Heaton Hops Web Shop

Designing an online beer shop

Phase 1 was to get the eCommerce system up and running using WooCommerce and taking payment with Paypal.

I also took what I’d learnt from building the Beerstork website back in 2018 and reflected what I could do better now when designing an online beer shop.

With this in mind, some of the main considerations for this project included:

• Finding the best way to present key information at a glance such as the ABV, size and brewery.
• Putting extra effort into how the site works on phones as this would be the primary way most people use it.
• Make it easy to find vegan and gluten-reduced beers which I felt was lacking on other websites.

Progress of a product listing from wireframe to design to build. The layout evolved through the process to make the vegan and gluten-reduced symbols stand out more and we combined the drink category with the product name to optimise it for search.

What's next

With the phase 1 build complete and the system taking orders, I’ve been blown away by the response in terms of orders and the positive comments.

We’ll be keeping track of user feedback to make improvements to the interface in the future.

We’re also using Fathom Analytics to anonymously measure which products are most popular and understand where improvements can be made.

We can also look to enhancing the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) on the site to make individual products show up on web searches made by the new nationwide audience.