Ways Your Website Still Plays a Role in a Social Media World
From time to time, Brewer Magazine receives announcements from breweries heralding the official relaunch of a website with new features and technology designed to help them better interface with customers.
Fat Head’s Brewery is among those breweries that were gearing up to redesign their website when we reached out to businesses to learn more about the ways they use websites and social media for a story that will run in the May/June issue. It’s not a simple task, Sales and Marketing Director Bill Wetmore said, because of the prominent role social media plays in businesses’ digital footprints.
“The evolution to mobile and people’s reliance on social sites like Facebook and Instagram as de facto web-sites are the biggest developments/challenges,” Wetmore shared.
Because of this, Wetmore said content needs to be more concise and impactful than ever to combat what he referred to as ‘linger-rates’ being shorter.
Despite social media’s growing role he said a website had, if nothing else, to do one thing: be an updated, consistent source of information that doesn’t conflict with the dynamic and ever-changing landscape that is social media.
“Info is so readily available at fingertips from so many different places that I don’t think web-sites have to work as hard on deep content delivery as they once did,” Wetmore said. “But with that in mind, it’s probably more important than ever that your website is completely real-time current, because if it’s in conflict with info from other sources, that’s definitely going to reflect poorly and erode consumer trust.”
Von Ebert Brewing recently overhauled its website as part of a massive rebrand. Haley Jean Marie, a consultant who manages marketing for the brewery, said making sure the website was information-forward and user-friendly were chief concerns.
The website can help streamline one thing that social media perhaps can’t for Von Ebert because it was carefully designed to help customers navigate what’s uniquely available at the brewery’s multiple locations.
“Because we have multiple locations with slightly different menus and various events, having a user-friendly menu for each location with options to order online or make a reservation, and an events page where guests can see our calendar were ‘musts’ for us,” Marie said.
