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.
