Sector(s)
Team Members
Project Team
Michael Kent
Robert Varkonyi
Un.titled and the Young Vic came together to revamp a site based on excellent data analysis instead of C-suite whims, making sure the customer was always at the centre of any decision.
The Young Vic is one of the UK’s preeminent theatres, with a long pedigree of creative success and a reputation for bringing politically astute and performatively daring creations to their London stage for fifty years.
Un.titled has only been around for fifteen years, but has consistently provided a home for high profile digital projects across the arts, cultural, heritage and non-profit sectors of the UK.
About the project
The primary goal of this project was to get the client off of an outdated site that was providing numerous resource challenges, both in terms of employee time and budgetary allocation. The previous site had been poorly designed, and its lack of mobile responsiveness hindered customer activity. A theatre company thrives on a creative approach, but it also needs to deliver a rock-solid user experience in terms of payment pathways and feedback mechanisms on all devices, and we knew that Drupal (in combination with our workshop-heavy waterfall approach) would deliver.
Improving the data architecture while providing adaptive content types for a more user-focused approach were two key pillars of our approach with the Young Vic. Combined with a seamless checkout pathway, this provides for both the creative and the practical demands of a site like this.
The results speak for themselves: year-on-year, they’ve seen a 9% increase on users and a staggering 21% increase in revenue. User sessions last up to a quarter longer, proving that content delivery has improved: a central KPI for showing that the new site achieves what it set about to do.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal met the needs of the project perfectly: a powerful platform that can handle the integration demands of the Tessitura API and TNEW ticketing system, while at the same time being flexible enough to meet the creative goals of the client. We believe that Drupal offers the most stable CMS for our clients, especially when they are trained in all of its facets.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
We’ve been working on our own Drupal theme development for a long time: we know our client base and have worked diligently to assemble a variety of key tools and styles that address their needs. This is partly because there are so many shared concerns—for example, making a content toolkit that can flexibly display a wide range of different content elements is a need shared across the majority of our clientele—and partly because deployment becomes so much faster. With the base build taken care of by a well-maintained custom theme, we can concentrate on the design and UX of a site instead of the everyday. This has been a boon to our production phase and a clear win for clients like Young Vic who have as high an expectations for site styling as they do for site performance.
Module choice reflects the nature of the Young Vic as a business. Pauthauto helps with easy URL updates, which make friendlier addresses for marketing purposes a breeze. Filters are an expected feature of theatre sites, so modules like Taxonomy and Better Exposed Filters help make it easy and powerful to redisplay content. Embed is an example of a necessary module for content extensibility: being able to include rich content from a variety of sources is a must-have for all artistic venues, and the theatre is no exception.
