Vine Street Imports
Focusing on what they call the four "Noble Truths" of wine, the team at Vine Street Imports travels through the world's many vineyards to bring some of the most exciting boutique and artisan wines to the US market. With a portfolio that includes selections as far as New Zealand and as local as Pennsylvania, each and every import is selected for its ideology--the quality, the winemaking and farming practices and, as they put it, "the personalities behind the booze."
Having launched their original site in 2006, we were familiar with the VSI branding and overall site design which, though it stood the test of time quite well, needed an updated look to meet the demands of mobile web browsing and the burgeoning tablet market.
The VSI website, much like their knowledge of vino, was robust from the onset. With massive amounts of content associated with the wineries, countries, regions and wines, our development team had the job of not only organizing, but also visualizing the user experience far in advance of the design. The end result is a well-structured site that puts the path of navigation into the user's hands. Whether they're searching for something specific (distributors located in New York state) or something a bit more vague (region-by-region details on winemaking), users are given the ability to swiftly move through the website--with plenty of options to detour for some additional information. In other words, it's a site that encourages user interpretation and allows you to choose your own approach to learning.
Being in the ever-changing wine market, VSI also wanted the ability to make quick changes to their web content--and, with so much content, there was lots of room to do so. Our team built a custom content management system that gives the VSI team access to virtually every piece of information on the site. Whether they're adding a new vineyard to their listings, making edits to their sales team (which correlates with the interactive map on the 'distributors' page) or adding a new team member bio to the expanding menu on the 'our team' page, what was once a lengthy update is now done quickly, easily and often on the fly.