York Gin

York Gin creates some of the world’s finest gins using traditional and sustainable methods. It’s an institution in its hometown of York, with its award-winning gin shop housed in a 16th century building at the very heart of the city. But its online shop didn’t quite match the brand, heritage or ethos of this beloved distiller. 

The challenge was to uplift the existing ecommerce platform, to build something that matched York Gin’s passion for its products and its iconic physical headquarters. This had to be a site that made it easy for devoted customers to find what they needed and one that the team at York Gin could maintain, making it sustainable for business. It was a challenge we accepted. 

It’s why our design team took a trip to York Gin HQ, photographing the textures, elements and colours, and getting a feel for what the brand really meant. We then got to work on reimagining the website into something that matched this. 

Agency51’s team started by pulling key brand colours into the design to reflect the hues that York Gin is known for. We then turned our attention to the font, switching the standard old body-copy font for something fresh that screamed York Gin. 

But it doesn’t matter how nice your branding is, no one will buy a thing if they can’t see your products. It’s why we bought the bottles right to the top of the page, to show people the award-winning spirits that York Gin is famous for. Of course, we included some words about the business, the ethos and the mission, but we let the drinks do most of the talking. With some close collaboration from the client, we had it. A brand-new website that was entirely them.  

Additionally, York Gin needed to make sure they were reaching the right customers at the right time. They already had an internal marketing team, so they didn’t need us to do everything for them. What they needed was a trusted partner to get their marketing channels – SEO, PPC, CRO, mailers and more – heading in the right direction and then set it all up for long-term success.  

The new site was one that truly represented the York Gin brand and its iconic home in the city. It’s instantly recognisable as the brand we all know and love.  Most importantly, we handed the team a site they can update themselves making it a sustainable solution for their business. That’s an outcome we can all be proud of. 

This solution has been widely recognised as a class-leading platform within the industry. With Agency51’s help York Gin has put in place a sustainable marketing strategy that they could execute themselves, a strategy that produced real growth. And the numbers speak for themselves.

But above all, the outcome was that York Gin had a local, trusted partner that could help take their marketing to the next level. They had our SEO team on call to answer questions, our designers to put together mailers, our content writers to pen some catchy copy and PPC team to perfect those ads. 

You’d say that York Gin got a sustainable marketing strategy, we’d say they got an extension to their team.