Matawhero

Matawhero is a heritage-rich Gisborne winery producing premium, naturally dry-farmed wines since 1975. Their online presence needed to reflect the brand’s deep roots in sustainability, craftsmanship, and coastal terroir, while showcasing their growing global ambitions. The website, built on WordPress with WPBakery and WooCommerce, serves as both a storytelling platform and an eCommerce store.

• Design a website that balances brand storytelling with eCommerce functionality.
• Represent the legacy and historical journey of the winery in a visually engaging format.
• Display a categorized wine catalog (e.g., “Single Vineyard”, “Church House”) for easy user navigation.
• Integrate third-party booking links for accommodation.
• Create a scalable content structure to share news, recipes, and insights.
• Ensure responsive design and modern UX for a diverse global audience.

• Built the site using WPBakery for flexible content layout control and ease of updates.
• Developed a custom legacy timeline, detailing Matawhero’s history year-by-year, highlighting milestones and heritage.
• Integrated WooCommerce to showcase wine products with category-based filtering and a detailed product page layout, featuring tasting notes, grape information, and vineyard background.
• Added a team member showcase section to build trust and brand authenticity.
• Implemented a news and recipe blog module, allowing easy updates and better SEO indexing.
• Included prominent, styled CTAs for third-party accommodation booking, seamlessly blending external functionality with on-site UX.

• Increased engagement across product pages and story-driven sections like the history timeline and team profiles.
• Boosted online wine sales with clear product categorization and a seamless checkout flow.
• The winery’s brand narrative now resonates strongly, with many users spending longer on the site exploring history and process pages.
• Streamlined wine browsing improved user satisfaction and lowered bounce rates.
• Blog content has driven organic traffic growth via news and recipes.

• A wine brand with strong heritage benefits from rich storytelling features like historical timelines and regional pride.
• Pairing WooCommerce with visual builders like WPBakery allows non-technical teams to maintain and grow a product catalog with confidence.
• Integrating third-party tools (like accommodation booking) directly into the UX maintains a unified user journey without requiring full backend builds.
• Carefully organized product categories (e.g., Single Vineyard vs. Church House) improve both discoverability and purchase intent.
• Combining visual storytelling, and local identity can elevate a niche regional brand to international appeal.

• Frontend: Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, jQuery
• Database: MySQL
• Page Builder: WPBakery
• Backend: WordPress, WooCommerce