How to Create a Brewery Website: The Best Brewery Websites
Bring your brews to the people and the people to your brews when you add a website to your brewery’s marketing toolkit.
Tyler MartinezAuthor
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| Built for RestaurantsYour passion for brewing is your greatest asset. Having a restaurant website is one of the best ways to share this passion with fellow beer lovers and turn them into future customers.
Let’s get something straight - a brewery website does a lot more than just deliver information to customers. It’s a digital destination for people to discover your brewery. A website can expose your brewery to new customers, wholesalers, and exciting opportunities - all things that make a website an invaluable asset to your business.
Goals for your Brewery’s Website
When deciding on the goals for your brewery’s website, the first step is to ask yourself why you want a website. The basic objective of a website is to provide solutions for customers, distributors, and anyone else engaging with your business. By knowing what you want to accomplish with your site, you can then set up clear goals to provide such solutions.
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Why you Should Build a Brewery Website
You may be a brewmaster or savvy businessperson, but designing, hosting, and maintaining a website? Now, that may seem like a big task that requires advanced technical skills and lots of time.
Not exactly. In today’s hyper-digital world, it’s now easier than ever to create a business website without having a tech background. That’s why this guide exists - to take the guesswork and frustration out of the website process by helping you build a clear plan for your brewery website.
Brewery Website Goals Checklist
Evaluating the profit potential of your website is essential to design a website that successfully brings you more business. Let’s analyze your site’s profit potential by answering the following questions:
What do you want your brewery’s website to do?
What is the design of your brewery’s website?
How will your website fit into your marketing strategy?
Where will you host your brewery’s website?
When should you launch your brewery’s website?
Who is going to maintain your brewery’s website?
Brewery Website Content Strategy
The marketing backbone of your website is your content strategy. “Content” refers to all the textual and visual information that lives on your brewery’s website, from hours to images to blog posts. Your content strategy is the plan you devise and execute to get this info onto your website and other digital channels (like your social media pages.)
As you imagine your website, consider what information you want it to deliver and what you want your customers to be able to access. What’s great about a website is that your content is customizable - meaning how and where information lives on your site is totally up to you. Basic info like hours, menus, and specials are essential details to add, but what matters most is where you place these important details. This placement is all part of your content strategy.
Pages and Content
There are a few standard pages for brewery websites, and some that are optional depending on your business model:
A homepage that directs users to content
An “About” page with hours, contact information, and important info about operations
Your menus (PDF menus are increasingly popular, accessible easily through a QR code scanner on a smartphone)
Special or seasonal information
An online store
Wholesale ordering/invoicing system integration
An events page and/or calendar
Knowing what pages you’d like to include on your brewery website is a crucial part of your content strategy. It will help you nail down where you want to put your content in a way that is easily accessible to customers. This is where the basics of User Experience (UX design) come in handy, a design element we will explore later in this guide.
Voice and Messaging
Content strategy also focuses on maintaining a consistent voice across all of a company’s communications. This is essential for marketing your brewery, as your content style and voice will make a big impression on customers. As you build your website’s content strategy, think about how your content will evoke the atmosphere and identity of your brewery.
Content Strategy Research
As your business grows, it’s wise to invest in some content strategy research. Creativity can be guided by data, and the best content strategies involve research including focus groups, surveys, and other methods to inform how you can manage and distribute content.
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Designing your Brewery’s Website
Brewery websites are inviting, but can easily be unimpressive in their simplicity. The most impactful sites strike a balance between eye-catching design elements and functionality.
UX Research and Functionality
Human-centered design is the current model for UX (or User Experience). This design approach is all about creating a streamlined site that is simple and approachable, even to those with no technical experience at all. To incorporate UX design practices, begin thinking about how you can make your site as accessible as possible. You want your site to be intuitive to all users, including those with disabilities.
Color Scheme and Typography
Colors can be just as influential as words or images. They are known to set the tone of a site and even have psychological effects on people. Try to find digital colors that are a close match to your brewery’s colors. Just like keeping a consistent voice in your content, maintaining consistency in your color scheme will preserve your brewery’s brand recognition.
The font and size of website text are critical design elements as well. Typically, sans serif fonts, those without the “flags” on the ends of letters, are easier to read digitally. Also, be sure to choose high-contrast fonts that are easy to read on your website’s backgrounds.
Another crucial tip for color scheme and typography is to consider mobile devices. Today, most people access information on the web via their smartphones. So, it’s wise to ensure that your text is large enough to read on a smartphone screen. This goes especially for digital menus, where text is often smaller.
Images
Images are a game-changing aspect of your site. They make your website more attractive and also increase its performance in search engines. Use original high-definition photos of your brewery and its menus, placing them strategically on your site so that new visitors can’t miss them. Also, make sure that the images aren’t too large - this could slow down your website and hinder your site’s UX.
Marketing with your Brewery’s Website
Your website is a marketing tool. It lets customers digitally access information, driving more web traffic and, hopefully, more foot traffic to your business. For your website to achieve this, it has to be easy to find on search engines and social media.
SEO Strategy
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to a set of practices that allows search engines to “read” your content. This increases the chance that your content appears in relevant search results.
SEO isn’t something you can master in a day. Fortunately, this comprehensive SEO for beginners guide from Search Engine Journal will teach you all the SEO basics you need to know so that you can secure your website’s search engine’s success.
Social Media Strategy
The best websites make their social media very visible, prompting users to engage with other interesting streams of content. Conversely, your social media channels will do the same - driving traffic back to your website through posts containing relevant links to your website.
Of course, users might not click through. But, the accessibility to your site will increase the chance that your page will get a hit, a new customer will engage, and, eventually, your brewery will gain new business!
Hosting and Publishing your Brewery’s Website
Your website’s “host” is the physical computer where your website’s info is stored and the location where your visitors access that content. While you could theoretically host your website yourself, it’s simpler and more reliable to use a hosting service like GoDaddy or Bluehost. Certain web builders will even let you buy a domain name and connect you to hosts as part of their services.
Choosing a Domain
Choosing the right domain for your website can be tricky. Many .com addresses are no longer available and it can be risky to choose a newer domain, such as .online or .live. Those domains generally see less traffic. One helpful tip is to incorporate the initials of your location into your domain. For example, if your brewery is called ‘Red Barrel Brewing’ and is located in Colorado, you can check if RedBarrelBrewingCO.com is available. This way, you secure a popular domain extension (.com) and the name of your business, while still keeping your domain short and concise.
Web Builder Platforms
Web builder platforms are services that make it easy to design your website by providing intuitive website building software. Choosing the right web builder for your website is important, as every business has different needs. You want to choose the platform that has the full range of services you need for your website. Some companies offer full-service website solutions - from design to publication – while others will require more legwork.
14 Smooth Brewery Website Examples:
There’s no shame in looking for some website inspiration. Check out these well-designed brewery websites to get your creativity going!
With a major passion for beer in your heart and a website in your marketing toolbox, you can easily encourage more beer-lovers to visit your brewery. All it takes is a little time and following this guide. Soon enough, you’ll be pouring more pints than you can count!
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DISCLAIMER: This information is provided for general informational purposes only, and publication does not constitute an endorsement. Toast does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any information, text, graphics, links, or other items contained within this content. Toast does not guarantee you will achieve any specific results if you follow any advice herein. It may be advisable for you to consult with a professional such as a lawyer, accountant, or business advisor for advice specific to your situation.
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