Lakefront Brewery

Brewing up a fresh digital strategy for a craft beer pioneer

Industry

Food & Beverage, Ecommerce

Platform

Wordpress

Engagement

Ongoing since 2012

Deliverables

lakefrontbrewery.com

Overview

Lakefront Brewery is a Milwaukee icon. More specifically: they’re true beverage pioneers, innovating in the craft brewery space, and putting Wisconsin on the craft beer map long before there even was a craft beer map. But after 30+ years of building one of the strongest brands in the business, they wanted to take the digital side of things to the next level. We were excited to help their team reach new goals, especially because we built their last website nearly a decade earlier.

Goals

Be as strong online as they are offline

Just need to make sure we retain and convey three-plus decades of brand equity. No big deal.

Showcase their incredible space

From world-famous brewery tours and tastings to dining hall experiences and rentals, a sense of place was necessary.

Create a refreshing shopping experience

So it’s much easier to browse (not to mention maintain) the Lakefront Brewery online store.
Web design on tablet for Lakefront Brewery.
Web design on mobile for Lakefront Brewery.

Solutions

  1. 01.

    Built a brand new website

    We determined that Wordpress was the right platform to give Lakefront the sleek, mobile-friendly website they needed. This new site improved the overall experience for their customers and made it much easier for staff to update and add pages. We also worked closely with their marketing team to make sure we were capturing those brand intangibles on every page.
  2. 02.

    Created a centerpiece video

    Photos can capture a space, but a high-quality video can capture the space, its people, and the overall essence of the place. We filmed Lakefront’s people in action on a bustling Friday at the beer hall to convey the true magic of the brewery experience and inspire a visit.
  3. 03.

    Elevated the ecommerce experience

    We integrated Shopify into the new Wordpress site, allowing their team to manage much of the website content in Wordpress while harnessing the power of Shopify for product management and fulfillment.

Services

  • Digital Experiences
  • Digital Marketing
  • Maintenance & Support
  • Ecommerce

Summary

Lakefront can now post information about its lineup of beers, broadcast events, and use the site as a hub for all digital marketing efforts.

Outcomes

40%
Increase in online sales*
2X
# of beer tour bookings
25%
New users YoY
10K
Retail shoppers YoY
2021 compared to previous year | * First 6-months from go-live

Cheers to a great partnership...

Though we wrapped up the initial projects, our relationship with Lakefront Brewery continues. Lightburn is currently providing some tasty ongoing services for Lakefront, including: 

Hosting

This beautiful new website’s not gonna host itself. Lakefront decided to embrace efficiency and have Lightburn be their one-stop digital shop.
read more about Hosting

Maintenance and Support

For those edits, updates, and additions that exceed internal capabilities, we jump in and make sure the digital experience is both current and without interruption.
read more about Maintenance and Support

Continual Improvement

We’re constantly working with Lakefront to improve the overall ecommerce experience, from the online order itself, to what happens before and after.
read more about Continual Improvement