Stag's Leap Wine Cellars
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars leapt to fame during the historic 1976 Judgment of Paris, winning the Cabernet Sauvignon competition and shocking the wine world. Four decades later, it’s established itself as a luxury brand, a Napa Valley first-growth estate that produces acclaim-winning varietals with a philosophy to create wines of classic beauty and harmony. Second only to their property itself, it's their digital home that welcomes visitors into their story.
1 / 0
Inspired by a new visitor’s center that invites guests into the winery, their new website delivers an equally immersive, engaging experience online, on any screen. Strategically, the first imperative was to show more than tell, relying more on imagery than description to create a luxury feel. The result is both high-end and welcoming, highlighting the brand’s differentiators of superlative product, historic influence, and on-property experience.
Stingy Content Makes For Luxury Product
Careful strategy winnowed lengthy copy to allow imagery to take center stage. This led to one of the site’s defining features – an uncommonly bold, left-justified navigation, anchoring one half of the frame to create confident user pathways and focus attention on imagery. In product detail pages, limiting the products and images displayed reinforces selectivity. Here, connoisseurs also find their dream feature – an online tool to authenticate each individual bottle in their collection.
Integrating Ecommerce into Brand and Product Content
The site challenges the standard ”wine shop” experience by facilitating ease of movement from product collections to purchasing. More like an upscale retail experience, users explore individual wines, then add to cart and check out, without having to rummage through a cluttered wine shop. Commerce flows from brand more than brand flows from commerce.
A Historic Brand Pushes into the Digital Future
A carefully planned, fully responsive design / build renders the site seamlessly across mobile, desktop, and tablet. The image-centric, minimal content approach lends itself perfectly to the increasingly important smaller screen. Ultimately, the elegant new digital home for Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars now more fully reflects the highly sought after luxury brand they’ve become while celebrating the history-making brand behind the bottle.
Awards
