This season is prime time for performing arts websites to prepare for holiday traffic spikes. While this article focuses on dance studios, it also applies to music and theater centers. Your website has a lot of work during the winter holidays. It plays an essential role in promoting performances, selling show tickets, and registering students for next term.
It’s important to prepare for a surge in website traffic as family, friends, and the larger community browse your site. Are you sure your website can handle it all? Slowdowns, crashes, and frustrating interactions can all cause visitors to leave your site. Without holiday website optimization, you’ll likely fail to meet user expectations. This means you’re sure to lose conversions. Not only that, but your reputation may suffer.
The following advice will help you deliver an exceptional digital experience during this special season.
Convey your brand as you prepare your performance site for increased traffic
Reinforcing your brand matters year-round, and holiday website optimization is ideal for solidifying it. Make the most of increased traffic to promote your school or performance group. Shine by showing your organization’s personality and purpose. For example, do you mostly teach children or pre-professionals? Is your primary focus on fun or technique? Who are your teachers?
As you prepare your website for holiday traffic spikes, consider adjusting your messaging, content, and design.
Branding example: The JLDC dance education center hired our Boston web design agency to strengthen its digital branding. Let’s look at the home page. First, the headline banner says, “We live to dance,” expressing their earnest love of the art form. Next, rotating slides support JLDC’s identity and relationships: “We are artists,” “We are friends,” “We are mentors,” and more. Long-standing excellence is displayed through the “Best of Boston” logo and the tagline: “Nurturing dancers for over four decades” (as of publication).
In short, the homepage conveys a comprehensive brand that is applied consistently throughout the website.
Ladybugz summary / JLDC Website (as of publication)
Optimization for increased website traffic starts with auditing your current capacity
When you think about how to prepare for holiday traffic spikes, what is the top priority? Data shows that fast load speed is essential for conversion and SEO. The bottom line is that 47% of people expect websites and pages to load in under two seconds.
In addition, nearly 62% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and this figure continues to rise. Moreover, research indicates that 53% of cell phone users will leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. This highlights that your overall website optimization plan must focus on mobile devices.
Fast load times produce these results:
- Better ranking on search engines
- Lower bounce rates
- Higher overall conversion
- Improve brand credibility
The upshot is that optimizing website speed produces higher revenue from class registration, ticket sales and workshops. Even if your stars shine on stage, optimizing for speed delivers a better experience and encourages families to enroll in your classes.
Important tips when auditing performing arts websites for speed:
- Test performance: Use testing tools like Google Page Speed Insights to monitor performance under normal conditions. Next, simulate anticipated traffic to estimate how quickly your pages will load and how your server responds under stress. Then, fix any stress points you find to avoid a crash.
- Large files and animations: While features such as photo galleries, video clips, and animations are popular, they can also take up bandwidth and cause delays. You may need to adjust or further optimize these elements.
- Compress and optimize media: Resize large photos and video files while ensuring high quality.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Increase bandwidth with a CDN. These networks of geographically distributed servers cache and deliver content from the network located closest to the user.
- Enable browser caching: Returning visitors don’t need to reload the same images and scripts each time they visit.
- Limit heavy plugins and animations: Too many visual effects can slow down a website, especially for mobile users.
Secure and streamline ticketing systems to handle website traffic spikes
Can your ticketing systems handle website traffic spikes? Prepare your website for holiday traffic by optimizing ticketing and registration systems. Performing arts organizations experience the most bottlenecks on these pages.
Helpful ways to handle purchasing and sign-ups include:
- Use scalable hosting that automatically increases bandwidth during high demand.
- Check that any third-party platforms, such as Eventbrite, can handle your expected level of usage.
- Test that mobile users can easily and reliably complete transactions from their phones or tablets.
- Encourage conversion with a smooth checkout process, clear on-screen information and transparency about pricing.
- Confirm that your SSL certificate is current, so all payment pages are secure.
- Before going live, test your entire sales flow, including seat selection, payments, and email confirmation.
Prepare your performance arts website for increased traffic by enhancing user experience (UX)
Users don’t care about your website traffic spikes—until insufficient capacity affects them. A slow or clunky site can affect class registration and performance turnout. In other words, users should be able to find what they want quickly and easily complete transactions. The point is that simplicity, clarity, and transparency are three key principles.
Website optimization techniques for UX during the holidays (and throughout the year) include:
- Simplify navigation: Feature priority items and use clear names. For example, top menu items may include “Buy Tickets,” “Class Schedule,” and “Register Now.”
- Highlight seasonal events: Promote items like holiday events and workshops with prominent, above-the-fold placement and clearly visible calls to action (CTAs).
- Ensure pricing transparency: Include all prices and extra charges, including costumes, registration fees or extra rehearsals.
- Streamline checkout: A complicated checkout process can kill the sale. Minimize clicks to purchase, simplify forms, and send confirmations quickly.
- Optimize for mobile: Did you know that 63% of total e-commerce revenues come from mobile users? Make your site thumb-friendly and legible on cell phones and laptops.
UX Example: Ladybugz Interactive redesigned Groton Hill Music Center’s website with a modern look, improved user experience and streamlined content. The website highlights conversion-focused features, with hard-to-miss headings for performances, education, and community engagement events. Interactive elements are also convenient for mobile users. Ladybugz summary / Groton Hill Music Center Website (as of publication).
Strengthen website security and backup during holiday website optimization
Users are more concerned than ever about cyber criminals trying to steal their personal and financial information. Strong security protocols safeguard user trust, brand reputation, and expensive cleanup should a breach occur.
Best practices to bolster security include:
- Install a robust Web Application Firewall (WAF) to block malicious traffic.
- Update your CMS, plugins, and ticketing systems before your busiest season.
- Schedule automatic backups to recover quickly from an outage.
- Use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication for site administrators.
- Regularly test your ability to restore data.
Website optimization will keep your audience coming back for more
The holiday season is the ideal time to prepare your performing arts website for traffic spikes. It’s also a great opportunity to enhance your digital brand, increase registration, and increase ticket sales. Looking beyond the holidays, build or modify a website that reflects your professionalism and personality.
A site isn’t built in a day, so start optimizing early to make sure your website performs as well as your students and ensembles. Find out how you can start the process by contacting award-winning Ladybugz Interactive.
