New website for Tonhalle Düsseldorf

More than 300,000 spectators a year attend the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra and many other renowned artists in over 450 concerts. Our task was to implement ambitious goals and challenges:

• Complete relaunch of the digital marketing landscape
• Implementation of a modern UI whose UX was inspired by established streaming services such as Netflix
• Migration of old content from the legacy system
• Connection to new third-party systems and SaaS
• Establishing a modern architecture
• GDPR-compliant implementation

How does a cultural entity become digital?

Through user experience and a well thought-out customer journey

The website for the Tonhalle was not only brought up to date technically, but also visually adapted to the new and fresh corporate design. In addition, processes were scrutinized, optimized and adapted, and external systems (such as the ticketing system for ticket sales and the event management system) were connected. With a single goal: to provide visitors with a consistent and enjoyable buyer journey.

Through content that impresses

Hundreds of events per season, history & culture of the Tonhalle and information about all services of the concert hall as well as an extensive press and PR area for trade visitors, the website offers music lovers a complete repertoire of content and information.

In a nutshell

Our client set us the following goals:

• High demands on the performance of the overall system in order to be prepared for the coming years.
• A modern, fast user interface - that's what visitors can expect today.
• A convenient and intuitive backend makes editors' daily work easier.
• Flexible options for content creation by the in-house team save external costs.
• A modern CMS shows that the Tonhalle is moving with the times.
• Connection to the new SaaS ticketing platform Secutix.
• Integration of the existing event database, where the events are maintained.

Our solution approach

Getting a handle on legacy systems

Content from the old website should be imported into the new system - with as little manual work as possible. We use Drupal Migrate to move the old press content to the new system.

Modern frontend & robust CMS

We use Drupal as a decoupled (headless) system in this project - this allows us to implement a completely javascript-based frontend and at the same time use the full potential of Drupal. This allows us to realize the desired user experience of our clients and the design team without compromising. For a professional media solution, we use Cloudinary as a CDN - because with programmable media we can automate further editorial work for customers and automatically scale and crop images with face recognition.

How to create a good product? Through a good process!

We introduce an agile process with everyone involved. Customers, partners and other service providers work and think successfully with us in sprints. We create the opportunity to react quickly to changing requirements and iterate and develop the features for the new website together.

New systems in the project

Along with the new website, our client is also introducing a new shop-system. The Tonhalle's new Secutix webshop is fully adapted to the Tonhalle's design.

Client testimonial

"Our collaboration with Bitmade was an impressive experience. They have exceeded our expectations with their professional, innovative approach and unwavering commitment. We look forward to more projects in the future." - Udo Flaskamp, Head of Marketing Tonhalle Düsseldorf

Bitmade develops with state-of-the-art technology

• Drupal serves as the basis as a decoupled/headless CMS, the frontend was implemented with Next.js.
• Data to be displayed is delivered from Drupal to the frontend via JSON:API using the Next Drupal packages (Next.js for Drupal ).
• React and Tailwind CSS are used as frontend frameworks.
• The system is hosted and operated in the AWS Cloud.
• Automatic image resizing and cropping was implemented for editor-friendly work: all required image derivatives are generated with AI support via Cloudinary Face Detection and delivered via a CDN.
• An automatic, time-based import of events with the Migrate API Framework was set up.
• The Drupal backend features the Gin theme and offers nodes/paragraphs as building blocks for website content.
• A modern and fast search was integrated with Elastic/OpenSearch, the extensively used event sliders display suitable events using the Search API.
• Smart real-time segmentation of events allows editors to create new topic areas (carousels/sliders) in Drupal flexibly and easily as paragraphs and to group the numerous events according to customer presentation.