm, casual, Colorado lifestyle.
In coordination with Avery's brand team, a font system, color palette, and image library were put together and applied to the previously approved wireframes.
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Launch
The revamped Avery website launched mid-2022 with a much greater focus on lifestyle. Large blocks of custom photography made the brand feel more approachable, while a secondary color palette and bespoke illustrations gave each brew product their own distinct personality.
The site still contains all of the technical brewing information that appeals to self-proclaimed 'beer geeks,' but guides the casual beer drinker through the Avery portfolio in a way that is not intimidating or overwhelming.
View the site
Please note that this site is connected to a client-managed CMS. As a result, page layouts and graphics may have changed since site launch.