Digital Marketing

Just Brew It
Individual Portfolio
Ben Hellyer [16606948]
University of Lincoln: MSc Marketing
MKT9118M: Digital Marketing
Module Co-ordinator: Emma Ellse
27 May 2021
Contents
Site Overview
– Aims
– Objectives
Audience Profiling
– Pen Profile
– Empathy Map
– Consumer Journey
Competitor Analysis
Site Design
– Home Page
– Content
– About Us
Promotion and Social Media
Appendix
1.1 Answer The Public Results
1.2 Answer The Public Results
2.0 – Pen Profile
3.0 – Empathy Map
4.0 – Home Page Wireframe
5.1 – Content Page Prototype
5.2 – Content Page Final
6.1 – About Page Prototype
6.2 – About Page Final
7.0 – Sitemap
References
Personal Reflection
Site Overview
About Us
What we want to do is provide an easy and engaging resource for those looking to go beyond
their instant morning pick-me-up and either dip a toe or dive right into the wide (and often
intimidating) world of home coffee brewing.
Our philosophy is that coffee brewing at home should be simple and enjoyable. You won’t find
any snobby guides comparing barista-grade equipment or perfect ingredient ratios or knitting
socks for each of your beans.
What you will find is how to whip up a brew that best suits you.
https://sites.google.com/view/justbrewit/home
Aims
As someone who enjoys the home brewing of good coffee
but hates the snobbery that often surrounds it, my goal
with Just Brew It was to create a site that could gently
lead people into the world of home coffee brewing.
Simply put, I wanted to create a site that I wish had
existed when I personally was looking into the hobby. I
was confounded by lengthy, confusing pages often more
interested in directing me to marketplaces than teaching
what makes a good coffee.
With the knowledge that I have on the topic years later, I
wanted to create a super simple website with guides that
could answer a range of common questions and issues.
These were queries that not only I had personally had
from years prior but were supplemented by common
questions from Answer the Public (Appendix 1.1, 1.2).
Objectives
I decided to set two SMART objectives for the site to try
and achieve by the end of this project.
• At least 20 unique visits to the site from social media
after 30 days of promotion.
• Reach an average of 10 interactions on each post of
social media promotion efforts after 30 days.
Based on my competitor analysis I decided to use
Instagram and Twitter for the promotion. Ideal
engagement rates varied depending on where I looked
but seemed to range between 2-5% for smaller
accounts. Given these numbers, these objectives
seemed to be fairly reasonable for a short promotion
given that I was starting from scratch and had a lot of
competitors.
Audience Profiling
Pen Profile
When I constructed my ideal target audience, I
envisioned someone in their mid-late 20s. Most
likely employed in the tech industry and living
comfortably enough to go beyond basic needs.
When I investigated surveys surrounding the
drink, it was indicated that 85% of professionals
drink at least three cups a day, with the highest
number being in journalism or media related
professions. (Pressat, 2014)
This helped me to paint the picture of a young,
city dwelling professional looking to go beyond
his instant morning ‘cuppa’.
Empathy Map
I took the idea of this target audience further in the
empathy map. Here the motivations for seeking out
such a site are explained.
It is likely that many have heard their friends or
colleagues self describe as “coffee addicts” or jokingly
express their dependance on the drink. This reflects in
the mind of our target, who wants to dip his toe into
the coffee community and is possibly driven a little by
ego. He may want to impress those acquaintances with
his own coffee knowhow.
However, it is a snobbish and confusing community. He
may be confused or deterred by the overwhelming
amount of information and options available. What our
man is looking for is a digestible and beginner friendly
website to give him the rundown on the different
aspects of brewing coffee.
Awareness
• Wants to brew
their own coffee
at home.
Research
• Wants a guide
that’s easy to
follow. Finding a
lot of confusing
information.
Conversion
• Finding an
introductory that
holds their hand
through the
process.
Continuation
• Contacts for any
further
questions. May
follow social
media for further
updates.
Instagram or
twitter posts
promoting the blog
Social media
promotion.
Google searching
The website itself
Email
Twitter
Instagram
“This seems
interesting.”
“I want to
be able to
do this.”
Positive
“What does
any of this
mean?”
“Maybe it’s
too much
for me”
Anxious,
Confused
“Oh this
makes

AssignmentTutorOnline

!”
“I get it
now.”
Positive,
Focused
“I wonder
what this
means.”
“What other
options do I
have?”
Relieved,
Inquisitive
Stage
Touchpoints
Feelings
Consumer Journey
Consumer Journey
This takes the previous profile and walks through the
steps that any consumer might while attempting to find
information on the topic.
Touchpoints are where they may discover the site,
contact me, or where the promotion I’ve set up could
reach them. Initially this is just the off the assorted buzz
made on the social media but if they dug deeper, it
could be the site off google searches, and later the
contact info on the site itself.
This is the ideal journey, and I would assume many
terminate at the first or second stage. It is even more
unlikely that among the many competitors, our site
would be the one they found. However, by making the
site itself appealing it boosts the chances of making it
through to the end stages.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor Analysis
From searching around for coffee blogs and taking the top
results I could divide most competitors into two categories.
The first can be seen on this page, which broadly were sites
with ‘too much information’ and would leave a new visitor
confused.
These were mostly found by looking for coffee blogs and
were the top SEO results. The top two examples I found had
so many pages in disorderly arrangement that it was difficult
to find anything on a specific topic even with the search
function.
These were completely at odds with what I wanted my site to
be. Moreover, they were at odds with the principles of basic
site design as found in Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think (2014),
being cluttered and hard to navigate.
Coffeeblog.co.uk
Perfect Daily Grind
Competitor Analysis
In the second category were sites that were more akin to extended
storefronts.
An example is ravecoffee.co.uk, a fantastic site for brewing guides
and one of the top ranked search engine results when searching
‘coffee brewing guide’. However, I found it impossible to find the
page that google gave me from the home page of the site itself.
Everything else on it is designed to sell you a coffee bean
subscription package. There are dozens of sites similar to these
that rank high on SEO.
Another kind I found as an example was wholelattlelove.com.
These were particularly common when looking for grinder or
espresso guides. It was verbose enough to make you want to skim
read it but doing so would quickly show you a machine with a price
point of nearly $1,500, off-putting to any beginner. These
were clearly done by people who had a lot more money, time and
access than I did. There could be no chance of me looking to make
a site similar to these as a student.
ravecoffee.co.uk
Wholelattelove.com
Competitor Analysis
In this final section of this competitor analysis, I found
examples of the sites that I wanted Just Brew It to be similar to
and which represent the closest competitors in terms of design
philosophy.
Homegrounds.co was on the first page of searches when
looking for brewing guides and is a very easy to navigate
source for tutorials and knowledge.
Coffeestylish.com was a site rated by Market Inspector (2019)
as one of their ‘Top 10 Coffee Blogs to Follow’ and was what I
examined most closely when designing the site. The navigation
is clean and extremely easy to follow, perfect for beginners.
The similarities between Just Brew It and the sites listed here
should be clear to see in the wireframes and final design.
coffeestylish.com
homegrounds.co
Site Design
Sitemap
Keeping to the theme of the site, the map is as basic as
it gets. People won’t use a site if they can’t find things
easily (Krug, 2014, 18) so the entire point of this site was
that every significant topic is on the front page
Each guide links into another guide at the bottom to
coincide with the stages of coffee brewing. Beans links
to grinding links to brewing. Therefore, no matter
where the user starts it will hand hold them to the next
stage.
At the bottom of each page there is a footer that links
to contact details. The About page also has contact
details on it. Everythingon the site links to just about
every other section of the site without being cluttered
and is designed in a way that a user could find anything
with virtually no thought at all.
Wireframe: Home page
The home page was one of the few elements that underwent
no revisions from wireframe to design.
Since my core philosophy for the site revolved around ease of
access, I wanted a design that would be extremely easy to
navigate. The page clearly outlines the purpose of the site
and provides three major content blocks to navigate to.
This has the effect of directing visitors to any one of the key
points on the consumer journey which also align with the top
searches for coffee related discussion on Answer the Public
(Appendix 1.1, 1.2).
Guides from webflow on UX (Cardello, 2019) suggested having
content done before putting the site up. For the reason I had
the majority of content I wanted to write ready to go when
launching and could immediately link it on the home page.
Both the images and text are links to content to aid in user
friendliness.
Home page wireframe
Prototype home page design
Wireframe: Content
This had to undergo changes to fit the UI of google sites. My
original idea was to have a sidebar that would have links to
different pages and have the main content be broken up by
images. This can be seen in the prototype image.
However, I soon realized that this would be not only difficult
to implement with the google sites engine, but more
significantly not fit a mobile UI at all.
It has long been a principle of UX design since a study by the
Nielson Norman Group that most users read in an F-shaped
pattern (Nielson, 2006). For this reason, I decided it would be
best to have short blocks of text broken up into different
general topics with visual aids to accompany each. As NN/g
discovered and as outlined by Krug, most users simply scan
pages for what they want so I emboldened key terms and
important information.
Prototype with sidebar Final with images
Completed Site design
Wireframe: About us
Another design that was altered by the features of Google
sites. I wanted the social media blobs neatly stacked in a row
as clickable icons, however this was impossible to do nicely
and so they had to be in a row. This ended up looking fine on
mobile however so I can’t consider it a setback.
The decision to just have the About and Contact on the same
page was one I decided based on seeing it on many
competitor pages. It was efficient and could be easily
redirected to from a footer.
It’s designed to be very informal, friendly and should set the
tone for the articles nicely. Clearly outlining the aims of the
site.
Prototype: Stacked socials. Final: Socials in a row.
Completed Site design
Promotion and
Social Media
Social Media
Based on the competitor analysis I decided to promote the site
on Twitter and Instagram. These fit the consumer profiles
created best and were sites I was at least somewhat familiar
with.
I based the strategy on the RACE framework:
https://www.instagram.com/justbrewitblog/
https://twitter.com/brewitblog
•Use catching images and different styles of
REACH posting to reach different people.
•Encourage viewers of the social media to check
the blog out and acquire new viewers either
ACT through direct linkingor suggesting the site.
•Bring interested viewers through each stage of
CONVERT the process on the site itself
•Bring viewers round to the social media and
contact page. Encourage following on other sites
ENGAGE too, engage with all comment
Social Media
The strategy I wanted to use was mostly based on ‘buzz’, given
that the site was starting from zero, so my idea was based
around gathering attention and pushing people towards the
site.
Instagram was the site I chose to focus on due to research
indicating a better conversion rate (Jackson, 2019). According to
further research the ideal posting time was between 10:00 and
15:00, but particularly around 11:00 (Hubspot, 2021) so for this
reason I decided to post a “morning mug” at around that time
and aimed to post daily to get as much interest as possible.
I hit out at a variety of Instagram topics with different mugs for
cities, interests and people and tagged them as so for the
greatest reach. Each post was followed with a post
encouraging users to visit the site, as direct linking was not
possible on Instagram.
Instagram camera roll
Instagram example post
Appendix
Appendix 1.1: Answer the Public Results
Appendix 1.2: Answer the Public Results
Appendix 2: Consumer Empathy Map
Appendix 3: Consumer Profile
Appendix 4: Main Page Wireframe
Appendix 5.1: Content Page Prototype Wireframe Appendix 5.2: Content Page Final Wireframe
Appendix 6.2: About Page Prototype Appendix 6.2: About Page Final Wireframe
Wireframe
Appendix 7: Sitemap
References
Pressat (2014) Here are the professions that glug the most coffee. Journalists are officially the biggest addicts. Pressat.
Available from: https://pressat.co.uk/blog/2014/09/here-are-the-professions-that-glug-the-most-coffee-journalists-areofficially-the-biggest-addicts/. Last Accessed May 23 2021.
Market Inspector (2019) The Top 10 Coffee Blogs to Follow in 2019. Market Inspector. Available from: https://www.marketinspector.co.uk/blog/2019/05/top-10-coffee-blogs/. Last Accessed May 23 2021.
Cardello, Jeff. Web Design for Beginners: a Simple (but complete) Guide. Webflow. Available
from: https://webflow.com/blog/web-design-for-beginners/. Last Accessed May 23 2021.
Nielson, Jakob (2006) F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content. Nielson Normal Group. Available
from: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content-discovered/. Last Accessed May 23 2021.
Chi, Clifford. When Is the Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2021? Hubspot. Available
from: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/instagram-best-time-post/. Last Accessed May 23 2021.
Jackson, Dominique. Instagram vs Facebook: which is best for your brand’s strategy? Sprout Social. Available
from: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-vs-facebook/. Last Accessed May 23 2021.
Chen, Jenn. Essential social media marketing statistics to know for 2021. Sprout Social. Available from:
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-statistics/. Last Accessed May 23 2021.
Krug, Steve. (2014) Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited. A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Indianapolis: New Riders.
Personal Reflecton
This piece is a critcal and personal reflecton on the creaton and maintaining of the Just
Brew It website over the last two months. The task involved using a myriad of skills that I
had never heard of before the module so naturally it was a litle overwhelming. It was
something that I was actually disproportonally overconfdent about coming into because I
had been making use of web and graphic design for many years and considered them both a
part of my skill set so I knew that I could put together a nice website. However I was not
prepared for the wealth of resources that I would become acquainted with and, besides the
golden rule of ‘Don’t make me think’, it would turn out that most of what I knew about web
design was flawed or outdated. In many ways this entre assessment was on the one hand a
brilliant learning experience but also I would consider the overall thing a failure.
Frankly looking back on this I can say that the concept was probably flawed from the ground
up. The original concept for a coffee website came from an idea I’ve had for some tme
which was a coffee shop review blog. Obviously since we were in natonal lockdown this was
impossible but I did want to try push the coffee idea regardless because of my own
experiences with getng into home coffee brewing. I had found it uterly infuriatng trying to
fnd informaton and sites to navigate when I got into it. Thus, the site I designed was
effectvely the site was the site I wish had existed when I wanted to start coffee brewing.
However this concept was one with so much existng competton and had so few methods
of actve promoton that for the sake of an assessment designed to measure digital
promoton skills it was simply flawed.
Reflectng on the website design it was probably the highlight of the assessment and I think
the site itself was well made and followed the outlines I set well. My whole plan with it as
outlined in the portolio was to make a customer journey that could take a reader from
nothing to all the knowledge they needed. The problem, however, again stems from the
inital concept. While I created a site that I enjoyed the existence of, it was a very niche
concept. Not only this but in it’s current state it’s a one use site. If it was a blog site I was
going to commit to long term then I would have to create some kind of contnual stream of
content which, given the subject mater, would be probably quite expensive. For whatever
reason I just didn’t realize the short sightedness of this untl I was deep enough into the
project that I had sunk cost fallacy and just wanted to commit and see what I could get out
of what I had done. Again, if I was to do this again I would absolutely not use this same
concept.
Which then brings me to reflecton on the promoton of the site, a can of worms in and of
itself. Let me preface this secton by saying I am an incredibly social media averse person.
This is obviously not the best kind of background for doing a digital marketng module but I
was keen to try and overcome my lack of experience. This however meant I had no idea how
to use social media effectvely. As I said in the introductory, a learning experience to be sure.
I decided to go with the coffee mug of the day idea on Instagram frstly because it was
something I could do from my locked down positon at home and secondly because, as I
found out only afer startng, that I couldn’t actually directly link the site on any Instagram
posts. I focus on the Instagram here because in my opinion at least it was a superfcially
successful endeavour. As of writng the page is stll getng interactons despite no longer
keeping it actve. My objectve was to get an average of 10 interactons on my posts across a
month of promo and looking at the numbers I got close to 200 content interactons for 17
posts of content since May 1 which means I actually achieved this objectve. I can’t get an
exact number because analytcs only started tracking afer a few posts. However since there
was no way to actually put the link to the site in the posts it required people to actually view
the profle to see the site. Despite me putng a message in every post to check the site out,
analytcs show that while about 70 people since tracking started viewed the profle I only
ended up getng 9 sessions from Instagram.
At the tme of writng this on 25 May, the site ended up getng 24 unique users afer just
under a month of promoton and 38 sessions which at least meant some repeat viewers with
93 page views between then. It was low numbers to be sure and it was prety disappointng
considering the work I put into writng the site artcles. Twiter meanwhile had a distnct
lack of any directon at all but I could actually link the site in posts which meant that it ended
up getng 9 sessions itself. I went all in on the Instagram because it was getng signifcantly
more impressions per post and from my research its likelihood of conversion was higher
than all other social media. This seems to have been a mistake and if I was to do it again I’d
have a much beter idea of how to go about social media usage and promoton, and would
go in on sites where I could directly link the site rather than Instagram where it wasn’t
possible.
Despite everything, the whole assignment was a good learning experience and I’ve taken
away much from it especially in regards to actually maintaining a social media account and
using it for promoton. I think if I was to do this again it would be a far superior overall
product and, while this atempt may have not been very successful, it ‘s given me a lot of
experience for the future.