Smooth Red has been crafting luxury wine tours and experiences around Europe for more than twenty years. Its experience in the world of wine is rich and varied, from its founder’s family’s heritage in the industry to its enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff, who are all multilingual wine aficionados.
As the shop window for their global clientele, the Smooth Red website needed a contemporary upgrade to reflect its position and ambition in the market.
A number of strategic issues needed to be addressed and overcome. Smooth Red creates tailor-made trips, but the site was very ‘product led’, with the navigation leading users to the wide-ranging lists of tours.
Meanwhile, as the products, destinations, types of tours had expanded, the structure of the site had become unbalanced and unwieldy.
And because of the product-led structure, the majority of users were defaulting to the ‘classic’ wine destinations of Bordeaux and Burgundy, bypassing the rich and varied alternatives elsewhere across Europe.
The new site needed a more streamlined approach, with fewer silos of product, and more of an expansive, inspiration-led experience. The number of headers on the homepage navigation was reduced from seven to four, with clear options for users looking for destinations, inspiration, or travelling style. Pre-determinded journeys were balanced with inspiration and immersive articles. The ‘About Us’ section took on new prominence, giving users a much richer taste of the heritage and expertise of the company, and detailed information about Smooth Red’s travel expert’s specialisms and backgrounds.
The structure was flexible enough to cater for new destinations as the launch of the website coincided with a move into South America.
A simple call to action was woven into the body of the site, appearing as users scrolled through tours and articles, encouraging them to get in touch and start planning.
