Opening their doors in 1953, the Guthrie Theater has been a mainstay of artistic excellence in its Minnesotan community. The organization serves nearly 350,000 patrons and the Twin Cities community year-round.
The Problem
A change in leadership at the Guthrie Theater prompted the need for a new and improved website. The Guthrie wished to provide patrons with a better user experience. Project stakeholders were also looking for clean design, intuitive navigation, a new content management system, and Tessitura integration using TNEW for ticketing.
Adage was chosen to update the website user experience for patrons and enable the marketing team with an easy-to-use CMS as well as aligning the visions of internal stakeholders and end-users. The result was an award-winning website that offers an interactive digital experience on ANY device and keeps patrons coming back for more.
Stakeholder Alignment
A Discovery phase kicked off the project. This required gathering phase is called Adage Align. During the Adage Align process, we worked directly with key stakeholders across the organization to align the goals of marketing, membership, development, IT, and leadership and establish a strong organizing idea.
Easy-to-Edit Content Management System
Adage recommended Optimizely CMS for controlling the content and Tessitura integrated features. Adage is in favor of Optimizely for arts organizations because of its ease of use, strong organizational structure, and large catalogue of add-ons.
The Guthrie team now has the ability to add, edit, and delete content with ease. They can create new product offerings, show personalized messaging, and conduct A/B testing. The site also uses responsive design, beautifully displaying content across mobile, tablet and desktop devices.
Integrations
The site rebuild included integration with Tessitura, which is responsible for the Guthrie Theater’s ticketing system and CRM.
Adage implemented TNEW into the main structure and styling of the new site. We also built shared session functionality to provide a seamless user experience.
Cloud Hosting
Adage recommended Guthrie Theater utilize cloud hosting. Adage guided them through choosing and purchasing the appropriate amount, then followed through with setting up the production site once the environment was ready to use.
Hosting services include proactive monitoring and notification of outages/issues as well as guaranteed response times, backup management, and performance scaling.
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