Rodeo Austin : Evolving the Rodeo Austin experience
Challenge
As a nonprofit organization focused on delivering high-value entertainment experiences to support their mission of youth education, having an intuitive, well-functioning website was critical to the success of Rodeo Austin’s events and community programs. A cleaner backend to reduce the time and energy it took to maintain their website, as well as a better user experience to increase user engagement and drive ticket sales were going to be two vital components to the project. Incorporating Rodeo Austin’s history, personality, and community was key to the project, since they deliver a major cultural experience to the Austin area.
Solution
We took a three-pronged approach that combined surveys, brand workshops with key stakeholders, and extensive market research. Through this deep-drive into Rodeo Austin’s customer base and brand identity, we learned that we needed to prominently feature Rodeo Austin’s philanthropic endeavors, which in their previous website had taken a backseat. Furthermore, we need to hone in on their identity as a non-profit delivering a family-friendly, gritty and unique experience that directly supports and gives back to their community. They needed a website to match this message—fun and impactful from top to bottom. Rodeo Austin’s mission and impact on the community needed to be brought to the forefront of the web experience. While people came to the website to learn who was performing, find out when events were, and buy tickets, we needed to make sure they understood the cause that their purchases were supporting. The Work The design pulled together extensive photography and content, as well as a robust event calendar to unite their philanthropic goals and community engagement in an interactive and engaging site. Alongside imagery, fresh messaging infused the benefits of their programs for youth and the local community on every page of the website. To align a strong design with strong user experience, we optimized the user flow to streamline the sign-up ticket purchase process. On the backend, we consolidated their backend to make the site easier to maintain and keep updated from season to season, including a custom automated process to quickly post rodeo event results nightly.
Results
For the first time in years, the Rodeo Austin team now has the flexibility and ability to manage their site and update it as they need for their different seasons. The ability to have less platforms to manage, as well as being able to process forms and reports internally, will be a game changer for the upcoming Rodeo season. In addition, the site is now part of our SEO program, where we will be working to maintain and improve SEO health in the upcoming season. As a result of backend optimizations and a clearer user flow, the new Rodeo Austin site is primed for higher engagement than ever before.
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