Some of you might remember I posted about me setting up an online real ale business, where you can buy bottled beer direct from smaller breweries.

We went live yesterday, with 30 breweries and over 140 products (more will be added ASAP)

have a look http://www.mybrewerytap.com
Any comments, positive or otherwise welcome!

ooh exciting I may well put an order in on payday!

Hmm broken link

try this one mybrewerytap

looking at the site just made my hangover a bit worse 🙂

introductory STW offer time maybe? 😉

Not a bad looking site.

Constructive criticism:

When you google real ale your site doesn’t come up.

Its very corporate – ie all the tasting notes just feel as though they are direct from the supplier, and it feels like your just buying in and selling on. You need to add value ie do you have credentials as to why you might be able to offer expertise to some ones buying decision, other wise I might as well go to Macro etc

I don’t like it when sites hide their postage costs.

Make more of a point of buy a case and save this much per bottle etc, a bit like Laithwaites do.

Who are you trying to target? Your proper real ale drinkers wont buy beer in a bottle, because lets face it, it can not taste as good as pumped stuff (as all the brewery’s will tell you)

Can you do a map of the UK so that people could look at a map and pick a beer from a region?

i like the map idea 🙂
you COULD do stats.

ie: xx% of people who bought this bought it again a second time
this beer has xx returning/regular buyers

and how about "if you like this, you may like:"

not sure on the "FREE POSTAGE" (on orders over £100)

i dont see postage as a hinderence,
yay that CRC and the like are free, but i would rather know before i started shopping, than have it tagged ontop of my budget, so i can take it into account while shopping 🙂

When you google real ale your site doesn’t come up.

It only went live yesterday – Google ranking takes time and effort.

Thanks for the feedback, just to answer some of the things you've raised:

As mastiles says – search engine optimisation does not happen overnight, hence why we're not up the lists yet, but we will be hopefully soon.

The corportae/proffessional/retail look is on purpose really to distinguish us from the other real ale at home sites which are less proffessional imo, and its also to get as many as breweries as possible interested in selling their products on the site.

We don't actually buy/stock anything, the way the business works is that we take your order and pass in straight to the brewery who send it out via our carriers. So we don't hold any stock, you are effectively buying direct from the brewery (which is why the tasting notes/descriptions feel the way they do).

We haven't intentionally hidden our shipping costs, they're available to see in all the normal places they would be. In fact i think they're a strong point (£4.99 per brewery consigment of up to 36 bottles). So i'll probably look to show that more prominently somewhere.

The site does have the ability to show "was" prices against products but on myBrewerytap.com the breweries set the prices not us, so until they want to discount something you won't see them.

The site also has the ability to review every product so the more its used the more helpful it will be in decision making.

We are trying to target everybody not just people converted to real ale, hence the "retail" look of the site. I agree beer is always better in the pub but i'd disagree that "proper real ale drinkers won't drink beer in a bottle" they do and hopefully will be able to do more, now they can find some of the breweries products which they enjoy in the pubs.

The map idea is something we definitely want to do, watch this space!

BTW – if you ever want help with SEO we can help 😉

Cheers, we've got someone on it, but if they prove to be rubbish i'll be in touch!

NP – had to be cheeky and mention it 🙂

Good luck with it all. Sounds liks a well thought out business plan and well put together site I like the fact that the site looks professional rather than home made. A few points

contact – I like to be able to see an actual bricks and mortar address for a web site even if you're a web only business.

List of breweries which you can click on to see the range of beers from them – makes it easier to see what you could add to a consignment or when you look at a beer know which other ones are available from the brewery.

Like the idea of the 52 week beer club.

Does cider and perry fall under real ale as I don't really drink real ale anymore.

Any expansion plans into small barrels though that then needs deposits and return carrige for the barrels.

Urm small point about forum rules, does this represent "trade or business" advertising though it may well have "overall positive effect on the mountain bikers" which is the aim of the forum !!!

contact – I like to be able to see an actual bricks and mortar address for a web site even if you're a web only business.

You are required by law to have an actual address on a business website.

Edit: clarification here – http://www.out-law.com/page-431

I don't think it's "Real Ale" unless it's bottle conditioned, and are the product descriptions supposed to be gibberish?

I am order number 14.

That is 52 weeks of beer 🙂

Only one bottle a week 🙁

Might have to sneak a few extra order in there 🙂

Can I combine the postage of my standard quarterly order with a sneaky special order each quarter?

So basically each delivery would be two cases. The first case of the 52 week deal and the second one a case of my choice but I would only pay for the one lot of delivery as they would be delivered together.

Thanks for the feedback

Yoda – if you navigate on the left via: "buy real ale – real ale by brewery" A clickable list of all our current breweries is shown.

Cider and perry are definitly in our plans!

If you navigate by "buy real ale – draught ale" you can see the breweries currently offering polypins through the site. I regularly get barrels from a local brewery who also lend me a pump and this was some of the inspiration behind the business idea. If you've been to the checkout process you'll see their is the option to "collect from brewery" so we always intended this (getting barrels direct), but im afraid its up to the breweries the products/service/amount of hassle they offer/want.

nbt- we're aware of this, it should be on each page! It will be shortly.

johnners – it sounds like your'e referring to the "CAMRA says this is Real Ale"? many of the bottles on the site have that accreditation, which revolves around whether or not an ale is bottle conditioned. We just reflect the breweries products and aren't intending to deceive in any way. The product descriptions are the breweries own.

WCA – we have to consolidate the 52WBC ourselves, so can't add seperate orders in from other breweries i'm afraid, but its only £4.99 a consignment.

Cider and perry are definitly in our plans!

😀

Oh, and like the fact that I can view the site without accepting cookies or having scripts etc. turned on

Just found ….. "Raspberry Grand Cru has a vibrant red colour and a fine white head. The beer has a full raspberry fruit nose, a balance of sweet and sour fruit on the palate and a wildly refreshing zesty finish." 😯

Glad to here it's going well for you forgot all about it.

I'll put some money your way mate, don't worry. The turkish shops around here sell a v poor range of beer and even sainsburys is pretty limited.

ooh like it! can I suggest you add Castle Rock Brewery in Nottingham, might be interested as they are an ambitious local microbrewer starting to do very well in and around notts, so might go further afield if tied in with you guys( i drink a lot of their beer too!)

The site started giving me a headache, trying to search breweries. The site is working?

Thanks all, its early days, but we're getting plenty positive feedback.

earl: Castle Rock have been sent the info, we'll chase them!

woodsman: what problems are you having?

hijack……….when we off away mr b.

Hello mate Dec 4th – 6th

very good, north of the border??

Thats the fella!

We'll need a local ride sorting?

i know just the fella……

nbt- we're aware of this, it should be on each page! It will be shortly.

Well, a link to it should be on each page, certainly. No need for the full address, I should htink

Its a f' up it was asked for weeks ago.

I think the legal requirement is just full address and co. details on homepage no?

We rarely put address details on the homepage. It needs to be somewhere "easily accessible". We usually take that to mean putting the info on one page, then linking to that page from all others – usually in the footer. more details in the link I provided, e.g. you have to add your VAT number if yo;re VAT registered

You don't seem to mention it explicitly anywhere, but I'm guessing you don't deliver to Spain, right?

😥

Hi mogrim, not at the moment, im afraid, but we've discussed the ex-pat market!

Im sorting out our mixed brewery cases in the next couple of weeks and don't mind shipping you one if you're willing to cope with the postage charge.

My email's in my profile.

Cheers

The brewery search doesn't work properly, just reverts to home page with the irritating moving images, it started to make me feel quesey.

Weird, Its working ok for me?

I've slowed the autoscroll images down a bit.

Works fine here too and no problem with the autoscroll, you hung over Woodsman 😀

🙂

I'll try again later

Got some nice homebrew for sale if you're interested? 😉

We just reflect the breweries products and aren't intending to deceive in any way

I'd not go as far as saying you're intending to deceive, but where it's just another long shelf-life sterile beer it's hardly real ale, is it?

The product descriptions are the breweries own.

Sure, but it's on your website, so you control what you choose to pass on to inform your customers. If you just uncritically parrot the brewery's speil you take responsibility for it. How does this make sense?

Country Life Brewery was started in the year 1998 and used the Brew plant from lundy Island. Originally it was located at pig in Pusehill. It shifted in Big Sheep in the year 2002. The current location of the brewery is Big Sheep. Country Life Brewery installed new state of art and bottling plant to produce more than 15000 pints of ales per week keep up with the demand. It uses the combination of state of art equipment and traditional breweing to ensure the production is among the best in the world.

It's drivel.

Johnners: Some of the beer has been made "bright" (it's been filtered to remove the brewers yeast particles) but none of it has been steralised/pasteurised or heat treated in anyway. I know CAMRA have recently started making the distinction that unless the beer has had additional brewers yeast added at bottling it isn't "Real Ale" but the vast majority of bottled ale is "bright". The site has beers served in both ways, we're not gonna start preaching to breweries if they aren't meeting CAMRA's criteria it's up to them how they bottle it.

I agree that text is bad, I'll do some editing later today.

I tried to buy a case of 12 but it came up with something about a certificate being revoked and won't go to checkout. What's that all about?