Transforming a distillery into a brand experience destination
36%
By the summer, The Distillery was already up on their end of year target
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The distillery, felt before you arrive
The Bombay Sapphire Distillery at Laverstoke Mill offers an experience you can’t get anywhere else, but its website hadn’t been properly updated in almost four years and was losing people at the point of booking. We redesigned it around how people plan a visit, then kept them coming with always-on paid media that nearly doubled the return on every pound spent.
Stats / At a glance
- Return on ad spend up doubled
- Two ways to book: by experience or by date
- A block-based design system for every new page and campaign
- 36% ahead of annual target
What the distillery needed
After a global Bombay Sapphire brand refresh, the distillery team asked us to bring its site in line with the new brand and make it “as straightforward as possible to use”. In discovery we found where visitors were dropping out. Mobile users were getting stuck, tourists wanted to book by date but could only book by experience, availability appeared too late and led to dead ends, and gift vouchers were hard to find. Bookings were also hard to track, because the domain changed at checkout.
Built around how people plan a visit
We rebuilt the site structure around tours, tastings, cocktails, events and gifts, then designed two routes into booking: choose an experience, or choose a date and see what’s available. Events were repackaged so groups and corporate bookers could see what they’d get, and dedicated landing pages gave every campaign somewhere to send people.
A feel for the place
The design carried the refreshed Bombay Sapphire brand into the distillery, with the mill’s setting, atmosphere and craft at the front. We handed over a block-based design system for desktop and mobile so the team could build new pages from any block, and worked alongside Bacardi’s development agency through build and acceptance testing.
Keeping visitors coming
We ran always-on paid social, display and search for the distillery, sending people to the pages we’d designed for them. Return on ad spend doubled in that time.
What changed
- Return on ad spend doubled
- 36% ahead of annual target
The distillery itself was the same. What changed was how much of it people could feel before they arrived, and how few of them got lost between wanting to go and booking.
“The Escape were a fantastic bunch of people to work with – incredibly professional and really went the extra mile throughout our website development project. They made a very difficult process feel easy… you guys are stars!”
Amy Dobson
UK Brand Home Sales & Marketing Manager, Bombay Sapphire Distillery
Sources: Bombay website brief (2019) · Approved web design cost (Sep 2019) · Discovery notes (Oct 2019) · Sunset meeting agenda (Apr 2020) · Case study JD (Sep 2020) · Bombay Sapphire Distillery case study (Dec 2021) · status call (Mar 2022).
