Arden Theatre Company
UX Strategy, Website Design + WordPress Development
The Arden Theatre Company website was updated and refined in 2024 to better reflect the brand’s core values. By streamlining the user journey and removing unnecessary steps, Beth and her team crafted a more engaging and efficient digital experience.
Developing a New Website for a Cherished Philly-Based Theatre and Then Doing it Again
The Arden Theatre Company opened in Philadelphia in 1988 with a simple mission: bring to life great stories by great storytellers. In their nearly 40 years of operation, the Arden has staged hundreds of productions on their mainstage—dramas, comedies, musicals, well as children’s theatre.
Beth first worked with the Arden in 2017 to transform their laborious, static HTML website into a visually-rich, custom WordPress website. The prior website lacked mobile responsiveness, making the user experience particularly poor. The new WordPress solution was fully responsive and included new features like an advanced calendar. Most importantly, the upgraded solution allowed the Arden staff to take the reigns of the website and deliver up-to-date content to theatre-goers and donors throughout the Greater Philadelphia area.
%
increase in engagement time
impact at-a-glance
The primary goal of the recent update to the Arden Theatre Company website was to improve the user experience. Within the 8-month period after launching the updates, the average engagement time of average users increased by 43.4% to 1 minute and 41 seconds.
Beth first redesigned the Arden Theatre Company website in 2017, transforming it from a static HTML website into a responsive, custom WordPress solution.
New Problems to Solve
In 2024, Beth met with the marketing, education, fundraising, and box office departments from the Arden to evalaute the current website. It was determined that while the foundational WordPress platform continued to work for the theatre company, a variety of updates needed to be made to make the website easier-to-use and easier-to-manage. This required both a reskinning of the website’s interface and the development of new content modules.
Brand Alignment: The regional theatre company’s brand strategy had evolved in the seven years since the first launch, so the website was updated to better reflect their current brand positioning. This included sitewide typographic updates. Beth also eliminated any graphic elements that were difficult for the Arden team to work with.
Individual Productions: The production artwork had evolved to the point that a more flexible system was needed to promote individual productions as well as the full season of event programming.
Global Content Elements: It was determined that in reskinning the website, we would utilize global elements on the website wherever possible so that we lowered any redundancy in making updates across the various sections of the website.
Beth first redesigned the Arden Theatre Company website in 2017, transforming it from a static HTML website into a responsive, custom WordPress solution.
The first redesign of the Arden Theatre Company website featured angled graphical elements inspired by the theatre’s exterior facade. But these elements proved too difficult for the in-house team to work with on a long-term basis.
UX Strategy to Meet New Departmental Needs
After seven years, the original website was no longer serving the needs of the Arden’s various internal departments. A short-term discovery phase was initiated to collect feedback from Arden staff members and plan for a quick turnaround on design updates to allow for a longer development phase.
Key Findings:
- Web masters struggled with the original design elements such as angled content areas and background images
- The team required new, updated presets for common content elements like buttons, accordions, and sliders that could be updated globally in the future
- The original, elegant sitewide navigation had become bloated and could no longer be expanded to account for new offerings
Beth improved upon the original WordPress platform by creating new, updated content modules including accordions, toggles, tabs, table of contents, and more.
The UX strategy for the revised website was focused on enhancing usability and engagement by simplifying the site architecture.
Content modules were developed to remove excessive decorative elements, prioritizing effective communication tools instead.
Content Audit & Prioritization
During a brief discovery phase and the initial design phase of the project, Beth focused on identifying high-performing content and key conversion points across the Arden Theatre Company website. It was imperative to consolidate redundant pages and content while redesigning content modules that focused on user needs.
The Arden team’s main objectives were to streamline the user journey and reduce steps in users buying tickets, securing multi-show subscriptions, or placing donations. To address these needs, Beth embraced a straightforward design approach characterized by a spacious layout, generous white space, and a streamlined palette of colors, fonts, and visual elements—focusing on clarity and alignment with Arden’s objectives.
Approach Fundamentals:
- Eliminate bloated, overly decoration design elements
- Prioritize key users tasks
- Reduce landing pages to core areas with clear calls-to-action
- Introduce easier-to-update content features
Creating a Streamlined User Journey
The biggest change to the new design interface was swapping the angled elements of the previous design for solid sections that could accommodate content at various lengths. Beth worked with the Arden’s digital marketing team to ensure that production imagery would still feature the signature “Arden angle” but used in more sparing ways. The production grid was developed specifcally to account for size changes throughout the season which starts with five shows but eventually will display just one show by the end of the season. These minimal changes proved significantly effective not only for Arden webmasters but for the general website user experience.
%
increase in new users accessing the website for the first-time
After the website’s navigation, layout and interfaces were updated, the Arden saw an increase of new users sessions up to 29.3%.
%
increase in mobile traffic across the Arden website
Expanding Mobile Responsiveness
With the majority of traffic to the Arden website originating on mobile devices, it was paramount that the mobile experience be improved from both a UI and performance perspective. The mobile menu interface was completely rebuilt to improve the user experience.
%
increase in page views
Building another long-lasting website
In the eight months following the launch of the website’s second iteration, the Arden Theatre experienced an impressive rise in page views, reaching an astonishing 92.8%. Initial analytics from this period indicate a remarkable boost in engagement, showcasing enhancements that the Arden will undoubtedly benefit from for years to come.
