Wood St Coffee - Website
I worked with a Shopify development agency and the roastery founder Gareth (my husband) to create a specialty coffee website which won Food & Drink Ecommerce Website of the Year at the UK eCommerce Awards 2023.
A few things happened in the business at the end of 2022 which meant it was time for a new Wood St Coffee Roasters website:
They upgraded to a 25kg roaster, increasing production capacity dramatically and enabling them to take on more wholesale partners and really push D2C retail coffee through the ecommerce site.
Founder Gareth would no longer be running a café and would instead be wholly focussed on the roastery business.
I went freelance so would also be able to commit more of my time and marketing expertise.
The brief
A great website starts with a great brief, and this is something that I pride myself on. Doing the groundwork on the brand strategy meant that I had a really clear idea of the direction the website needed to take.
Two key aspects were captured by the brand personality:
Familiar – we started out knowing each of our customers in depth, serving them on our market stall and at our café. We still communicate in a friendly, familiar tone, and try to offer a personalised service whenever possible.
Expert – we take coffee very seriously. We spend hours sourcing, roasting and serving really good coffee and want to make sure you enjoy it by passing on tips, tricks, and brew guides to get the most out of our coffee wherever you’re brewing it.
User experience
With this is mind, the user experience of the website was of utmost importance and a lot of the references we shared with the web development agency were fashion brands. In place of a ‘size guide’ we have a ‘coffee picker’ to help you choose which coffee to order. We added brew guides with professional videos to help customers get the perfect cup at home, and a ‘subscription builder’ tool to make personalising your subscription a breeze.
Gareth Reid, founder of Wood St Coffee, said:
“We’re so proud of our coffee and our brand, and this new site makes it effortless for customers to see who we are, to navigate our range, choose the products and services which are just right for them.”
“Our customers love it – and they’re showing us how much through increased orders and subscriptions and increased loyalty.”
Results
The new website, launched in time for Black Friday 2022, almost doubled our subscriber base and saw a remarkable 43% revenue growth for non-subscription sales in the eight months after it went live, compared to the same period the previous year.
The hard work all paid off when we were awarded Food & Drink Ecommerce Website of the Year at the UK eCommerce Awards 2023.
The UK eCommerce Awards judges described the website as “really impressive” in particular praising the “innovative use of QR codes” on the packaging linking to more information on the coffee . They also commented that the website is “achieving great results and hitting all targets set.”
