By
As we begin to see the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, live music venues are ramping up to host shows again. Integrity’s favorite venues are right here in the Loop: The Pageant and Delmar Hall.
Our St. Louis web design agency has been proud to partner with these businesses for years and help maintain their websites. By completing a website redesign, we’re able to showcase these incredible venues in a modern light to both current and new fans.
Integrity has maintained The Pageant and Delmar Hall sites for years, but we noticed that some aspects of the sites needed a refresh. Given current user expectations we identified a simple path forward:
Here’s how our web design and web development teams approached the website redesign project:
If you’ve worked with Integrity or taken a look at any of our web projects, you know that “audit” is one of our favorite words. By conducting a UX and technical audit, our teams were able to determine what was and was not working on the original sites, guiding the changes we planned to make during the redesign.
We’re pretty vocal about our deep love for Figma in web design projects. By creating everything from wireframes to the design system, page comps and prototypes within Figma, we were able to provide a stable foundation for the site redesign to stand on.
Figma allows for real-time collaboration, so users can offer feedback on the actual design files directly on those designs — with no need to export JPGs or provide design specs. This gave our web design team more room to iterate and pivot without wasting valuable time.
The sites were converted from a multi-site to a single-site WordPress install. Since both music venues are owned by the same company, this simplification increases efficiency across all web-related tasks. This reduced the need to publish duplicate informative content on two different sites and gives the user access to see upcoming concerts at both venues.
We also utilized Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) — again, one of Integrity’s favorite tools — which allowed us and the client to enter all details needed for artists and venues in one single location. This saves time that would’ve otherwise been spent re-entering all event information in other locations on the site. ACF also provides flexibility on what content our client wanted to show on the various pages.
One of the biggest challenges in developing this site was making sure the event filters were filterable and correct and utilized UX best practices. Our team used the Search & Filter Pro plugin to run the Ajax on the event pages to make this process seamless.
Another thing our devs were excited to embark on was adding the capability for automatically pushing event status updates. This, among other things, allows for event tickets to go on sale at the exact time the client needs them to, removing the burden on the client to manually stay on top of those dates and times themselves.
Overall, the new, merged site incorporates more modern design elements in its look and feel, from the fonts to colors and buttons. Combining The Pageant and Delmar Hall sites into one unified site makes it much easier for the user to navigate.
By focusing on a singular call to action (Buy Tickets), we reduced the user’s cognitive load while removing and reorganizing less-important content and actions. We also heavily focused on the site’s mobile experience, making sure all text, navigation and forms were usable on all devices.
Changes to the development of the site also make it simpler for the client to input and adjust events themselves, without always having to go through a developer. And adding internal pages is a more flexible process with the addition of ACF blocks.
When going through a website redesign, it’s important to be able to know when changes are needed and when they’re not. For the most part, the original websites functioned OK and allowed users to purchase tickets: the ultimate call to action. Our web design team didn’t want to change the site just for the sake of changing it.
By starting with that audit (there’s our favorite word again), we let the data drive our decisions, creating an end result that both the client and our teams were proud of.
---
Looking to embark on a website redesign or refresh? Integrity has the design expertise to get the job done right. Contact our St. Louis web design agency to begin.
