Descendants Beer Co. Brews Up New Website with Digital Main Street

Descendants Beer & Beverage Co. is a craft beer brewery in Kitchener, ON that first opened their doors in 2016. The owners, Robin and Lee, had set out to create a welcoming craft brewery, beer store, and event venue, all in one. It was a place where events and social gatherings were what they were known for. Then the pandemic struck.

Descendants quickly made their own website to sell their craft beer online and gain some revenue back, but it just wasn’t enough. After several layoffs, restricted venue capacity, and a major sales reduction, Descendants simply did not have the resources to build a completed website that was up to the standards they desired. That’s where the DMS Future Proof Transformation Team came in.

The Transformation Team met with Descendants to discuss their situation and gain an understanding of their needs. They established that they needed to shift the website’s focus from events to retail sales of their craft brews; this required a brand-new website.

The Transformation Team, assisted by the excellent communication from Descendants team, created a new website on a different platform that was more suitable for the business, and utilized existing resources that Descendants provided. The Team cleaned up the online beer shop with attractive photos, product categories, a review system, and in-depth descriptions that gave all the information a customer could want.

There were several key pieces of website copy created or updated by the Transformation Team. These included an About Us/Our Story Page, delivery and shipping information, and a backstory page for the unique characters that are tied to their beers.

SEO was also improved to attract more visitors to the website. This was completed by adding keywords to copy, creating meta descriptions for pages, and adding alt text to images. A Pixel and various Google website traffic monitoring services were also integrated so Descendants could gain valuable information about activity on their website.

They now have a new website built to accommodate their short-term need for beer sales, but the Team also gave them resources to make them Future Proof. The website has pages for events and their food menu that are ready to be updated when those are available once again. The Team provided templates for product descriptions and beer can mockups to make the introduction of new beers a smooth process. They also provided tutorials for using the beer can template, writing/inputting meta descriptions and alt text, using the new website’s features, and using the newly integrated plugins.

With the help of the Future Proof Program, Descendants Beer & Beverage Co. is now better equipped to endure the rest of the pandemic and serve Southern Ontario.

Owners Robin and Lee had this to say about working with a Transformation Team: “Each of the members of the team were incredibly kind, engaged and professional throughout the entire project. We are so grateful for the work they were able to complete and the research and effort they provided us. The team kept us up to date throughout the whole process and was very responsive and helpful and took on extra tasks and ideas and questions throughout. We are so grateful to the team for all of their help.”

Our Digital Main Street Future Proof partner in Waterloo Region is Communitech. See how they can help.

Written by Mike Crocker