Theatre Website Design
When local, independent theatre, The Place, needed a website that was much easier to update, integrated with their new ticketing system, and better reflected their outstanding events programme we were proud to help. As a web design agency, we are embedded in the creative industries and Bedford is our adopted home town.
Community theatres rely on volunteers and funding. They do not have the kind of website budgets that we are used to, so this project required a lot of creative problem solving to make sure they got the most effective, efficient website from a minimal budget.
Budgets & Drama
The Place Bedford is a community theatre located in the geographical & emotional heart of Bedford. Alongside community events for schools & amateur dramatics, The Place Theatre also delivers an innovative & impressive program of events that range from gaming events & audio recording to film & immersive theatre. The original theatre website had been built many years previously, and was difficult to update with the latest events listings and needed a new approach for their new theatre website design.
WordPress seemed to most practical solution, particularly as there was custom work required to integrate with their TicketSolve box office system.
Displaying Ticketsolve on a Theatre Website
One of the essential requirements of the new website design for The Place Theatre was the integration of Ticketsolve as a ticketing system, and to display the listings on the theatre website.
Ticketsolve is an event listings & online box office aimed specifically at arts organisations. It has the essential features to enable local theatres & venues to create events listings across multiple spaces, take payments and view reporting. TicketSolve also provides a simple way for arts organisations to display events on their own websites for marketing & SEO.
Narrative has a lot of experience integrating back-office systems into websites, so getting TicketSolve listings to display on the theatre website was surprisingly simple. TicketSolve provides an XML feed that arts organisations & theatres can use to display their event listing on their website. TicketSolve’s XML Feeds is old school & very limited compared to more modern techniques, but that also makes it reliable & incredibly easy way to display the events on a website and automatically keep them up to date.
Occasionally, The Place Bedford also runs events that aren’t suitable for TicketSolve, so they have the ability to manually add events to the What’s On page with different links for booking.
The Place Bedford
Narrative were originally unsuccessful when we pitched to design & build the theatre website for The Place Bedford. It wasn’t until about a year later that we learned that the successful agency had let them down and failed to deliver what they had promised. We stepped in to get the job done, with the remaining budget.
Narrative are experts at getting our clients the most bang for their buck when it comes to website. Our experience with enterprise level web development means that we can apply similar thinking to smaller projects, to ensure our clients get the most effective, efficient use of their budgets.