Brewery website design has to serve three different buyers from one site: the trade (pubs, bottle shops, distributors) who want a product list, prices and delivery terms, drinkers near you who want taproom opening hours and what is on tap, and people further away who want to order a case. Most small breweries get this wrong by building a taproom website and bolting a shop on later. Decide upfront which of the three earns the most and build outwards from that.
The three audiences, and why they want different pages
A landlord deciding whether to take a cask is doing a job of work. They want format, ABV, case size, trade price, minimum order and when you deliver to their postcode. They are not reading your founder story.
Someone searching for your taproom on a Friday afternoon wants opening hours, whether the kitchen or the food van is on, whether dogs and children are allowed, and where to park. On a phone, in a hurry, usually outside.
Someone who tried your pale ale at a festival in Leeds wants to buy twelve cans. They want to know the postage cost before they reach the checkout, and they want to know it ships in a box that survives the courier.
One site can do all three comfortably. What it cannot do is lead with all three on the same homepage. Pick the one that pays the bills, put it above the fold, and signpost the other two clearly in the navigation.
What the trade section actually needs
This is the part most microbrewery websites skimp on, and it is the cheapest part to build because it is mostly text and a table. A trade page does not need a basket. It needs enough detail that a buyer can place an order by email or phone without a back and forth.
- Current beers with ABV, style, format (cask, keg, can, bottle) and case or cask size
- Trade prices, or a clear line saying prices are on request with a form to request them
- Minimum order value and whether you combine formats to reach it
- Which days you deliver to which areas, and which wholesalers stock you elsewhere
- Lead time from order to delivery, and your cut off day
- Returns policy on casks, kegs and empties, including deposits
- Allergen and vegan status for each beer
- Whether you do pump clips, tap badges and point of sale material, and whether they cost anything
- A named contact with a direct email, not a general enquiry box
A service area map helps here more than people expect. It is included on every one of our packages, and for a brewery with its own van it answers the first question a pub asks: do you come out this far. If you only do one thing to the trade side, make the delivery radius visible without an email.
Downloadable trade list or live page?
A PDF trade list is easy to send, easy to print and easy to forget to update. A page on the site is better for search, easier to correct and can be edited in a minute. Do both if you like, but keep the page as the master copy and generate the PDF from it. Nothing annoys a buyer more than ordering from a stale sheet.
The taproom pages
Taproom information is local search work, not design work. Hours, address, parking, accessibility, whether you take card only, the food situation and the next few events. Keep the hours in text on the page rather than inside a graphic, because a picture of your opening hours is invisible to search engines and to screen readers.
Christmas, bank holidays and brew days that close the taproom all need to be editable by you on the day you decide, not by a designer next week. That is a content change, and we do not charge for those. If your taproom hours drift with the seasons, that matters more than any visual tweak.
Your Google Business Profile does a lot of the heavy lifting for taproom visibility, and the site should agree with it exactly on name, address and phone number. We wrote about that in more detail in getting found on Google when you only work locally.
Events and what is on tap
A "what is pouring" board on the site is lovely and almost nobody keeps it current. Be honest with yourself. If you will not update it twice a week, do not build it. A simple events list with the next three or four things, plus a line saying the tap list changes weekly and pointing to your social feed, is more useful than a stale board that says you still have a beer you kicked in March.
Age verification and selling alcohol online
If you sell beer from the site you need an age check. In practice that is two separate things, and people confuse them.
The first is the gate on the website: a date of birth or "are you over 18" prompt before someone browses. It is a declaration, not a check. It is common practice in the drinks trade and it sets the tone, but it proves nothing on its own and it does add a click between a visitor and your beer.
The second is the one that matters at the point of sale: the age check at the door when the beer is handed over. That is usually done through your courier's age restricted delivery service, which requires an adult signature and ID on the doorstep. It costs more per parcel than a standard service. Build that into your postage price rather than discovering it after your first fifty orders.
Your checkout should also state plainly that you will not leave alcohol in a safe place, with a neighbour, or with anyone who appears under 25 without ID. Say it before someone pays, not in a policy page they never open. Licensing conditions vary, so check yours with your local authority rather than copying another brewery's wording.
Is an online shop worth it for a small brewery?
Sometimes genuinely not, and it is worth saying so. Beer is heavy, glass breaks, and packaging that survives a courier network costs real money. If your postage is close to the value of the beer, people abandon the basket and you have paid for a shop that takes four orders a month.
A shop tends to earn its keep when at least one of these is true:
- You sell mixed cases or gift boxes with a decent margin, not just singles
- You have people who tried you away from home and have no local stockist
- You run subscriptions or a monthly club, which turns one setup into repeat orders
- You sell merchandise, glassware and minikegs alongside the beer, which lifts the average order
- You do local delivery or click and collect from the taproom, where postage is not a factor at all
If none of those apply, a well built brochure site with a trade section, taproom pages and a list of stockists will do more for you than a shop. You can always add the shop later. Moving from a standard package to a shop package is a conversation, not a rebuild from scratch.
Click and collect is the underrated option
Taking orders online and handing them over at the taproom door removes the two worst parts of selling beer online: postage cost and breakage. It also gets people onto the premises, where they tend to buy something else. If you are testing whether online selling works for you, this is the cheap way to find out.
What a brewery website costs at our end
Our standard packages are priced by page count: Starter up to 5 pages at £49 a month, Essential up to 10 pages at £79, Professional up to 15 pages at £99 and Business up to 25 pages at £149, all excluding VAT. A brewery with a trade section, taproom pages, a beer list and a stockists page usually lands on Essential or Professional.
If you want to sell, the shop packages are Shop Starter up to 25 products at £99 a month, Shop Professional up to 100 products at £139 and Shop Business up to 250 products at £179, each including 10 pages, all excluding VAT. Count your products properly: a 330ml can, a 440ml can and a case of twelve of the same beer are three products, not one. Most small breweries sit well inside 25. Extra pages are £10 a month each or five for £40 a month. There is more detail on how the tiers work in our piece on pay monthly online shops.
A blog is included on every package except Starter, where it is £10 a month, and it is worth having if you write up new releases or collaborations. Online bookings are included on Business and are £20 a month elsewhere, which is the thing to look at if you run brewery tours. Hosting, SSL, business email, the Nova editor to change your own hours and tap list, a yearly redesign and a free .co.uk domain are all in the price. You can price up your website in a couple of minutes and see where your beer count lands you.
Words and photos for a brewery site
Beer writing is personal and most brewers are better at it than any outsider would be. AI copywriting and AI image creation are included free on every package, so you can start from a draft and change it, or ignore it entirely and send us your own tasting notes and photos. Most breweries mix the two: their own words for the beers, generated text for the dull pages like delivery and returns.
Photography is where a microbrewery website is won or lost. A phone photo of a can on a clean surface near a window beats a stock image of a stranger's brewery every time. Shoot each beer the same way against the same background and the shop looks tidy without anyone designing anything. If you would rather write the pages yourself, our notes on writing the words for your own website cover the order to do it in.
Renting or owning
You can rent the site monthly with no contract and a month's notice, paying the first three months up front and then monthly from month four, with no setup fee. Or you can buy it outright: a shop is £1,188, £1,668 or £2,148 depending on tier, and a standard site runs from £588 for a single page Starter up to £2,988 for Business with 25 pages, all excluding VAT. After buying, hosting, support and the editor are £250 a year or £30 a month.
Buying outright is a separate one off payment at the price on the list. It is not reduced by rent already paid, and it costs the same in month three as in year three. Breweries with seasonal cashflow often prefer renting through the quiet months. If you are weighing it up, should you own your website or rent it sets out both sides without a sales pitch.
Frequently asked questions
Do I legally need an age gate on my brewery website?
Requirements depend on your licence and your local authority, so check with them rather than copying another site. In practice most UK breweries use an age declaration before browsing and an age restricted courier service at delivery. The declaration is standard trade practice; the doorstep check is the one that does the real work.
Can I show trade prices and retail prices on the same site?
Yes, and the usual approach is to keep them apart. Retail prices sit in the shop, trade prices sit on a trade page, either published openly or behind a request form. Mixing them on one product page confuses both audiences and invites awkward conversations with pubs about what the public pays.
How many products does a small brewery usually need?
Fewer than people expect. Four core beers in two formats plus a few mixed cases, glasses and a T shirt is comfortably under 25 products, which fits Shop Starter at £99 a month excluding VAT. Seasonals come and go in the same product slots. Count formats and case sizes separately when you work yours out.
Can I update the tap list and opening hours myself?
Yes. The Nova editor is included on every package, so you change hours, tap lists, prices and photos whenever you want. Content changes are unlimited and free whether you do them or we do. One design revision is included; after that, the yearly free redesign is where bigger visual changes happen.
Where to start
Work out which of the three audiences pays you most this year, build that part properly, and keep the other two simple and accurate. Get the trade details right, keep the taproom hours current, and only build a shop when the postage maths works or you can do click and collect. RentAWeb builds and runs small business websites and shops for a monthly fee, with hosting, email, the editor and a yearly redesign included, no contract and a month's notice. Everything is done remotely by phone, email and video. If you want a number before you talk to anyone, see what yours would cost, or have a look at what a rented website costs.
