About Bush Theatre
The internationally-renowned Bush Theatre in London is a beloved home of new plays, and a champion of exciting playwrights.
They’re on the cutting edge of theatre – the Bush has helped launch the careers of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Richard Gadd, among many others, while Lenny Henry, Golda Rosheuvel and Letitia Wright have walked their boards in recent years.
But if you looked at their website, it was a different story being told – the site looked outdated and clunky, with messy user journeys to buy tickets, and very little content telling the theatre’s story effectively. Enough was enough – time for something new!
Onboarding and discovery
We spent plenty of time getting to know the Bush team, their frustrations with the current site and Spektrix integration, and their goals going forward. Working with their marketing and box office experts side by side meant we left no stone unturned in looking for a way to improve user experiences.
Content migration and managing their extensive archive of posts going forwards was also essential – we undertook extensive analysis of the site’s SEO performance across all content, ensuring we didn’t lose anything important while also streamlining both the size of the site, and processes for updating it.
A punchy, modern design
At first look, the new Bush Theatre website is focused on with dark greys contrasting with the recognisable brand green, paired with bold lettering and video content to capture hard-hitting work. As users scroll, pops of colour and vibrant images join in to guide you through a journey focused around creativity and community.
Flexible page layouts mean the production pages can develop through a show’s run, adding photos, videos and reviews as they become available. It’s a dynamic web design that can respond to the theatre’s needs.
Fundraising-focused Spektrix integration
As a charity, the Bush Theatre relies on donations and memberships as much as its commercial offering. By using the Spektrix API to rebuild the site’s buyer journey, we can not only improve upsells for events and drinks at the bar, we can also prompt for donations and membership signups at key points along the way.
Custom features to improve access
Improving access to theatre is one of the Bush’s biggest aims – and they go beyond many other theatres in achieving this. While the site does have an easy-to-use accessible performances listing, price-based accessibility was as important for the team.
The theatre provides a £15 discounted ticket offer, allowing a much wider audience to attend shows. The offer isn’t available for every performance of every production, and the availability is heavily date-driven, so delivering a calendar system specifically for these tickets was essential.
Focus on sustainability
Our sustainable approach was something that helped the Bush team make their decision to work with this, and we ensured the site was built to the highest standards with sustainability in mind.
We use green hosting for all of our sites, and also ensure efficient code and content optimisation to minimize the carbon usage per page. Working with the Bush team on content and page layouts meant we were able to achieve Eco-Friendly Web Alliance Accreditation for the site.
Impact
The new site launched to coincide with a new season of productions at the theatre, so we could see the impact we were able to make right away.
We were delighted to hear that it was the Bush Theatre’s most successful on-sale in recent history – due primarily to an amazing programme, of course, but we can’t help but feel like the improved user experience played its part!
We saw:
- A 133% increase in ticket purchases (compared to the previous season)
- A 348% increase in purchase revenue in the first four weeks after launch (compared to the same period in the previous year)
- A 61% increase in all on-site conversions, from the major to the minor, in the first month after launch (compared to the previous month)
Ongoing support
We continue to work with the Bush team on hosting and maintaining their new website, as well as adding new features as needed. Our hope is that it will continue to grow with them for years to come.
Let’s work together
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