New York City Ballet

Event Discovery

While NYCB produced and presented magnetic content, the site’s vast, unwieldy global navigation meant that casual users often abandoned the site before discovering it. NYCB therefore required the new site to improve the presentation of their content and increase user engagement.

Unblocking Innovation

In their RFP, NYCB made it clear that they wanted the website to reflect their organization’s mission to “continually innovate and… reinforce [their] position as a leading, digitally-centric performing arts company nationally and internationally.” Due to the “obsolescence” of their old site, new features were risky and costly to build, and generated limited impact. To achieve their goal, NYCB needed a partner that embraced constant evolution in the digital sphere. 

Event Discovery

On the previous website, NYCB fell victim to two very common problems: a calendar that occupied a lot of space, but communicated very little, and unwieldy navigation. Driven by mobile-first design principles, we did away with the traditional square calendar and eliminated a significant amount of white space by only surfacing days with events in them. To make event information quickly accessible, we also implemented popovers, giving users a choice between visiting the event page or heading straight to the ticket purchase path.

Not every interaction is transactional, though. Beyond event discovery, NYCB had received feedback about issues users experienced when trying to locate information about castings, or when searching for newsletters. To tackle this, we significantly reduced the navigation and introduced a clear structure to the site. 

To make sure that the new site structure was easy to navigate, we ran user testing workshops to ensure these design choices were on track before we marched down the path to launch. The feedback revealed some minor, but important, improvements which were quickly addressed, integrated into the project plan, and included in the final product. 

Setting NYCB up for the future

One of the key benefits of utilizing Made’s custom ticketing platform, BlocksOffice, is that it can be customized as a client’s needs evolve. NYCB strives for high levels of innovation, and we support this through monthly strategy meetings, during which we discuss analytics, our visions for the site, and recommendations for additional features. Combined with our regular support system, we remain constant, vigilant and active with the site. Rather than maintaining a status quo, we’re able to keep NYCB where they should be: at the forefront of digital innovation.  

Pandemic

When COVID-19 upended the arts and culture industries, we were a mere three months away from debuting NYCB’s new site in time for single ticket sales. It would have been naive for us to attempt to plow forward with the project as if nothing had happened. With NYCB’s priorities shifting rapidly to navigate the consequences of the pandemic, a new project plan was devised with extended testing periods and a delayed launch. We also turned our attention directly to the donation and membership paths. We had planned for single tickets to be the star of the show at launch, but with no events on sale, and a clear need for revenue, we needed these contributed revenue paths to be flawless.