Established in 1889, wine brand Brown Brothers have become renowned for not only their vintage wines, but their historic vineyard that hosts countless events for loyal customers. Naturally, the Brown family wanted their company’s online wine store to be just as striking. WooCommerce experts Emote Digital were happy to take on the task.
An Intuitive User Experience
Brown Brothers didn’t just want their new website to be functional, but a pleasure for users to navigate. The challenge: introducing and managing purchasing restrictions – Brown Brothers has both a six-bottle minimum purchase requirement and exceptions for specific products – without compromising the user experience.
To achieve this, Emote implemented intuitive and interactive sidecart purchasing rules. Customers browsing the stores can mix and match their favorite bottles, and check out becomes available when they reach the minimum six-bottle threshold.
Customers can clearly see if they’ve reached the order minimum thanks to a countdown message and animations in the sidecart, which is always visible while they shop. There’s no need for customers to repeatedly visit their cart only to discover they still aren’t able to check out, which means less frustration and happier browsing.
Customers can also override these rules when purchasing specialty products, such as Magnums or mixed bottles. This allows the system to be effortlessly customizable for any future rules and exceptions.
Emote added other features to enhance the user experience as well, including the ability to create recurring orders (powered by WooCommerce Subscriptions) and options allowing customers to select their courier of choice.
After all, it’s the little details that encourage appreciative customers to return to an eCommerce website again and again.
Versatility Through Consistent Design
The Brown Family Wine Group are the proud owners of multiple wine brands and offer one of the largest selections of wine in Australia. This also means they have more than one website.
Each website needed to allow the individual brand’s personality to shine while still staying true to the Brown Family Wine Group character.
Emote Digital created a set of pre-designed modules that could be used across all four Brown Brothers websites. Each website is based on the same cohesive template but is fully customizable for the individual brand. This modular design guarantees the same user experience across every Brown Brothers website, no matter the brand.
Each website is based on the same cohesive template, but is still fully customizable for each individual brand.
Many Brands, One Point of Management
To help Brown Brothers manage its collection of websites, Emote created a unified multisite that runs all four brand sites off the same core. This allows the different brands to be cross-sold across every Brown Brothers website, but also creates a unified shopping experience that maintains each brand’s unique character.
A suite of sites that work together as one simplifies management without compromising the individuality of each brand, benefiting both the brand and the customer.
Seamless Stock Control
With design and management taken care of, there was one final component to deal with: stock control.
While each individual brand promotes their own products on their own website, customers do have the option of purchasing the entire Brown Brothers range across all websites. Offering the same products from more than one online location provided added value for the customer, but it was crucial for Brown Brothers to instantly sync stock levels across all their sites.
Emote created a centralized database – “stock master” – to monitor and control every bottle. All updates to products – like product descriptions or stock levels – are simultaneously synced to any or all the four sites through the one multisite.
Added search filters allow the customer to easily browse the entire Brown Brothers range through any given site.
Customization
The WordPress plugins and WooCommerce extensions that customize and run the Brown Brothers store include:
- Advanced Custom Fields
- WooCommerce Subscriptions
- WooCommerce Memberships
- WooCommerce Min/Max Quantities
- WooCommerce Product Bundles
- Mailchimp for WooCommerce
If you’ve got a special eCommerce project coming up – in Australia or beyond – and are seeking a WooCommerce expert: the team at Emote Digital would love to hear from you.
