Project Overview
Sullivans Cove Distillery is responsible for putting Tasmanian Whisky on the map. As one of the oldest whisky distilleries in Tasmania, they take pride in using locally sourced, high quality ingredients including pure Tassie water and barley. In 2014 Sullivans Cove won World's Best Single Malt Whisky at the World Whisky Awards, catapulting them and the Tasmanian whisky industry into the international limelight.
Critical acclaim meant the website no longer matched their premium brand offering or the influx of customers wishing to purchase an award winning drop. Sullivans Cove came to Northmost with a desire to transform their digital presence, creating an engaging world leading whisky brand destination.
With a common aging process of 9 to 18 years and releases that sell out as soon as they are online, their primary focus wasn’t conversions, rather a deeper level of engagement and brand experience. Sullivans Cove wanted a new site that reflected their high quality products, was easy to use, accessible for customers new to whisky and yet informative enough for the whisky aficionado. Northmost worked with Sullivans Cove on a content strategy and user experience that engaged and educated customers about each individual product, created a new digital brand aesthetic and an overall experience that encouraged brand advocacy.
Launching in late 2017, the new website has had an overwhelmingly positive response. They have seen a 1.5% increase in conversions along with an increase in customer engagement across product information, process and video content.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
UX & Creative Direction: Beth Walsh
Technical Direction: Michael Walsh
Project Brief
Three years after winning World’s Best Single Malt Whisky at the World Whisky Awards, Sullivans Cove had a website that no long represented them as a brand.
The website lacked the detail that differentiated their ranges and the premium brand experience their customers were looking for. On release days, traffic spikes would cause the website to crash, leaving the team at the distillery dealing with emails and phone calls from irate customers who had missed out. Combine this with an inefficient shopping experience, a lacking responsive execution and dated design aesthetic, positive customer engagement on the website was low.
Sullivans Cove engaged Northmost to change the face of their business online. Creating a website that was befitting their premium status through educational content, an engaging user experience, new digital brands for each range and a custom shop that ensured a smooth conversion process across devices. Ultimately the goal was to make the Sullivans Cove website a destination for whisky lovers.
Project Need
With over 50% of their traffic on mobile, Sullivans Cove required the design and development of a new website and online shop that ensured a quality user experience across all devices - not just a responsive one. The site had to be considerate of brand growth over the next 18 months and flexible enough for upcoming range launches. It had to encourage engagement across the distillery’s three core brands, Sullivans Cove Whisky, Hobart No.4 Gin and Firedrum Vodka through individual on page brand experience and design.
Core to the approach was creating a website that demystified whisky. Sullivans Cove required a content strategy that would provide engaging information on taste, flavour notes and process in an easy to understand way. This underlying principle of ‘plain speak’ strongly reflects the brands values and the distillery experience in Tasmania.
Although conversions was not the primary focus it was still an important part of the brief. The shop had to better promote the individual brands and encourage customers to purchase from the gin and vodka ranges. It also required a complete review of the user journey across devices, providing a best practice experience for the customer and removing roadblocks that would see them previously abandon cart.
User Experience
Northmost reviewed existing analytics and ran workshops with the team at Sullivans Cove to uncover business and user requirements. Customer insights were gathered from users and social channels to better understand what information they were looking for on the site.
The outcomes of our research showed that the site needed to better convey the premium nature of the brand as well as the individuality of each of the ranges. It also needed to provide customers detailed yet accessible information about each individual bottle, crafting brand advocates and encouraging purchases, especially on mobile devices.
A major focus for the user experience was the ‘poster layouts’ for each product. We wanted each product page to hero the whisky, like a poster you might see in the distillery or on a billboard. This provided a premium experience across devices through a full screen scaling image and lockup.
Another important factor was the CMS user experience for the team at Sullivans Cove. They required an engaging website for their customers that was easy to keep up to date behind the scenes.
The user experience and design needed to stand out from the crowd of new Australian distillery websites and cement Sullivans Cove’s place as a leader in the industry.
Project Marketing
The website was launched with an email campaign sent to the Sullivans Cove database, resulting in a three fold increase on their best sales day ever. With Shopify as the chosen ecommerce platform, the large spikes of traffic that would have previous seen the site go down, had no effect on the browsing and conversion experience for their customers.
Since launch Sullivans Cove has seen a 1.5% increase in conversions and engagement across their site. They have had four major product releases that have smashed previous sales targets every time. Mobile conversions have now surpassed desktop proving that a great user experience that considers all devices is an important part of the creative process.
Project Privacy
The Sullivans Cove website is required by law to ensure users accessing the site are of legal drinking age. Northmost ensured that the age gate was compliant with ABAC recommendations and the Liquor Licensing Act 1990.
Customers who sign up for an account can track their previous purchases, providing a record of specific cask numbers for whisky fiends. Accounts and email subscription settings on the website can be managed by the customer.
Digital - Food & Drink
Food & drink - essential to us all. We all engage with sites and apps with a food or drink focus be that restaurant guides, cooking sites, purchasing produce or nutritional advice.
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