Reviving Heritage Online: A Digital Stage for a City’s Cultural Landmark

A major historic performing-arts venue located in an urban cultural precinct undertook a full redesign and rebuild of its public website using Kentico Xperience 12. The goal was to deliver a modern, engaging digital platform that reflects the grandeur of the venue, simplifies event discovery and booking, supports venue hire enquiries, and empowers internal teams to update content more efficiently. 

Business Objectives: 

• Provide visitors with an intuitive “What & When – Book Now” digital experience for upcoming performances, shows, and events. 
• Enhance the venue’s identity as a landmark cultural destination by reflecting its heritage and modern amenities online. 
• Enable the marketing/team to manage content such as event listings, venue-hire details, and venue history without developer bottlenecks.
• Improve site usability on mobile devices and across platforms to meet thebehaviorsof diverse audience segments.
• Support venue-hire enquiries and function bookings (e.g., theatre, foyer, meeting spaces) via clearly defined online pathways.

Key Features & Deliverables: 

• Modular page templates in Kentico K12:HomePage,EventsLandingPage,VenueHirePage,PerformanceDetailPage,VenueHistoryPage.
• Clear segmentation of content: “What’s On”,“Hire Our Venue”,“Visit & Accessibility”,“History & Heritage”.
• Responsive, mobile-first design for usersto browseupcoming shows on phones and tablets.
• Visual storytelling of the venue’s heritage and architecture, with strong imagery and event-driven visuals.
• Content editor workflows allowing non-technical staff to upload event information, banner images, venues and hire terms.
• Analytics tracking tomonitorevent page visits, booking enquiry submissions, mobile vs desktop usage.

Challenges: 

• Translating therich heritage and multifaceted functionof the venue (historic theatre, live performances, venue hire) into a clean, usable digital experience.
• Ensuring clear navigation and user flows for diverse audiences (patrons, hirers, tourists) with differentobjectives.
• Delivering a strong visual ambience (heritage + performance) whilemaintainingmobile performance and accessibility.
• Empowering internal teams to manage frequent updates (new shows, hire offers, news) without developer dependency.

Solution Approach: 

• Deployed KenticoXperience12 as the CMS framework: defined content types (EventPage,VenueHirePage,HistoryPage) and reusable widgets (hero banner, event carousel, hire enquiry CTA).
• Designed an audience-centric UI:Homepagehighlights upcoming shows + “Book Now” CTA + venue hire feature; navigation simplifies access to events and venue details.
• Adopted mobile-first CSS grid, lazy-loaded images, and optimized asset load to support on-the-go users.
• Configured editorial workflows: marketing and venue staff can schedule event pages, update hire terms, and publishheritage stories independently.
• Embedded analytics dashboards tomonitorkey metrics: event page engagement, mobile vs desktop bounce rate, hire-enquiry conversions.

Quantifiable Results (First Quarter Post-Launch): 

• ~25 %increase in visits to “What’s On” events pages.
• ~20 %improvement in mobile engagement metrics (lower bounce rate, longer session durations).

• Internalcontent teamreported ~30 %faster publishing of new event pages and hire offers.
• Increase in venue-hire enquiries via website contact form (compared to legacy site baseline).

Conclusion: 

The revamped digital presence for the historic performing-arts venue, built on Kentico Xperience 12, successfully transformed its site into a modern, engaging, and content-efficient platform. It reinforced the venue’s position as a cultural landmark, improved user access to events and hire services, and enabled internal teams to operate with greater agility.