BERGEN COUNTY PLAYERS Website Receives Recognition

See the full post here: https://www.facebook.com/artstothepeople

Here at Arts People we see ALOT of client websites, and sometimes one stands out for it’s clarity of design, attractive aesthetics and ease of use. One of those sites is from our long time client The Bergen County Players (https://www.facebook.com/bcplayers) in Bergen Co, NJ. Their site is bright, airy, enticing, easy to navigate and extremely functional. 

Check it out at http://bcplayers.org/

I had a chance to chat with Stephanie Bazzanella (Webmaster/Asst Box Office Manager) and Jennifer Cottone (Asst Box Office Mgr/Publicity), about the approach, goals, thought and work that went into creating it. 

Stephanie shared, “We had been talking for years(!) about updating to a CMS-driven site. We had the in-house knowledge but not the time, so we eventually decided to outsource the work and we were able to find a wonderful design firm called DesignSpike (neat coincidence in the names, eh?) who had previous experience with community theater website design. The gal that I worked primarily with, Allyson Shoshana, actually walked the walk and talked the talk with respect to small theater - she already understood most of our needs without explanation since she has worn many of those "hats" (that we community theater volunteers juggle) with the theater that she volunteers with. She and the developer, Brandon, were absolutely incredible... I highly recommend them if anyone is looking for someone to contract. Our website was re-launched in the Fall of 2012.”

Spike: What were the most important objectives in the website design you implemented?

Stephanie: Our primary objective for the new website design was to attain a database-driven site with more updated, vibrant, and energetic look. We wanted something fresh that maintained the clean layout and easy navigation that we've always had. 

Spike: That was my next question… So it is based on a CMS (content management system) platform, and that helps you to manager the content more easily?

Stephanie: Yes, the site runs on a customized CMS developed by the design firm. The CMS is online and is now maintained by a small handful of people rather than just me (which had been another justification for this development). All source data for our website is maintained via this access.

Spike: I’m curious, did you take any specific steps to help you more easily integrate the Arts People system links for patron call-to-actions? 

Stephanie: The Arts-People links are identified in the CMS as either external links for website menu items or as a purchase link for specific shows. During the design phase, we outlined where we would need to link to the Arts-People pages and these fields were included in the CMS design.

Spike: So what’s next for your site?

Stephanie: The one additional piece of work that I still have yet to complete is to update the graphic design on the Arts-People site to reflect/complement our new website design. I'd love to start working on that sometime soon.... can you point me to the help files that can get me started? Thank you!!

Spike: You bet Stephanie. Actually our staff often do refreshes to our client public pages for them, no charge. So we can help you with that right away!

Thanks again to Stephanie and Jennifer, and also Brian at Bergen County Players. Your site is a great example for others to model.