A website for an arts centre has to sell tickets, explain what you do, bring in hires and donations, and feel like the place itself. The way to do that is to put what’s on first, connect it to your ticketing, and build it so your own team can run it.
We built a custom site for Sterts Arts & Environmental Centre, East Cornwall’s creative hub on the edge of Bodmin Moor. Here is what we would plan for any venue.
put what’s on first
Most visitors arrive wanting to know what is happening and how to book. Make that the clearest thing on the site, with listings that are easy to filter and the next event reachable from any page.
connect it to your ticketing
Listings typed in by hand drift out of date. A site that reads live from your booking system is always right. At Sterts, What’s On reads live from TicketSource and other ticketing partners, so a change made once in the booking system shows up on the site.
Pull the data into your own design so visitors stay on your site until they are ready to book. A good integration also copes with the quiet moments, such as a slow response or a missing image, without breaking the page.
tell your story with movement
People come for the atmosphere. Short video, motion and strong photography say more about a venue than a long history page. At Sterts, the about pages tell forty years of the centre through movement rather than long paragraphs.
make support and hire easy to find
Donations, volunteering, memberships and room hire keep many venues going. Give each its own clear page and a simple way to act, so a visitor who is ready to help is not hunting through menus.
let your team run it
A venue changes its programme constantly, so staff should be able to update content without a developer. The easiest content systems use fields that match what the site shows, a title, a date, a photo, so the design cannot be broken by accident. At Sterts, everything except the live listings sits in a content system the team manages themselves.
“Working with Ace is a total joy. He has a unique creative eye and takes a collaborative and flexible approach. He has enabled our organisation to achieve more than we thought possible in the timeframes we’ve had to work within. We love working with Ace and can’t recommend him highly enough!”
websites for arts venues in plymouth and the south west
We are a creative studio in Plymouth building websites for theatres, galleries and cultural organisations across the South West. If you are planning a new site, send us your project details and we’ll get back to you within a few days.