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Overview

The Scotiabank Dance Centre, also known as the Dance Centre, is a nonprofit organization that supports the development of the vibrant dance scene in BC since 1986. It is one of Canada’s flagship dance facilities. As a nonprofit, creating a user friendly website to communicate their services was key to their growth in the arts and culture scene in Vancouver.

The Dance Centre represents professional dance companies and individual artists in BC and provides support and opportunities for funding, jobs, auditions, training, and studio rentals. The Dance Centre also fulfills an educational mandate. As a registered charity, the Dance Centre relies on several grants, donations, and fundraising from the community to continue supporting dance innovations.

The Dance Centre’s Board wished to achieve higher ticket sales, strengthen its brand equity, and increase customer awareness and loyalty. Pace Creative worked with the Dance Centre to redesign and update the content of its current website. Pace Creative created a user friendly website that aesthetically captures the Dance Centre’s brand whilst ensuring it good usability for external and internal users.

24,000

new visitors in 2019

95%

sold out dance shows

55.84%

website bounce rate achieved

Challenge

Considering the Board’s goals, Pace Creative had to redesign and revise the content of the Dance Centre’s website. The Dance Centre’s website had to be customer-focused and mobile-optimized, to ensure it was easy to navigate. The website must be optimized for organic SEO and use content marketing. The content and design dating back to 2012 had to be updated. The Dance Centre struggled to organize new pages and activities due to the website’s age. Upon launch, the Dance Centre also required technical support and ongoing maintenance.

  • How to design a strategic not-for-profit website that streamlines over 180 pages of content and yet is user-friendly and intuitive?
  • How to create and maintain a user friendly website that is also scalable and expandable for both the public-facing and the secured member login websites?
  • How to organize the site map to meet specific business goals?
  • How to organize 180 pages of content to rank organically on Google?
  • How to retain members by automating the renewal of memberships annually?

Solution

Developing a Strategic Site Map

Pace Creative conducted extensive industry research to build a site map that organizes the Dance Centre’s website content to be thoughtful, logical, and scalable for future additions or changes. The content flow was designed to lead users to the Dance Centre’s main focuses – events, membership, and programs. Our site map conveyed the stakeholder journey, focusing on the usability and flow of the content on each page.

Creating a User Friendly Website

To create a user friendly website, we identified key personas to gather audience information. We audited and reorganized the website content to simplify the online journey for each stakeholder. We reduced the total number of pages from over 180 pages to 85 pages by removing and streamlining all the duplicated content. The content highlighted custom Calls to Action on each page to improve the conversion rate, reduce the bounce rate, and ensure the content flow was logical.

To provide the Dance Centre with the ability to host targeted digital campaigns with engaging and on-brand content, we developed and edited the content of each of their landing pages. We integrated various APIs and functionalities such as membership login, an event calendar, and ticket purchases to match the Dance Centre’s business needs. We customized the event calendar to add interactive features for users to find upcoming performance tickets to purchase. We also automated the membership initiation and renewal process.

Strategic Branding and Design

Our team developed a bold look for the website while following the brand style guide and brand architecture. This would help increase the overall brand awareness and brand equity of the Dance Centre.

SEO Strategy and Website Optimization

Pace Creative considered an SEO strategy to optimize the website for organic SEO and use content marketing. We educated the internal communication and marketing team on the benefits of organic SEO and how content and specific keywords can impact the overall website positively.

Creating the Custom Functionalities for a Not-For-Profit Website with WordPress

Pace Creative created custom functionalities for the Dance Centre website using WordPress.

The functionalities of the public website include:

  • email subscription
  • ticket purchase
  • integration of non-profit donation processing – Blackbaud, and
  • events calendar

The functionalities of the back end include:

  • a member portal with an automated online membership renewal payment process via Paypal
  • custom forms functionality, and
  • a wide range of membership functionality – application, renewal, and member-specific content

Result

  • After the 1-year anniversary review, all website goals (achieve higher ticket sales, strengthen their brand equity, increase customer awareness and loyalty) have been met!
  • The website has brought approximately 24,000, 42,510, and 76,939 new visitors in 2019, 2020, and 2021 respectively.
  • Our design and content helped lower the bounce rate of the website to 63.93% in 2019, 68.31% in 2020, and 61.42% in 2021, which is well within the industry standard of B2B websites.
  • Digital campaigns have been promoting specific programs, rental opportunities, and events successfully. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, 95% of the dance shows were sold out.
  • The website has become a hub for dance resources and events in BC.
  • Pace Creative conducted a website and SEO audit in 2022 to strengthen the organic SEO results.

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