Deerness Distillery

A clearer path from discovery to purchase

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Client

Stuart Brown

Services

Website design & development

Timeline

2022

Impact

Revenue quadrupled in two months.

Project summary

Deerness Distillery needed its online shop to reflect the quality of its Orkney-made spirits and liqueurs. With sales declining, we reviewed the buying journey and redesigned key pages around clearer messaging, stronger imagery and simpler navigation. Revenue quadrupled over the two-month reporting period, alongside an increase in average order value.

The challenge

Starting point

Deerness Distillery makes spirits and liqueurs by hand in Orkney, Scotland. The brand had an established product range, but online sales were declining compared with previous years. Facebook and Instagram were its main sources of new customers, and net sales had fallen to £1,641 in the month before our engagement.

The website needed to communicate the quality of the products and make the path to purchase clearer.

Strategy & design approach

Analyse

Our review identified several issues in the shopping experience: weak product imagery, inconsistent use of brand colours, unclear navigation priorities, limited social proof and text-heavy landing pages.

Google PageSpeed Insights scores were also low: 15 for the homepage and 20 for the collection page. Together, these findings gave us a set of design and performance issues to address.

Audit of the original Deerness collection page

Strategise

We started with wireframes for the pages most closely involved in the buying journey, clarifying the messaging and page structure before developing the visual design. The priorities were to:

Use stronger imagery to communicate product quality and character.
Introduce consistent grid layouts and shorter, easier-to-read sections.
Add clear headings so visitors could scan the key messages.
Put shopping first in the navigation, in line with the business’s sales goals.

Build & optimise

We redesigned and developed the key pages in the shopping journey, applying the new page structures, imagery and navigation. Consistent layouts, clearer headings and shorter sections made the product information easier to browse.

Results & outcomes

Revenue quadrupled over the two-month reporting period, and average order value increased. The redesigned website gave the brand a more consistent presentation and a clearer shopping journey, with stronger imagery and more accessible product information.

Revenue: 4× growth in two months
Average order value: Increased

In our client’s words.

E-commerce website

Deerness Distillery

“The website looks fantastic thank you 😊 for all your hard-work. Looking forward to see how our customers respond to the new site and the improved shopping experience it will provide.”