Lucas Bols

Building a digital first experience.

Building a digital first experience

Amsterdam based Bols, is one of the most celebrated and best-loved liquor brands across the globe. It’s a staple on bar, restaurant and cocktail menus worldwide. Bols asked Story of AMS to elevate it’s brands - and make a new retail ecosystem that is faster, mobile-first and more interactive.

What we did

  • User Experience Design

  • Interface Design

  • Responsive Web Development

  • Content Production

Balance inspiration with clarity

Bols, founded in 1575 in Amsterdam, is one of the oldest liquor brands in the world. Untill today, Bols has the widest variety of market-relevant spirits. While this is great it also presented a challenge. How can we create a compelling and intuitive user journey through all the flavours and recipes?

Scalable Solution

The solution we landed on needed to be scalable. Since Bols produces over 40 different flavours which can be used to mix more than a 100 different cocktails. We created a digital design system that matched the look and feel of the Bols brand, and guides customers on an intuitive journey through all flavours and recipes.

Optimized product pages

When it comes to presenting the product, every flavour has a separate page. On that page, drinkers can find a variety of things. Cocktail recipes for that specific flavour? Check.
Video about the ingredients? Sure. Related recipes? Of course! All in all the solution was to create a single source where all that Bols has to offer lives and can be interacted with.

Future-proof technology framework

The platform is content heavy with hundreds of liqueurs and cocktails. We created a flexible framework that could handle this while keeping the same page speed. At the same time the framework also makes it easy for Bols to add new flavours and cocktails.

Unique design framework

Throughout the website we added elegant motion design which exposes the product and ingredients while scrolling.
To reduce manual labour and costs we created automated animations and transitions to create a consistent experience across all the pages.

QR Code integration

With a stronger focus on consumers, Bols added QR codes on their bottles. Each QR code is linked to the page that matches the bottle, where you can learn about the products ingredients, and the cocktails you can make with it.

Brand Storytelling

In order to truly transform the Bols story into a living, online narrative we created two pieces of video content. The content is used throughout the product pages and is focused on making the ecosystem more interactive and compelling.

Bols switched to using 100% natural botanicals throughout their whole product range. A big step that puts Bols in a league of their own. Today’s consumers are more aware
than ever on the impact they have on the world and the quality of products they consume. In the first video we focused on telling the story about the natural botanicals with which Bols products are made.

The history of Bols

Bols rich history is one of the things that makes the brand so unique. To draw people into their story and give them a little taste of their rich history, we created the second piece of video content to further enhance the brand storytelling.

Interesting in learning more?

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