Why do we need an effective website?

Image via Wikipedia

Because it makes you money. It’s quite simple really. If your website is really working for you then it will bring in more visitors. Not lots of random visitors, but exactly the right kind of visitors for your arts organisation.

They’ll be looking to buy from you. And if your website works well and you can boost conversion rates then they’ll become customers. You need a website which is visible so people know about your organisation and are driven there. Then you want to make it an easy and pleasurable experience for them to buy from you. If they have a great experience from the moment they deal with you then they are likely to become repeat customers.

Your first step is to develop a marketing plan for your website – get that end objective clear in your mind and then work towards developing a profit-centre website that will take your organisation to the next level.

If you’d like to know more about turning your cost-centre website into a profit-centre website then call Masque Arts on +44 (0)20 7100 6010 or email us for further information.

Which Comes First: The Design or The CMS?

Working with CMS: Content Management System


In today’s web world any kind of design, which is going to be continually updated with content, needs a CMS. This database stores your site content and allows the site admin to work with an interface which means you can then add, modify and remove content at your will.

Although a CMS can be designed and programmed specifically for a site it is necessary for you to first consider the type of CMS you are looking to work with. Free website platforms such and Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress are available. Although a cheaper option maybe attractive you must match the best CMS available according your requirements – just because it looks cheaper in the short run doesn’t mean it will be over time.

The Relationship Between CMS and Design Brief

A problem we often come across when designing and working with clients is the relationship between the CMS and your design brief. I have begun to think why you shouldn’t specify your CMS as part of your design brief. With some potential clients we can sometimes find the first problem we come across is that the amalgamation of the brief for the technical side (content management system [CMS] and the customer relationship management [CRM]) with the design itself. To solve this problem you should assess these as two separate items and each should be approached separately.

A good CMS will support just about any design that it is thrown into the mix and any designer should conversely also be able to work with most CMS. In regards to implementation, we would always carry out all of the associated work anyway and it should be our main job to make sure the CMS templates correctly implement the design.

Of course it is also possible that over time we can see multiple designers working on a project, even on different parts of a sites design. So by having the technical infrastructure independent to the design company itself can give you much more flexibility. If you are attempting a much larger revamp of the site, why switch your CMS?

Keep the CMS at the Top of the Design Process

We should always put the CMS at the top of the design process; it is imperative that this is done first, before any of the design work. Lay the groundwork of the project with your CMS from this the rest of the design should flow. This is so that the CMS forms the foundation of any website allowing the website process to be much more productive.

Birmingham Royal Ballet website - generated with Repertoire

Birmingham Royal Ballet published their planned productions for the Birmingham Hippodrome today and you can find the listing here.

What is great, for us, about this is that it shows some of the new features in Masque Repertoire (our content management system for the performing arts), allowing all the information about a production to appear on one page together with links to the booking pages on the theatres web site. Take a look at the Romeo and Juliet page to get the idea.

This is just the first phase in our redevelopment with lots more features being added. We have worked closely with BRB for several years to develop a system that is easy to use and quick to update when you have more information to impart.

From a technical point it has been a fascinating challenge to get the underlying database structure correct and then to build the web program to bring this all together into the web pages - depending on what's coming up performance wise this might generate 1,500 pages or more - and is handling about 5,000 page views a day.

Navigation - when every page is the home page

Interesting time over the weekend. The back button on my browser stopped working! You really don't realise how much you use it until it's not there and it really makes you appreciate good navigation on websites. How easy is it to get to what you are looking for? How simple to get back to the home page? Can you see where you are on the site?

This last one is becoming ever more important when the search box is just sitting there on the top right of your browser. A considerable number of your visitors will arrive on your site as the result of a Google, Bing or other search and you have little control over where they land. As such, every page becomes a home page. And, when your visitor can't see what you are looking for it is as easy for them just to enter a new search or click the back button to the search results than trawl around your site.

One of the things that I did find frustrating was when I landed on a site which didn't have crumblines (you know the series of links that show where you are on the site) that really made me miss the back button.

I always believed that navigation and site layout has always been a major feature for good website design and this experience has just strengthened my belief that navigation is the main feature on stick ability.

Actually, I might not even fix the back button.