Athletic Brewing Co.
From Culture to Commerce:
Designing the App
Overview
The Athletic Brewing Company app provides a seamless shopping experience for customers looking to purchase non-alcoholic beer products.
However, it also offers much more. The app aims to create a sense of community, allowing users to engage with the brand's culture and values while exploring its product offerings. The end result is a comprehensive and engaging experience that not only drives sales but also strengthens the brand's relationship with its customers.
Client: Athletic Brewing Co. is a alcohol-free beer company dedicated to making great-tasting craft brews, without compromise.
Goal: Creating an app for Athletic Brewing Co that will provide easy access to a variety of alcoholic free drink options, offer a convenient subscription model, and foster a sense of community and engagement among users.
My Role
- Product Designer
Project Length
- 10 Months (discovery → launch → iterations)
Skills
- UX Research
- Product Strategy
- Design System
- Prototyping
- Documentation
Business Context
Athletic Brewing had built one of the fastest-growing alcohol-free beer brands in the United States. While its ecommerce website successfully drove online sales, the company saw an opportunity to create a dedicated mobile experience that would do more than facilitate purchases.
The team wanted the app to become a destination customers would return to regularly—not only to shop, but to stay connected with the brand through exclusive content, athlete stories, new product launches, and community experiences.
From a business perspective, the product needed to support three strategic goals:
- Increase recurring revenue through subscriptions
- Improve customer retention beyond individual purchases
- Strengthen long-term brand loyalty
Rather than designing another ecommerce app, the challenge was creating a product customers would want to open even when they weren't buying beer.
Success Metrics
Before starting design, we aligned on the business outcomes that would define success.
Discovery
Rather than jumping directly into design, I wanted to understand the current market and why customers purchased Athletic Brewing products and what prevented them from returning more frequently.
Research included:
Competitive Landscape
Instead of only focusing on direct competitors, I looked at products solving similar engagement problems. I analyzed both direct competitors and brands known for strong customer engagement to understand where Athletic could differentiate beyond the ecommerce experience.
The analysis showed that:
- Most competitors focused almost exclusively on the ecommerce experience
- Very few created reasons for customers to return between purchases.
This revealed an opportunity for Athletic to use content and community as retention drivers. Giving users reasons to return even when they weren't ready to buy.
User Research Insights
We conducted several rounds of user interviews to better understand our users motivations, behaviors, and pain points throughout the purchasing experience. After synthesizing the research, we identified recurring patterns around shopping habits, subscription needs, and brand engagement.
We translated these findings into three distinct user personas representing our core customer segments. These personas helped us bring research insights into the design process and provided a shared framework for prioritizing features, evaluating ideas, and ensuring the experience addressed the needs of our target users.
Insight 1 → Users identified with Athletic's lifestyle.
People weren't simply buying beer. They were buying into health, performance, and social experiences without alcohol.
Opportunity: This suggested the app should reinforce the brand beyond commerce.
Insight 2 → Returning customers want speed
Many purchases were repeats. Users expected reordering to feel effortless.
Opportunity: Create a personalized experience for returning guests, making it easy to manage subscriptions, reorder past purchases, and discover relevant products.
Insight 3 → Content increased trust.
Many purchases were repeats. Users enjoyed athlete stories, recipes, podcasts and new releases. The existing website treated this content as secondary.
Opportunity: The app could elevate it into a daily engagement experience.
Key Design Decisions
Design decisions that shaped the experience
Design System
To ensure consistency and scalability, I built a reusable component library supporting the application across future releases.
The system included
- Typography
- Color tokens
- Buttons
- Product Cards
- Navigation
- Forms
- Accessibility guidelines
Introducing dark mode early ensured accessibility was considered as part of the foundation rather than as an afterthought.
Deliver
MVP Launch
After extensive discussions, we reached the final design solution for the app. We made several important decisions to enhance user experience: we changed the label "Locator" to "Stores" for clearer understanding, introduced "quick links" as handy bubbles for easy navigation, implemented a dual state slider in the cart screen to switch between one-time purchases and subscriptions.
To simplify the process, we eliminated the "create your own subscription" flow, allowing users to add products to their cart as either one-time purchases or subscriptions. Additionally, we recognized the importance of accessibility and created a sleek dark mode design. These changes ensure a more intuitive and inclusive experience for all users.
Reflection
Looking back, there are two areas I'd continue exploring.
- First, I'd validate which types of content create the strongest long-term retention through experimentation and analytics rather than launching all content equally.
- Second, I'd explore personalized recommendations based on purchasing behavior to make product discovery more relevant for returning customers.
The project reinforced an important lesson:
Designing an ecommerce product isn't only about making checkout easier. The greatest opportunity often lies in creating reasons for customers to come back before they're ready to buy again.