Yorkshire Sculpture Park – a great day out!
And one that's easy to plan – thanks to a clear, flexible, and user-focused website
Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is the leading international centre for modern and contemporary sculpture. With a 500-acre park, indoor galleries, restaurants, shop, learning centre and more, YSP offers a huge range of activities.
When the YSP team approached us, they were happy with the overall look and feel of their old website. But they found the content management system (CMS) – Umbraco – clunky, complex, and difficult to use. So, our original brief was to rebuild the back-end of the website using the lightweight and intuitive Craft CMS.
Rather than re-building the website like-for-like, however, we wanted to use this opportunity to improve the end-user experience too.
Having had a lot of success with the introduction of advance bookings during the Covid-19 pandemic, the YSP team had recently team implemented a new ticketing structure. We wanted to make the most of this – and help to increase advance bookings by encouraging visitors to plan a full day out at YSP.
(Because, from walks in the park to seasonal events and celebrations in their indoor spaces, it really is a great day out. Whatever the ever-unpredictable British weather!)
Without drastically altering the visual design, we worked on several solutions to improve the end-user experience, and increase bookings:
Working with the Supercool team on the project was a joy. They were able to take our brief and create a site which meets the needs of a wide range of visitors, and is also really intuitive for staff to manage.
Lauren Cowdery – Digital Marketing Officer
Drastically simplified navigation
The old website’s navigation was overwhelming. Sitting behind a burger menu, absolutely every single thing on offer at YSP was listed. To add to the confusion even further, several items were named with language that end-users wouldn't necessarily understand – such as 'Projects' and using specific restaurant names.
Not only did this make it hard to find what you were looking for as a website visitor – the huge menu also made it impossible to take-in what was on offer at a glance. Making it hard to plan a day out.
So we reviewed Google Analytics data, mapped out user journeys, and designed a drastically simplified navigation.
Instead of showing everything we focused on six key areas: Visit us, What's on, Art outdoors, Shop, Learn, Support us.
This navigation provides quick routes into key areas, based on user needs. For example, visitors can find the info they need within 'Visit us', and teachers can find education resources within 'Learn'. Simple.
Clear 'Book' buttons
The old website lacked any real calls to action. Users could spend time on the website without being nudged to make a commitment – or even realising they would need to pay to access the park.
The website now has clear 'Book' buttons – with the nifty option for website admins to edit button text. This means users can be nudged to 'Book tickets', 'Donate now', or 'Book a table' at the restaurant.
This level of flexibility is great as it allows the website to grow with YSP, as the team experiments with new revenue streams.
Showcasing the Collection
YSP’s Collection is truly unique. It's a vast collection of outdoor works that can be explored throughout the park. The new website retains the use of large, full-width imagery that beautifully showcases the Collection within the landscape.
An addition to the new website is Art outdoors.
This area of the website acts as a Collections database. It holds artwork information like Artist name, year of creation, and materials – alongside rich content about the piece.
There's also a handy interactive map, to help website users locate the artwork in the park.
The Art outdoors database is a fantastic addition to YSP's offer. Not only does it help in-person visitors to plan their route ahead of time, and offer them insights into each artwork. It also enables people from all over the world to explore YSP's Collection.
The [Supercool] team have a wealth of knowledge and are always happy to chat through ideas to come up with the best solution. And the ongoing support from a team who really understand user behaviour is invaluable.
Lauren Cowdery – Digital Marketing Officer
In summary
Our improvements have made it significantly easier for the YSP team to manage content day-to-day.
And the flexibility and future-proofing offered by the website are hugely valuable for the team as they explore and experiment with ticketing policies and revenue streams.
The website is also helping YSP to better promote their wide offer – making it easy for anyone and everyone to plan their day out at the park in advance.
Planning a new website project? Let's talk – kate@supercooldesign.co.uk