Taproom Traffic: Planning a Brewery Website for Beers and Tours

To build a brewery website, list your beers with their style and strength, show your taproom hours and address, and let visitors book a table, a tour or an event in a few taps. Keep the text plain, keep the beer list current, and follow the labelling and review rules that apply where you sell.

• AI Web Maker built the fictional Ironhill Brewing sample, 6 pages, in 35 seconds, and it lists 3 bookable services. See the sample page
• US brewers must follow the labelling and advertising rules for malt beverages in 27 CFR part 7 and the health warning rules in part 16. TTB guidance
• The FTC's rule banning fake reviews and testimonials has applied since 21 October 2024. FTC announcement
• Google uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking. Google documentation
• The Brewers Association advises keeping tour groups small and tours on a regular schedule. Brewers Association

What does a brewery website have to do for its visitors?

It has to tell a beer lover what is pouring, when you are open and how to book. Everything else supports those three jobs.

Think about who arrives. One person on a phone outside your door wants to know if you are open now. A group of friends planning Saturday wants to know if they can reserve a table. A person organising a birthday wants to know if they can hire the space. A visitor from out of town wants to see the beers before deciding to travel.

Each of these visitors is short of time, so each page should lead with its answer. Put opening hours where they can be seen without scrolling, and put the address beside them. Put the booking button on every page where a decision happens, not only on one hidden page. If a visitor has to hunt for the closing time, they will often give up and pick another place.

Be honest about what you do. If you brew on site and pour in the taproom, say so, as the Ironhill Brewing sample does with its home page headline "Beer brewed here, poured here". Ironhill is a fictional brewery, built to show what AI Web Maker makes, and its people, reviews and prices are invented. Your own site should only say what is true of your own brewery. Visitors forgive a small taproom, but they do not forgive a promise that the room cannot keep.

A good test is the ten second check. Hand your phone to a friend who has never seen your site and ask them to find tonight's closing time and one beer they might order. If they need more than ten seconds, move things up the page. Repeat the test for booking a tour. This small habit finds most problems before a customer does, and it costs nothing but a few minutes of a friend's patience.

Resist the urge to put a long history first. Beer lovers like your story, but they read it after they know you are open and what you pour. Give the story its own page and link it from the menu. That way the people who care about your founding can find it, and the people who just want a pint are not slowed down. Both kinds of visitor leave happy, and both are more likely to come back.

Which pages does a brewery website need?

Start with six: home, beers, book a table or tour, events, your story and contact. That is the shape of the Ironhill sample.

Six pages are enough for most breweries and taprooms. More pages mean more words to keep current, and stale pages cost you trust. You can always add a page for a food menu, a merchandise shop or a club later. Begin small, get the facts right, and grow only when you can keep up. A tidy six page site that is always correct beats a sprawling one that is often wrong.

The table below maps each page to its job and shows where to see it done on the sample. Open the sample in another tab and click along as you read.

Page	What it must do	See it on the sample
Home	Show what is on tap, hours and a way to book	Home
Beers	List each beer with style, strength and tasting notes	Beers
Book a table	Let visitors pick a service, a day and a time	Book a table
Events	Explain private hire and take enquiries	Events
Our Story	Build trust with people and place	Our Story
Contact	Give address, hours and a message form	Contact

Name the menu items in the words visitors use. "Beers" beats "Our Liquid Portfolio". "Events" beats "Experiences". Plain labels help people and help search engines understand each page. A visitor should never have to guess what a menu word means, because a guess that goes wrong is a visit that ends.

If you run tours, decide whether they get their own page or sit inside the booking page. A brewery with one regular tour can list it as a bookable service. A brewery with several tours and tastings may want a short page that explains each one, then a booking button under each. Choose the layout that matches how many different things you actually offer. The sample keeps things simple, and most taprooms can do the same.

Keep the order of the menu stable: beers, book, events, story, contact. Regular visitors learn where things are, and they come back for the same few pages again and again. Changing the menu often confuses the people who already like you. If you must add a page, add it at the end, so that the familiar items stay where people expect them.

What should each brewery page say?

Each page should lead with its answer, then add detail. The words below are what beer lovers look for.

On the beers page, give every beer a name, a style, a strength and one or two lines of taste. Strength is the alcohol by volume, written as a figure with a percentage sign. Say plainly if a beer is seasonal or limited, and say when you update the list. The sample's beers page has a section on what changes through the year, which tells visitors why the list moves. If you serve food or snacks, give them their own short section with prices, as the sample does. A visitor who knows the price of a pretzel before arriving is a visitor who orders without worry.

Write the list as real text, not as a photo of a chalkboard. Text can be read on a phone, searched, translated and read aloud by screen readers. A photo of a board can do none of that. You can still show the board as a picture beside the text for atmosphere, but never let the picture be the only copy of the list. When a beer sells out, change the text the same day, so that nobody travels for a pint that is gone.

On the home page, show what is on at the taproom now, a short line about the room, a way to reserve and the address. Do not crowd it. Three or four clear blocks beat ten. The sample's home page uses sections for what is on, the taproom, a reservation prompt and how to find the brewery, and that order works because it follows the questions a visitor asks. Each block should earn its place by answering one question, and any block that answers none can go.

On the story page, name the people who brew and pour, say how the brewery began and describe what a visitor will find in the taproom. Real names and real photos build trust better than any slogan. Add a short note for groups who want to visit together and point them to the events page, as the Our Story page on the sample does. Keep the tone warm and direct, the way you would talk to a regular at the bar.

On the contact page, give the address, the opening hours by day and a short message form. Add a line for visitors who want something else, such as trade or press enquiries. Keep the hours exact, including any days you close, and update them for holidays. Avoid claims you cannot prove, such as "the best beer in town". Say what is true and specific: how you brew, what you pour, who you are. Specific facts persuade more than big words, and they cannot be disproved.

How should bookings, tours and events work?

Make booking a short path: pick a service, a day and a time, then send a request. Use a separate enquiry form for events, because they need more detail.

AI Web Maker's Booking Manager lists each bookable service with its length. A visitor chooses one, picks a day and a time and sends a request, and you accept it or move it. The Ironhill sample lists 3 bookable services this way. You can try the flow on its booking page and see how services are grouped on the category page. Because the owner accepts or moves each request, you stay in control of your own diary. A busy Friday cannot be overbooked by a form that never asks you first.

For tours, put the practical rules where people book. The Brewers Association suggests keeping tour groups small, running tours on regular days and times, and avoiding tours during production. It also suggests requiring closed-toe shoes and eye protection, and warning guests ahead of time that the brewery can be hot or cold. Those points belong in plain words on your booking page, so nobody is turned away at the door for the wrong shoes. If your insurer or local authority sets other rules, follow them and state them too. Clear rules written in advance make it easy and polite to say no on the day.

Say how long each service lasts. A visitor deciding between a tasting and a full tour needs the length to plan the day. Say what is included, such as a glass or a number of samples, only if it is true for every booking. Vague promises lead to disappointed guests and awkward conversations at the bar. A short line such as "about an hour, ending in the taproom" does more good than a paragraph of enthusiasm.

For events and private hire, the sample's events page shows a useful order: what you can host, the space, what you can provide, how to enquire, then the form. Ask for the date, the number of guests, the type of event and a contact number. Say how soon you reply, but only promise what you can keep. A group planning a party will often contact two or three venues, and the first clear reply usually wins. Speed and clarity matter more here than any discount.

Check the booking inbox daily. A request that sits unanswered for days loses the booking, and the visitor may go to the brewery down the road. Set a simple routine: look at requests when you open, and again before you close. Decide in advance who in your team answers, so that nothing falls between two people. When a request cannot be met, offer another day rather than a bare refusal, because many visitors will happily move if you suggest a time that works.

How does a brewery website earn trust, and which rules apply?

It earns trust with real people, real photos, exact facts and honest reviews. Alcohol advertising, labelling, age and review rules add limits you should know before you publish.

On labelling, the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says brewers must follow the labelling and advertising requirements for malt beverages in 27 CFR part 7 and the health warning statement rules in part 16. It also publishes a guide to malt beverage labelling that lists mandatory label information such as brand name, net contents, class or type, name and address, alcohol content and the health warning statement. If you show can or bottle labels on your site, show the approved label, and check the TTB pages for how advertising is treated. Rules differ by country and state, so check your own regulator or brewers association. This is general information, not legal advice.

Age rules matter too. Many places restrict who may buy or be served alcohol. The sources here do not state your local rule, so look it up with your own regulator and say it plainly on the site, for example in the footer and on the booking page, so visitors know who may attend. A clear age line protects you and sets expectations for groups that include younger guests. It also saves your staff from having to explain the rule at the door to a disappointed family.

On reviews, the US Federal Trade Commission announced a final rule on 14 August 2024, in force from 21 October 2024, that bans fake or misleading consumer reviews and testimonials. That includes reviews by people who do not exist or who had no real experience with the business. In the UK, since April 2025 the law bans posting or commissioning fake reviews, and the CMA can fine a company up to 10% of its global turnover. The FTC also publishes guidance on endorsements and reviews for businesses. Read it once, and you will know what a safe testimonial looks like.

So use only real reviews from real customers, and never write your own. The reviews on the Ironhill sample are invented because it is a fictional demonstration, and your site must not copy that approach. If you have no reviews yet, leave the space empty rather than filling it. A site with fewer, genuine words is safer and more believable than one padded with praise nobody earned. Over time, ask happy visitors to leave an honest word, and quote only what they actually wrote.

How do you make the site work for every visitor?

Design for the phone first, keep pages fast and meet basic accessibility standards. Most visitors will be standing outside, deciding where to go.

Google uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking, so a site that works badly on a phone also ranks worse. Check that text is readable without zooming, that buttons are large enough to tap and that the booking form works with one thumb. Test on a real phone, not only on a laptop with a narrow window. Try it outdoors in bright light as well, because that is where many of your visitors will be.

Keep photos sensible in size. A heavy gallery of beer shots can slow a page on a weak signal. Choose a few strong images of the taproom, the brewhouse and the people, and give each a short text description. Taprooms are often in industrial areas where mobile signal is patchy, so a light page is a kindness to your visitors. A page that loads at once feels welcoming, and a page that hangs feels closed.

Accessibility is a legal and a practical matter. The US Department of Justice's web guidance of 18 March 2022 says Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by businesses open to the public. It names the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as helpful technical standards and lists common barriers: poor colour contrast, colour alone used to give information, images without alt text, videos without captions, inaccessible online forms and mouse-only navigation. The current version, WCAG 2.2, became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. You do not need to read the whole standard to start, only to know that it exists and what it asks for.

For a brewery, that means a few habits. Use strong contrast between text and background, even on a dark, moody design. Label every form field. Make sure the whole site works with a keyboard. Do not show strengths or beer styles by colour alone. If you share a video of a tour, add captions. These steps also help visitors reading in bright sun, and they cost little if you build them in from the start. Fixing them later is always harder than doing them first.

How will local beer lovers find your brewery?

Keep your name, address, phone number and hours identical everywhere, claim your Google Business Profile and write helpful pages. Local search rewards accuracy and usefulness.

Google's guidelines for a Business Profile ask a business to represent itself as it is consistently represented and recognised in the real world: its real name, address, phone number and hours. Make the details on your site match the profile letter for letter, and update both when hours change for a holiday or a private event. A mismatch confuses both search engines and customers. It takes five minutes to check, and it prevents a wasted trip.

Google also supports LocalBusiness structured data, which can tell it your hours, departments and other details. Ask whoever maintains your site whether it is included. It is a quiet piece of work that helps your listing stay accurate. You will never see it on the page, but search engines read it and use it.

Write for people. Google's ranking systems are designed to prioritise helpful, reliable information created to benefit people, not content made mainly to rank in search. For a brewery, that means a beer list that is accurate, a visit page that answers real questions and an events page that explains what you offer. Mention your town or neighbourhood naturally, where a visitor would expect it, such as on the contact page and in your story. Do not stuff place names into every sentence, because readers notice and so do search engines.

A site check can find problems that keep pages out of results. AI Web Maker's AI Website SEO Tools checks the pages of any website for those problems and says how to fix each one. Run it after you build, and again after any large edit. Local visitors also arrive from maps, social posts and word of mouth, so make sure the address on your site links cleanly to a map and that your site name matches the sign on your door. Consistency across every place a visitor might meet you is the quiet engine of local search.

How do you build a brewery website with AI Web Maker?

Give AI Web Maker your brewery's name and a short description, watch it build the pages, then edit every word and photo before going live. The sample took 35 seconds to build.

Follow these steps.

1. Go to the AI Web Maker builder and enter your business name, an email, a phone number and a short description. Mention that you brew on site, that you have a taproom and that you offer tours or events.
2. Watch the build. AI Web Maker plans the pages, writes the words, chooses the photos and sets up booking and enquiry forms where the business needs them.
3. Open the editor. Every page can be changed: the words, the photos, the sections, the services, the prices and the hours. Replace placeholder beers with your real list, styles and strengths.
4. Set up your bookable services in the Booking Manager. Add each tour, tasting or table booking with its length, then check how a visitor sees it.
5. Add your tour safety notes and age statement to the booking page and footer, using your local rules.
6. Replace any sample reviews with real ones from real customers, or leave them out until you have some.
7. Preview everything on a phone and on a laptop. Click every button. Send yourself a test booking and a test event enquiry.
8. Go live when you are happy.

Building and previewing cost nothing, so you can try the whole thing before you decide. Going live costs $119 a year of hosting, and the domain name is paid separately. Optional AI work, such as extra blog posts, is paid with credits of about $0.65 each. You pay for those only if you choose to use them, and the site works without them.

If you would like to compare your plan with a finished example before you start, read this brewery website example page, which sets out the sample's facts, then click through its live pages. Seeing a complete taproom site makes it easier to decide what to keep and what to change. For more on what a taproom site needs beyond the beer list, see the companion guide on microbrewery websites.

Frequently asked questions

How many pages does a brewery website need?

Six is a good start: home, beers, booking, events, your story and contact. That is the structure of the Ironhill sample. Add pages for food, merchandise or a club only when you can keep them current. A small, accurate site beats a large, outdated one.

Should I list beer strengths on my website?

Yes, give each beer its style and strength so visitors can choose before they arrive. Alcohol content on labels has its own rules, which the TTB explains on its labelling page. Check your regulator before you publish claims beyond style and strength, and keep the site consistent with your approved labels.

Can I write my own customer reviews for the site?

No. Fake or misleading reviews and testimonials are banned under the FTC's rule in the US and under UK law since April 2025. Use only real reviews from real customers. Rules differ by place, so check your own regulator.

How should I handle tour safety on the site?

State the rules where people book. The Brewers Association suggests small groups, regular tour times, closed-toe shoes and eye protection, and a warning that the brewery can be hot or cold. Telling guests in advance avoids arguments at the door.

Do I need a separate form for private events?

Yes. Events need a date, a guest count and the type of event, which a simple booking does not. The sample's events page ends with an enquiry form for this reason. Say how you will reply, and reply quickly.

How much does it cost to put the site online?

Building and previewing with AI Web Maker cost nothing. Going live costs $119 a year of hosting, and the domain name is paid separately. Optional AI work is paid with credits of about $0.65 each.

What should you do this week?

Spend one week on the facts, and let the builder do the layout.

On day one, write your beer list in plain text: name, style, strength and one line of taste. On day two, write your opening hours by day, your address and the tours or events you offer, with their lengths. On day three, find your local age and advertising rules and note what your site must say. Check your regulator or brewers association rather than relying on a general guide.

On day four, open the Ironhill sample and click through every page, noting what you would copy and what you would change. On day five, start your build with your name and a short description, then edit each page with your real facts. Send yourself a test booking and a test event enquiry, check it on your phone and ask a friend to find tonight's closing time in ten seconds.

On the weekend, claim or check your Google Business Profile so the name, address, phone number and hours match your site exactly. Then go live, and update the beer list whenever the taps change.