This was a very challenging project and took a lot of effort to create the final result. As many of us already know the combination of art and technology rarely comes yields successful results. Most of the time you end up with either a great looking website which is missing basic elements for UX and SEO or with great web development which doesn't 'speak' to the audience and the potential customers of such a project. Our team created a theme that combined these two worlds, with the best possible results. We provided training to our client and his representatives, to be able to maintain and update the website by themselves. We used multiple software engines for communication, marketing, social media, blogging and a very nice registered-approval-only community which made their life easier and their students more satisfied than ever. Online payment methods, custom made social pages, photoshooting and re-branding resulted in what is probably the best website for this industry in NYC.
What it's about
TedBardy.com is the web presence of Ted Bardy Acting Schools. They have to provide information through the web about their class offerings, provide online registration for students, offer online payment options for existent and new students, event announcements and payment options for their theatrical shows and to provide a complete experience for international & local customers. Their old website (done in 2012) had many technical and UX issues, and a weak SEO engine:
- Dark colors made the visitor feel uncomfortable
- Logo was too "shiny", focused on the film industry
- Images across the website were very small and not so sharp/vivid
- There was no blogging system
- Testimonials were hard to read and find
- The website was not viewed correctly from mobile devices
- Social media marketing didn't exist
- Website performance was too slow
- The registration proccess was complicated
- There were no photos from the school itself
What we did
To get the full image, here is an example of the old home-page and the new one (click for larger images):
Obvious differences:
| Not so obvious differences:
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Web Software & Configuration
For the final results that you see we had to combine 9 different commercial software and 12 free GPL3 licences, to create a complete custom solution for this complex project. Amongst other things, there is software for newsletters, facebook auto-posting, blogging system, class announcements, image calibration, multi-share capabilities, private registration, form-reservation systems, payment system, advanced database optimization, community system, rss, schedule system, and multi-marketing software.
Results (so far)
Below you can see the infograph after the first month of the re-development:
Testimonial from the owner:
-Ted Bardy, Founder & Artistic Director of The Ted Bardy Studio, Inc. and ActNyc.com
