Bend–April 28, 2011: Out and about, trying to find a Deschutes beer to quench your thirst? Homebrewing and want to wow your friends by brewing your own version of Black Butte Porter? Want to share a photo of your favorite Deschutes moment via a Flickr stream? The newly launched Deschutes Brewery website at www.deschutesbrewery.com has all these features and more. The user-friendly site design helps visitors find exactly what they are looking for, while also providing an easily accessible mobile version for those on the move.

Asking Deshutes Brewery fans what they want from a website
At the beginning of the website project, Deschutes felt it was important to reach out to website users and ask them how they used the site and what they would like to see. Responses from nearly 2,000 Deschutes Brewery fans showed that the number one request was to find beer, especially seasonal brews. A close second was finding out about Deschutes Brewery events. That’s when the company decided on a Mobile First plan for the new website. “It meant really focusing on incorporating the customer feedback we’d received, coupled with the needs of today’s mobile user,” said Jason Randles, digital marketing manager for Deschutes Brewery. “We’ve integrated information that our fans want and need – including a beer finder for all mobile devices that will help them locate our beer wherever they happen to be in our distribution area.”

Mobile users and the beer finder
The innovative beer finder is “location aware.” This means that the mobile user has only to click once, without typing, and the beer finder returns results from within that immediate area. It also allows users to type in their location and view all of the events going on nearby, as well as pinpointing restaurants, bars, grocery stores, and specialty beer shops in the areas that carry Deschutes Brewery beers. The same beer finding functions work equally well on the desktop/laptop versions of the new website. “We want to make it easy for people to find our beers wherever they may be,” Randles continued.

Unique features of the Deschutes Brewery Mobile Beer Finder
Although there have been other breweries that have implemented the available beer distribution data for their own versions of “beer finders,” the Deschutes Brewery Beer Finder has some unique attributes.
• Auto-detect a mobile user’s location (the user can allow this function or not through control permissions).
• Mobile Beer Finder can search and find a specific beer among all of Deschutes Brewery’s brands by location.
• The tools can add Deschutes Brewery events when searching for beer locations.

Key features of the new website
· Shares clone recipes of all Deschutes beers with homebrewers.
· Allows scrolling through beers by style, brand or series.
· Mobile friendly: smart phone users can easily find beer and view and interact with the site.
· Fully integrated with links to Deschutes Brewery’s social media sites and the ability to “like,” tweet and email pages.
· A Flickr gallery that incorporates specifically tagged photos on each page.
Discover more at www.deschutesbrewery.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2011 at 11:04 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.