Ecommerce website design and build for a Marlborough winery
Lawson’s Dry Hills is a family-founded winery in Blenheim, at the heart of New Zealand’s Marlborough wine region. Its wines have a loyal following at home and abroad, but its website wasn’t keeping up.
Where they were starting from
Their existing site was built on an off-the-shelf theme. It did the basics, but the theme decided what the site looked like and what it could do. The winery was fitting its brand around the template rather than the other way round. There was little room to tell the stories behind the wines, and no good way to sell them online.
What they asked for
They wanted a website shaped by who they are, not by a theme. In practice that meant:
- A look and feel that’s unmistakably theirs. The site’s design should come from the winery’s own identity: its landscape, its people and the character of its wines. It should feel like a natural extension of the brand.
- Room to tell their stories. The people, the vineyards, the vintages, and the thinking behind each wine. The team needed to be able to add and update these stories themselves, without calling a developer.
- Sustainability front and centre. Sustainable winegrowing is central to how Lawson’s Dry Hills works. They wanted it to show up clearly across the site, not be tucked away on a single page.
- A shop for New Zealand customers. Wine lovers across New Zealand should be able to browse the range, find the right bottle and buy directly from the winery. That needed a checkout and delivery set up for the NZ market, and the right checks for selling alcohol online.
What success looks like
A site that looks and sounds like Lawson’s Dry Hills, gives their stories a proper home, makes their commitment to sustainability easy to see, and turns visitors into customers. It also needed to be one the team could run day to day.
Client: Lawson’s Dry Hills
Services: Website design and build, ecommerce
