Relaunch Website Theater Basel

Case summary

Theatre Basel presents itself and the new season in a new garb.

Case description

The Basel Theater is there for everyone. The largest three-part house in German-speaking Switzerland invites all theater and culture enthusiasts to its opera, drama and ballet performances. The aim of the digital presence is to pick up all interested parties from young to old and to inform them about the entire program of over 600 events per year.

With the new artistic director Benedikt von Peter, the program for the 20/21 season and the other theatrical seasons has changed completely under the new artistic direction. To this end, the entire corporate design and the website should be revised according to the principle of mobile first in order to present the new program with many new exciting productions on all devices in the best light.

Case goals and results

With its wide range of exciting performances, the theater sees itself as a basic provider that offers something for everyone in the program. In this regard, a major goal of the digital strategy is to address the various target groups with the right content.

Drupal perfectly meets the requirements defined in workshops with Theater Basel. In particular, the ability to connect different systems to the Digital Experience Platform (DXP) and still remain flexible in the design speak for the solution.

With the connection of the theater planning software Theasoft, all data relating to the productions are updated hourly via importer. Thus, all information about the individual performances such as the performance dates, the cast, as well as the duration and all subscription details are recorded in Theasoft and played out in Drupal. This automation saves a great deal of time for the Basel Theater, as content no longer has to be copied manually.

Furthermore, the ticket solution from Secutix was integrated into the Digital Experience Platform. The latter connection not only makes it easy and quick to buy tickets. Via the integration, the ticket availability can be seen at first glance in the schedule on the website so that visitors know whether there are still many tickets left for their desired performance without first opening a seating plan.

The Drupal Experience Platform enables automation on the one hand, but also leaves enough design freedom to present content individually. The Theater Basel wants to act as a basic provider in a way that is tailored to the target group. Therefore, together with the agency Claudiabasel GmbH from Basel, it has developed a corporate design that offers a black and white frame in which each production can develop its own color. Pure diversity! In this way, websites or landing pages can be individually structured based on paragraphs and enriched with content from the connected systems or the Drupal Content Hub.

In addition to the informative content about the productions and the program, a new communication vessel was created with the media library, which offers a visual and interactive experience in various formats such as podcasts, videos, picture galleries or publications.

In order to manage all of this content efficiently, the Theater Basel can now use the Drupal Content Planner to digitally plan, create, revise and control all content at the desired location and at the desired time.

Challenges

The wide range of, in some cases, very different offers and the target group-specific approach represent a major challenge at Theater Basel. The program addresses everyone from toddler age to advanced retirement age and must therefore also be able to easily find the right information digitally. The website therefore has to pick up the regular audience as well as families, schools, young people and expats.

As a member of the inclusion program and label “Kultur inklusiv” from Pro Infirmis, the Theater Basel wants to make culture easily accessible for everyone, which is why the entire website should be made accessible.

Furthermore, for the interactive program for more than 600 performances and 45 productions in the fields of opera, drama and ballet, a large amount of data has to be imported from the theater system to the website and continuously synchronized.

Community contributions

https://www.drupal.org/project/content_planner

Hosting

Drupal Hosting by NETNODE

Why should this case win the splash awards?

The unusual design and implementation, for all end devices, deserves to win the Splash Award in 2020.
The site does not only look special optically, but also impresses with its large information section, which promotes the sale of theatre tickets.