WordPress Web Design – HaigWhisky.com
Haig Whisky is the oldest Scotch whisky in the world dating back a couple of centuries. This WordPress web design project for HaigWhisky.com is a particularly interesting one as it is a fansite with the brand domain. Haig Whisky was dormant for about 50 years and so an enterprising whisky fan and aficionado, Stuart McNamara, purchased the domain to keep the memory of the brand alive. Subsequently Haig Whisky were purchased by Diageo and have just launched a new product, Haig Club, in conjunction with David Beckham. Whilst all that didn’t really affect the WordPress web design for HaigWhisky.com it sets the stage nicely.
As sites go this is arguably one of the most beautiful I’ve ever worked on. We worked closely with graphic designer Elena Montes who really knocked it out of the park with her choice of imagery, edits and colour schemes. Elena also looked after the logo for the site as well as the “Pooka Scale”.
Under the hood the site is, amongst other things, an affiliate site and is synched up with a variety of different vendors, namely Amazon and The Whiskey Exchange. The affiliate aspect is powered using a great plugin called DataFeedr with some custom shortcodes so that only what is required is automated (lots of affiliate plugins pull in product descriptions etc which is just duplicate content and of zero SEO value, this site just pulls in price, image and buy now button) and everything else is unique and written by Stuart. This is a nice between automation and fresh content.
A large plank of this sites success is going to happen in the blog section. Stuart is one of the top whisky writers in Ireland the blog is his sandbox. There is an ongoing arrangment in place with Stuart and each post is being optimised prior to posting to keep the site competitve in a very challenging niche (cough, Diageo, cough). With that said the site is ranking nicely and will continue to do so. You can view the site at the link below or check out my post about the HaigWhisky.com site launch.
WordPress Web Design Project – Haig Whisky