How Propeller Transformed JW Lees’ Digital Estate

Founded in 1828 by John Lees, JW Lees is a seventh generation family brewery based in Middleton, North East Manchester. Along with their brewing routes, the company now spans Willoughby’s Wine Merchants, along with a flourishing managed pub & hotel estate spanning from Manchester to North Wales.

As a heritage driven, family-run brewery with nearly 200 years of history, JW Lees blends tradition with a modern guest experience across its growing estate. When they first partnered with us, they had a very basic digital presence, making it critical to build a strong foundation for their online identity.

As their estate expanded and customer expectations shifted, the need for a cohesive, scalable hospitality digital transformation became a core strategic priority. We also identified a significant opportunity to drive online bookings via their digital channels.

Key goals included:
Building a strong pub and brewery website design from the ground up
Driving bookings across the estate through web and platform-level solutions
Increasing website traffic and improving conversion rates
Creating a digital experience that reflected the heritage and personality of the JW Lees brand

Phase 1: Estate-wide template development
Our first job was to ensure that each of the venues in the managed estate had a website that did them justice. We developed several templates, which were critical commercially as they enabled rapid deployment of multiple sites, and streamlined maintenance across a growing multi-site estate, forming the backbone of a scalable hospitality web platform.

Phase 2: Central website redesign
We designed and developed the new JWLees.co.uk website, transforming their central hub into a digital destination that reflects the richness of the brand’s brewing and hospitality heritage.

Phase 3: Headless architecture rollout
As their requirements grew more complex, we introduced a new headless website variation to improve performance, flexibility, and speed across all sites, enabling better integration with bookings and content management via a multi-site CMS.

Phase 4: Central site redevelopment
We delivered a full redevelopment of the central site to modernise the user journey, strengthen brand storytelling, and improve visibility of key revenue-driving areas. This continued investment in a unified hospitality web platform ensures the estate can efficiently scale and adapt to evolving customer expectations.

A major focus of the revamped central site was bringing JW Lees’ beers to life. We saw a product SEO opportunity and developed: Dynamic beer cards, Individual beer pages with enhanced content and improved on-site navigation. This allowed the brewery’s most iconic products to become a hero feature of the digital experience.