Apothic Wines
The Challenge
With the coming launch of a new marketing campaign, Apothic needed to streamline the in-store discovery process to increase product awareness and conversions. For current customers, Apothic needed new ways to engage with their base beyond Instagram posts and newsletters.
Goals
Aligning the site with user shopping behaviors both in-store and online was crucial, as was the need to allow for brand exploration beyond the primary Apothic Red varietal. The new site needed to facilitate the following:
“Edutain” users and lets them learn more about the brand and other varietal blends.
Sell directly to customers through the website, but launch without ecommerce functionality.
Tie in existing marketing and other customer touch points, such as social or newsletter content.
Our Audience
Working with our content strategist, we began by mapping out various user journeys for our new target audiences:
Embodying the lifestyle of the marketing campaign, these users are early adopters of the next trend, a handy trait when promoting lesser known varietals. These users would also explore other branded content such as recipes or blog posts to understand the brand.
This group is looking for a reasonable entry into the next tier of wines. Generally use to purchasing wines under $20, these users don't necessarily expect high-end taste, but will do research to make sure that they're buying a quality produce.
The opposite of our "Premium Wine Explorer," this group mostly consumes beer and liquor products and will look for a low-price entry into the wine category. They are more likely to buy through marketing efforts rather than previous experience with wines or the brand.
Wireframes
After identifying the design requirements, we created low fidelity wireframes that lined up with our different use cases. Leveraging the blog content throughout the site, the "Millenial Status Seeker" and "Premium Wine Explorer" user journeys were fairly similar, with our "Customers from Other Alcohol Categories" group being the exception.
Visual Design
Finally comes the easy part where we applied visual design and motion to align with the new marketing campaign's aesthetic while retaining some of the familiar elements of the previous iteration of the site that worked and resonated with the brand.
