Sydney Coliseum Theatre Website

BUSINESS SITUATION

Like many venues in the performing arts industries (and others) Sydney Colisuem Theatre was hit hard by COVID. The Sydney Coliseum Theatre, West HQ approached Tangible seeking a complete website rebuild that allowed the company to better promote their full service offering, and increase their online presence . The current Sydney Coliseum Theatre website was built on Drupal that, while a satisfactory user experience for its audience, didn’t adequately suit their more ambitious content creation and distribution needs. The West HQ team turned to Tangible to help create something unique, iconic, whilst being easy to manage and update content internally. An important criterion for the solution was increasing conversion rates, minimising the ongoing development costs and removing content update limitations. With this in mind, our proposed solution was to build a new website on WordPress.

SOLUTION

The Tangible team led a cross-functional ideation session with key stakeholders from the SCT and West HQ Marketing Team. Whilst they liked the simple nature of their previous website, they felt that it didn’t encapsulate the premium offering and bold personality of ‘The Sydney Coliseum Theatre’.

The project consisted of three parts:

1. Seat View – a 360 degree view from your seat. Unlike other digitally rendered solutions, we wanted to create something as real as possible. A truly unique experience where guests could get a real look at what they would see from their seat prior to purchase, or in some cases, after. With the user in mind, we crafted two ways in which a user could access their view being a ticket search function or selecting a bay on the rendered map. A complete custom solution was built for WordPress.
2. UX Design – As part of the website design process, we worked with Sydney Coliseum Theatre on an audit of all of their existing website content. This involved breaking down all of the different pages and reviewing their performance to determine which pages could be removed, consolidated with another, improved or kept. We started with their sitemap, examining the user journeys. We than crafted a new User Flow which led us into wireframing. This helped to really scale back the number of pages on the website overall as well as simplify the structure of the navigation. The key pages on the site are now well structured allowing people to quickly find the information they need.
3. Event Page – The UX/UI of an event landing page plays a significant role in shaping the overall ticketing experience for attendees. A well-designed and intuitive page can make a positive impression, instilling confidence in potential attendees and encouraging them to purchase tickets.Extensive work was put into creating the optimal Event landing pages – utilising user experience testing and usability trends to make this page intuitive and engaging for regular and new bookers. We designed a template that would highlight the show using a large hero image with an optional video. A content area that allowed flexibility in adding a description, reviews and other rich text and/or html. The accordion dropdowns provided all the extra information users may seek allowing for a seamless experience. We coded a Spotify embed, a gallery which allowed for images and video, as well a cross-promotion block at the bottom of the page.
4. Search – Effective navigation and search functionality play a crucial role in providing a positive user experience. We designed and built intuitive navigation menus, allowing users to quickly find the information they need and easily navigate between different sections, such What’s on, Plan your visit, and Hire our venue. Additionally, we built a robust search functionality which enables attendees to search for specific events, venues, or ticket types, saving time and enhancing the overall user experience.

RESULT

Using an agile methodology, our delivery team worked closely with West HQ to rapidly prototype and build the experience, which was ready to go live for the public in only twelve weeks. The website has allowed Sydney Coliseum Theatre to offer a more engaging experience which has been incredibly successful in meeting their goals – including boosting ticket sales and giving people a much more enjoyable experience on mobile and tablet devices.

In the 6 months succeeding launch, we have seen a 33% increase in site users, and a massive 850% increase in ticketing click-through.

CLIENT

SYDNEY COLISEUM THEATRE, WEST HQ

PROJECT DATE

Jul 11, 2023

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