Last week I got the word that Auchentoshan released a new website and since I have some comments and Internet is one my daytime speciality I thought I’d stick out my nose and suggest some new ideas on how to make it (and other whisky sites) better.
What first strikes me with the new Auchentoshan website is the fact that finally someone has understood that it’s about usability, quality and simplicity when you launch something online, especially towards an older target group (after all, most whisky drinkers are not digital natives).
The site has 6 main sections ‘Whiskies, Triple distillation, How to enjoy, The distillery, Conference centre and Blog. They also have two more sections placed a little bit on the side in the menu - Competition and Shop. I don’t know what the thought behind this is, but I would definitely have placed shop as the number two option in the menu to increase clicks.
What does Auchentoshan.com stand for? Today the site doesn’t have a strong tone of voice. It’s quite flat and copy doesn’t ad anything to the experience. A simple tagline or intro headline would have done a lot for this site. Consider that if someone lands on your site and doesn’t know shit about your brand, what should be their 2 second outtake? Take a look at Flying Dog Ales, there you have an example of a very clear tone of voice, different of course, but you quickly understand their brand.
Once I navigate deeper on the site, the usability disappears, and it seems that a designer have had to much to say. Why the square small images with text on the right that has to be scrolled. I think this could have been solved a lot easier with a longer page or wider design. People don’t have anything against scrolling, it’s just small scrolls that makes people stop. The worst example was that I tried to complete the competition, but the ‘submit’ button wasn’t there. Shame.
But overall though the site is a nice one. The design is clean, images has been nicely retouched and adds a quality feeling to the site. What I do lack is modern thinking.
See the site here
But what if I had built it (or any other whisky site for that matter)?
Then it would have been a compilation of social media and interactions among the Auchentoshan fans. Today any site should be built using a set of social tools. The whisky lovers are out there and they want to interact with your brand.
Technology is the enabler
To begin with I would definitely have built the site on top of a Wordpress platform. This way the site would have been SEO optimized and different plugins (Google XML Sitemap, All in One SEO Pack, Quick Meta Keywords, SEO Title Tag, would have added even more to that very important part of building a site today. Other plugins such as Piclens or Next Gen Gallery, ShareThis, SDS Talkr, iWphone, Similar Posts, Recent Comments, Democracy, TubePress, Another Flickr Plugin and others) iWPhone would for example automatically make sure the site was fully readable in iPhone and SDS Talkr turns your site into sound. No extra development cost there! The writing settings would of course ping all important search engines with Ping-o-matic. And I would also send updates via PingFM to all important social networks (that I haven’t built into the site). RSS feeds would off course be handled via Feedburner and the content would be used more if we produced widgets for sites like Netvibes.
Some of my plugins on Whiskygrotto.
All videos would be placed within an Auchentoshan YouTube channel and linked into the site dynamically using the plugins above. That would have ensured more exposure and more exposure means more selling. I would probably have treated images the same way, only using Flickr instead of YouTube. Look for example how Nike Soccer is doing it on YouTube and how much coverage adidas has on Flickr.
On Facebook, MySpace, Friendfeed, Twitter, Jaiku and all the other social networks I would have created groups and application that made sure the content was spread in these channels as well. Comments inside the networks would of course be shown on the official site as well. Instead of a blog I would have created a thumblr log, styled it to match the site and showcased it inside an iframe.
The structure
If would of course have kept the classical structure but most definitely added Live. Here Twitter, Jaiku, Messenger, Face and Skype would have ensured that people could get in contact with us all the time. I know, some of you would say – “We don’t have time for that” I say – “What, you don’t have time for your most loyal customers”. Every friday or saturday I would use YahooLive to broadcast from the distillery. And on bigger occasions such as first cask bottlings etc I would have special ‘shows’.
Yahoo Live
I would ad a section called ‘What is whisky’ and then hire a freelance writer to write everything there is to know about Whisky. This way I would ensure we end up high in the Google (and other search engines) listings.
Like Dell or Twingly I would open up a section called Auchentoshan Dream Land where people could ad their own suggestions on how Auchentoshan should develop their whisky, brand and more in the future. People should be able to vote and comment. And I would most definitely make sure the board picked up the ideas and made some of them go from dream to reality.
All sections would have an “Ad yours” button. This would urge people to ad their own content – How do they enjoy Auchentoshan, what do they like and not like about it etc. Either by uploading it to our Flickr or YouTube accounts or simply send us their own links and we would favorite it (this way it’s added automatically).
Design and usability
I wouldn’t change to much here. But, I would definitely bring a more Web 2.0 feeling to it. (visit CSSmania for inspiration) This means easier to use, better readability, designed for multiple interfaces (phones, xboxes, PSP’s) and multiple browsers (Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera etc).
What is Web 2.0
Finally
How it actually would look in terms of design, tone of voice etc, that’s something I don’t have time to do for free. So, this is it for this time. I could probably go on for ever and write a book. If you wanna get more inspiration see this slideshow that I held in Livigno on the subject. The part in the end of the presentation about Barack Obama’s campaign is especially interesting.
Or follow my other blog on innovative communication.
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