King Estate’s New Digital Reign

King Estate holds court as one of Oregon’s largest wineries and a major national wine industry brand. Their new FINE site creates a web presence to honor its grounds, history, and vision through an elegant exploratory experience.

The expansive estate in Eugene, Oregon boasts much more than King’s signature Pinot; it’s 1,033 organic acres of hand-grown grapes, orchards, gardens, lavender, and wetlands. With this in mind, a robust site that speaks to the Estate’s sense of place—took formation.

Throughout the fully responsive site that renders across the full spectrum of digital devices, the user is immediately welcomed into the King brand with the kind of confident approachability only possible from an established winery.

Visually driven modules act as both a guide into Oregon’s most notable characteristics, while also making King Estate accessible and recognizable nationally. FINE-written copy enhances this mission by telling the story of King’s dedication to sustainability, family-owned operations, and the evolution so notably started by Ed King Jr.

Much work took place behind the scenes to architect the modules used, guided by an intricate templating system that was complex in conception to make it easy for the end users. Wireframes outlined responsive behavior across devices, simplifying the production process and making the user experience smoother. Strategically, it helped focus features like the custom shop and All Wines page, where filters and collections make browsing and buying efficient and easy.

[caption id="attachment_16126" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Designer Amanda Joy-Frank and Developer Tim Shedor worked closely to create an original template system for the complex design[/caption]

On the technology side, a Test Driven Development methodology (backed by RSPEC Gem and 250 tests) was used to develop many of the more complex features on the site and make the site more sustainable and maintainable in the long run. A custom CMS also assists with ease of maintenance for fresh-content creation.

With such robust content and storytelling, the unveiling effect while scrolling through pages welcomes a smoother transition to the drawer navigation—most notably seen in the Explore the Estate page, where depth of content is balanced with ease of navigation.

Overall, the new King Estate website is as rich and engaging as the brand itself. It asks the user to Explore the Estate—a request met within every page.