I am a big fan of Charnwood Brewery, having consumed a number of their beers in the local pubs. I like the artwork and the branding, which does a great job of conveying ‘local’ with its use of the mascot Clarence the fox (foxes being used as a symbol of the region). It’s fun and playful, a well-designed brand that isn’t taking itself too seriously. In fact, Charnwood Brewery was the main reason I joined a dozen eggs. So I was happy when I got the opportunity to build their new website not long after I joined.

As we were adding a shop to the website, we used it as a chance to move over from the bespoke Ruby on Rails CMS that was being used to WordPress and Woocommerce. Woocommerce gives you a lot of functionality out of the box, including tax calculations, shipping options, and payment gateways. Woocommerce is also free and open-source, although premium plugins can be purchased to extend its functionality. We used the Table Rate Shipping and Royal Mail plugins, as the cases of beer were to be delivered by courier at £8 per case, with the merchandise and posters being delivered by Royal Mail based on their package size and weight.

The design of the site was largely based on the previous version of the site. Our designer Beth and I worked on the design of the shop, and we freshened up the rest of the site and improved the navigation and structure.

You can read more about the branding of Charnwood Brewery on the a dozen eggs website.