Angostura Bitterly Disappointed
I know I shouldn’t be making fun of other people’s website design, but there is something particularly jarring about this. Angostura Bitters is a world-renowned drink ingredient. The brand has been around since 1824 (no typo). It is an essential element of the world’s oldest cocktail recipes, like the Manhattan.
2 oz blended whiskey
1/2 oz sweet vermouth
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1 dash Angostura Bitters
Swirl with ice to chill, pour into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a maraschino cherry.
Great product, but their website design is pretty poor.
What’s wrong?
a) Smiley happy people
b) Big Angostura bottle size of a bar stool
c) Ugly fonts, many fonts
d) Shiny halo around the bottle
e) Recipes section looks like it was designed in 1994
f) Dark letters on a dark red background
g) Crazy line frames
h) Very little connection to the heritage in the title
i) No links from the “Recipes” headline at the top
Like I said, I know I shouldn’t talk, because of my default Word Press template. I must change my design. The world’s greatest, oldest brands suddenly become pretty crappy when framed in a crappy website. And a decent blog is indeed tainted by a run-of-the-mill WP template.
The recipes section has some good content though. Try the Sophistication. Smooth as can be.
Thanks for your comments.
Hi Giselle. I hope I didn’t come across as too harsh. I just think there is a huge opportunity, with minimal investment, for Angostura to position itself as the “world’s most important cocktail ingredient for almost 200 years”; improving the website and using social media.
Get the owners to agree on a competitive bidding process for (a) a marketing visual ID “brand book” and (b) a new website based on that brandbook, and get a whole bunch of ideas (for free). Make sure one of the big bosses is at the presentations from the brand/web agencies. Then they’ll very likely give some budget to pick one company and make at least some of the ideas real, and take Angostura Bitters in a direction it deserves to go!