Midland Center for the Arts brings together live performances, art and science museum exhibits, historical areas, art instruction, and more, all under one roof. Located in Central Michigan, their mission is to be a regional cultural destination where people find meaning and connection in their busy lives.
The Midland Center campus is home to a wide variety of venues and educational facilities, including a 1,500-seat auditorium and a 400-seat theatre.
The Problem
Midland Center for the Arts partnered with Adage in 2019 to redesign and rebuild their website in an effort to provide a seamless customer experience across their multiple venues and program areas. The goal was to ensure that the new site would serve as a key marketing tool for the organization, while being easy for the Midland Center staff to update and maintain.
One of the major challenges for the Midland Center website was to offer a seamless customer experience, whether customers were visiting a museum, buying tickets to a show, registering for a class, or any combination of the three.
Discovery and Design
The partnership began with a Discovery phase—a series of workshops with Midland Center staff to flesh out the needs for the new site. Based on the outcomes of those Discovery work sessions, the Adage team presented design options that began with the most basic elements of Midland’s new website—colors, fonts, overall look and feel—and then moved to creating specific elements for each page. The new design relied on visuals to help customers differentiate between the many options available at Midland Center.
Development and Deployment
Once the designs were in place, the next phase was the Development and Deployment of the recommendations developed in prior phases. Adage used Umbraco Content Management System for Midland’s new home page and informational pages, as well as implemented digital tracking tools to help Midland track website usage. Through a partnership with Tessitura, Adage was able to utilize TNEW functionality in a style that was consistent with Midland’s new branding.
The customer experience was always kept at the forefront throughout the Development process, with an eye to ensuring the website would be easy for Midland staff to update as new programs were added to the Center’s calendar.
The Result
The Midland Center’s new website is engaging, eye-catching, easy to navigate, flexible and consistent with the branding of the Center and its programs. Customers can easily view the wide variety of programs and performances available at Midland Center, and also purchase memberships and make contributions.
Adage also ensured the new site is mobile-friendly, which was a struggle with their previous website. The new site also played a key communication role between the Midland Center and patrons during COVID-19 shut downs and cancellations while offering engaging online programming for parents to share with children at home during the pandemic.
The Adage team allows us to work with incredibly skilled and proficient developers to help us overcome any challenges or address new opportunities. They are attentive, prompt and continually supportive of the work we do and ensuring we meet our objectives.
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