The Customs House launches a new website
Published: November 2016
Leading North East art and entertainment venue, The Customs House, has gone live with their brand new website, designed and built by Newcastle web design agency Urban River.
The new website is aimed at providing a smoother, quicker way to book tickets, as well as giving online users more and clearer information about the venue and forthcoming shows.
The Customs House turned to Urban River, a North East web design and marketing agency after working with the public in a series of focus groups to find out what they wanted from a new website.
Urban River’s Managing Director Carl Buckley said: “We’ve been working with The Customs House for the past three years providing marketing support and started on the website in the summer.
“We had a mixed team of designers and developers working on the website and are delighted with the result.”
“I think the site is much better organised now and it’s easier to find out whats on, on any given day. We have also improved the mobile site, which is now much easier to use and fully responsive.”
“There’s so much going on at The Customs House that sometimes you have information overload, so we’ve worked hard to present the information in an easy-to-follow way, presenting a much better user experience.”
“One area that we thought it important to highlight was all the work The Customs House does in the community, through its workshops and education work – people just don’t realise how busy they are in the community.”
The Customs House Executive Director Ray Spencer MBE said: “We’ve spent some time thinking about what we wanted from our website, and how best to present information for users.”
“The Customs House is a complicated organisation in that we do so much in lots of different directions, so it was a challenge to pull that together coherently in one website.”
“For instance, we put on hundreds of shows every year, all needing to be promoted online, but we also need to let people know what’s on in our cinema and in our fantastic Port of Tyne Gallery and our other gallery spaces.”
“We also need to incorporate information about our very successful restaurant, The Green Room, our outside catering offer and our capability to host a range of events, from weddings to conferences to private dinners.”
“Then we needed a section about the important engagement work we do through school partnerships and groups such as our two Youth Theatre sections, our Custom Reels film makers group and our new Young Interpreters group too.”
“So you can see what a challenge it was,” he added.
Urban River tackled this challenge head on, with an installation of Spektrix booking system – used by major theatres across the UK, including Northern Stage and The Lyrics Theatre.
The new website is the latest in a series of investments made to improve The Customs House. You can see the new website for yourself here: https://www.customshouse.co.uk/
Email us info@urbanriver.com or ring 0191 456 6199 to see how we can help you to make the most of your online presence.
