Prepare Your Website for 2025: 8 Essential Checks for Food & Drink Brands

It’s tempting to think that after all the work you’ve put into creating your website, it’s done and dusted. However, no website is static. It needs to be regularly refreshed and tweaked – whether on the customer facing side or the back end – to stay in tune with tech developments, consumer trends and market shifts. Businesses in the food and drink sector significantly impacted by these factors, so it’s crucial to give your website a regular once over to see where you might need to step things up.

1. Is your website optimised for mobile users?

With smartphone searches accounting for over 50% of online traffic, having a mobile responsive website is a must. Things to look at include:

• Does the page design allow content to adapt seamlessly to any screen size or are bits cut off and out of line?
• Is overall page speed a problem?
• Do images and videos take their sweet time to load?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” it’s time to get it sorted.

A digital specialist can give you all the pointers you need on how to enhance your website, keep your brand consistent, boost your online visibility, make your social media profiles the envy of your competitors and much more besides. They also know how to navigate market trends, leverage customer behaviour and create campaigns that connect with your specific target demographic. 

2. Is your SEO strategy up to date?

As consumer behaviour changes and trends come and go, search keywords and phrases naturally change in step. If you want customers to be able to find your online shop or visit your premises, examine your current content for SEO:

• Are you targeting the right keywords for your niche? Eg, handmade, artisan, organic, etc.
• Are you using key dietary and environmental terms? Eg, vegan, gluten free, sustainable etc.
• Are your Google My Business listing and local SEO optimised?
• Are you consistently adding fresh, valuable content to your site?

Search engine optimisation might not be the simplest thing to rectify but it’s a key practice to improve website performance for food brands.

3. Have you updated your branding lately?

Your visual identity goes way beyond simply making everything look great. Cohesive design and strategic placement build recognition, trust, and loyalty. Even the most recognised brands on the planet regularly refine their logo design and marketing to stay relevant. A regular brand audit never goes amiss, so it’s worth asking:

• Is your branding consistent across your website?
• Does your brand look dated? E.g, colour palettes, logo, and typography.
• Does the design reflect who you are and what you offer as a business right now? E.g, do you offer new products, has your sustainability ethos or niche evolved, etc?)

It may be that you’d benefit from creating an entirely new brand pack, or perhaps a few subtle tweaks might be enough to give your branding a fresher look.

4. Is your E-commerce shop up to the job?

Whether you’re selling B2C produce in your online shop, offering home food delivery or working with wholesale B2B clients, your customers expect a clear, seamless system that makes their purchase straightforward. Key aspects to consider here include:

• Does your site have a one-page checkout or do customers have to jump through hoops?
• Do you offer multiple payment methods like Google or Apple Pay, PayPal etc?
• Have you got an effective system for abandoned carts?
• Does your site offer B2B customers a secure login, wholesale bulk order calculation, custom quoting etc?

Making your customers ‘journey as painless as possible could be the difference between clinching or missing a sale.

5. Are your performance analytics optimised?

Another key website optimisation tip for food and beverage brands is getting your metrics sorted. It’s critical to know how your website is performing to pinpoint key areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions. So,

• Are you making the most of Google analytics, heatmaps etc. to help you track metrics and better understand consumer browsing behaviours?
• Are you paying attention to conversion and bounce rates?

We know that website analytics aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but gathering and using key metrics is the cornerstone of building a successful digital strategy.

6. Are you gathering social proof?

When it comes to food and drink, personal recommendations carry a lot of weight. A few questions that can highlight whether your website gives customers the opportunity to share their experience are:

• Does your site offer the opportunity for customers to add reviews/ratings to product pages?
• Do you feature prominent testimonials and case studies on your site?
• Are your social media platforms fully integrated and do you offer incentives for customers to tag your products?

In a highly competitive sector, social proof is a powerful tool for driving conversions.

7. Are you automating key functions?

Al can be a useful and effective tool to keep customers happy and free you up to concentrate on other areas of your business. For example:

• Would adding a chat bot be a more efficient and foolproof way to field frequent questions?
• Could integrating AI make your site more interactive and creative? E.g, enabling customers to create their own food or drink pairings?
• Would automating functions like bookings and deliveries improve customer experience?

The possibilities of Al are ever expanding and something that many food and drink businesses are incorporating into their digital platforms.

8. Are those all-important environmental credentials on display?

Sustainability, food miles, zero carbon – all big buzzwords in the food and drink sector. With consumers thinking greener, you need to make sure that your environmental policies shine through. So, ask yourself:

• What are the important environmental issues that customers are concerned about and want to see addressed by businesses like yours? E.g, food miles, ingredient sources, waste, and recycling, etc.
• Does your website content effectively convey your environmental ethos?

This will become increasingly important to consumers going forward, so remains a key area of focus for the food and beverage industry.

Create a website that serves your customers with Web Adept

As experts in developing B2C and B2B marketing strategies for food and drink websites, we know our way around the sector. We’re lucky to count some of the best local and national food and drink brands among our clients. Luminaries include:

• Salty sea dogs and purveyors of excellent spirits Barti Rum, who tasked us with designing a bespoke, on-brand e-commerce website with the wow factor.
• Wholesale growers and champions of the finest Welsh farm foods Puffin Produce who asked us to transform their old third-party website into a fresher, more agile site with sleeker brand alignment.
• One of Pembrokeshire’s finest foodie hotspots The Angel in Narberth, who we worked with on their website and brand refresh after the new owners undertook extensive (and seriously stylish) refurbishment of their boutique bar, restaurant and accommodation.

So, if you need experienced digital mentors help you implement some of the website tips above or to keep your business in step with more general 2025 digital trends for food and beverage companies, drop us a line at hello@webadept.co.uk or call +441437 720033.

And if you’d like to stay up to date with our latest news and digital marketing top tips, why not sign up to our fortnightly newsletter on our Let’s Talk page?

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