Pubsite Rebrand

As a longstanding client with positive experience of our Sitecore development services, Fuller’s came to us with a request for a full website rebrand. Fuller’s is a premium, well-respected hospitality business, with almost 400 pubs and hotels in London and across the South East of the UK. We’ve been working closely with Fuller’s for several years now and have worked on many exciting web development projects together. We’ve had the pleasure of working on all aspects of Fuller’s Sitecore website, including the recent development of directories and an event finder. So, we were delighted to take on the challenging task of a full website rebrand and Sitecore CMS upgrade for all of the Fuller’s Brewery pubs and hotels!

THE BRIEF

Modernise the Sitecore CMS implementation of the pub sites

Prior to the website redesign, the Sitecore CMS wasn’t being used to its full potential. Sitecore works best when components are implemented. Without the development of components, a website administrator is restricted in what they can do. Fuller’s needed full flexibility for their website. Which brings us onto our next point…

Improve the user interface

Fuller’s Sitecore CMS needed to be easy to use, with drag and drop features and on-page editing.

Add a fresh look and feel to the website

Fuller’s websites and pages all had a similar look and feel. Some of the larger pubs and hotels required new themes and fresh page templates.

Streamline the user journey

The customer journey needed to be smoother, with clearer touchpoints and calls to action on desktop and mobile devices. The mobile version needed to be modernised to make it easier for people to use the booking system.

THE OUTCOME

With a clear brief in mind, we put our heads together and came up with a plan for the website redesign. We involved the Fuller’s Brewery team at all crucial stages of the planning process, to ensure that everyone was on the same page and on the path to meeting the same goals.

What did we do?

To start fresh, we treated this as if it were a brand new Sitecore project. We created greenfield templates, content and code. Here are the main things that we delivered during this project:

Full site audit and clean up

All our web development projects start with a full audit and tidy up, to make sure everything is in order and there is no extra unnecessary data using up storage space and slowing the site down.

Brand new sites with automatic content migration

Due to the vast amount of content on over 200 Fuller’s sites, it was important to provide a suite of migration and image optimisation, so that existing content could be easily brought over. We used Sitecore PowerShell Extensions to set up automatic content migration.

New components, user interface and themes

We developed components, customisable themes and page templates, to make full use of the Sitecore CMS. Sites are now more flexible and can be edited on a per page basis. Along with this, they are more responsive and built to standard Sitecore practises.

Revamped website design

With the implementation of new themes and page templates comes a fresh new look and feel. The customisable components and flexible page layouts are major contributors to the website rebrand and new design.

Site has been optimised for the user’s booking journey

Naturally, the user journey and experience have been considered throughout the website redesign project. In particular, the booking journey for the hotels. To make the navigation clear, we have added calls to action on relevant pages, including a permanent booking link on mobile.

Full use of the CMS platform

Our Sitecore CMS upgrade, Fuller’s can now manage more content using the newly developed features of the CMS. When creating new pages, different themed templates can be selected that are easily editable for the website content administrator.

Updated integration of the internal pub management system

Pub information can now be easily automated and managed thanks to the improved integration of Fuller’s pub management system.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Fuller’s Brewery are very pleased with their website redesign and our professional web development service. The new sites have very recently gone live so we are excited to see how well they do for Fuller’s. We have also integrated Google tracking and will be conducting a full SEO and speed analysis to monitor performance. Once we have the results for this, we will be sharing our findings on this page. Watch this space!

HOW WE CAN HELP YOU

If you’re facing similar challenges to Fuller’s and you’d like to enquire about our sitecore development services, get in touch with our team using the form below. We’d love to chat!