RICHARD KIHL

Project Scope

Richard Kihl has been a customer of Rade for a number of years so when it was time for a website revamp, we were pleased to be able to help with a new Umbraco website.

The new site needed to mirror much of the content from the old but with a fresh modern design, improvements to the features and functionality and an efficient administration system that allows the site to be updated multiple times per day.

A key feature of the site is a list of vintage wines available for sale, which is updated daily. The ability to do this via one simple import interface was a prerequisite of the new website. The list needed to be searchable and also offer the user to option to download the list as an Excel file.

Another major feature of the site is the offers section, a part of the site where the latest special offers and product alerts are featured. The offer not only needs to include information about the wine itself, but also provide information about the producer and a list of bottles on offer.

Solution

The existing site had been developed on an early version of Umbraco which made the use of Umbraco 8 (the latest version at the time) an obvious choice. With a new interface and a vastly enhanced features list, it was able to deliver the transformation in functionality and ease of use the client was seeking.

A fresh modern design in keeping with the brand was created. Taking a minimalist approach, the design features a simple colour palette of black and white supported by gold used as an accent colour.

A new routine was written to enable the wine list import to be a matter of a few simple mouse-clicks. The ‘Advanced Search’ allows the visitor to choose from a series of drop-down selectors to filter the wine list based on their interest.

Restructuring the offers section ensures that the client is able to enhance each offer, with additional information added from a library of producers. The producer library ensures that, once created, they can be added effortlessly to multiple offers without having to recreate every time and ensuring consistency across the site.

Profile:

Richard Kihl specialises in selling to the UK and international fine wine trade. The company has private customers, both in the UK and overseas, who buy from en primeur and use a wine cellar service. In addition, the company has a small retail fine wine shop in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.