Fablr, a web design agency with offices in Manchester and Leeds, has just re-launched the digital presence for East Street Arts.
East Street Arts is a Leeds-based arts social enterprise and charity that creates space for making art, social events and learning opportunities with the aim of making our cities a better place to live and work in.
The organisation already had a well-established visual brand identity, but their website was slow and outdated, and didn’t engage people in the way they needed it to. Working closely with the East Street Arts stakeholders, Fablr delivered a project that was visually exciting and would draw attention to their work with artists, local communities and neighbourhoods, and would highlight their service offering.
The Fablr team pitched for the work at the end of 2019 and the project began in 2020. There was a slight delay due to lockdown, but the finished website had a soft launch in June and is now fully operational.
Since its launch, the new website has hit most of its objectives and, as it continues to grow and develop with new and richer content, it looks set to continue increasing engagement with artists and the local community. The analytics are impressive, as well. Compared with the previous year, the number of users on the site has increased by over 50% and the amount of time users spend on the site has also increased substantially.
Jon Wakeman, artistic director at East Street Arts, said: “In 2020 it has become vitally important for us to effectively communicate our work and our services to the artist and the wider community.
“The new East Street Arts website allows us to quickly and easily update content - ensuring that people can find all of our news and information. Throughout the project Fablr made the whole process painless and prioritised keeping our wants and needs in at the forefront - which is especially important during such challenging times.”
Philip Bennison, technical director at Fablr, said: “East Street Arts supports artists, arts organisations and local neighbourhoods and helps them to make their spaces more creative and exciting. We were delighted to work alongside them in refreshing and redeveloping their web presence so that it more accurately reflected their personalities and their mission.”
Geoff Bretherick, creative director at Fablr, said: “The new design is clean, spacious and polished - with the odd visual quirk intentionally hidden within the layout. The idea was to provide a backdrop for the wealth of image and video assets East Street Arts had on offer without an opinionated look and feel getting in the way of the most important things - the artwork.”
“One of the really important parts of the project was establishing the interconnectedness of the content. As East Street Arts engages directly with communities, there are many audiences to reach and multiple contexts for anything published on the website. When a user engages with a piece of content they can find more and more interesting topic-led articles and media, leading them deeper and deeper into the wealth of articles, blogs, editorials and other content pieces East Street Art are regularly publishing.”
The project kicked off with a user experience and analysis process to discover how the new site could help to deliver the practical organisational goals of East Street Arts, without obscuring their brilliant personality and brand.
From its two Northern bases, Fablr works closely with arts organisations across the UK, from user experience and website audits, through to branding, design and website build and development. They also offer digital marketing with a strong focus on analytics and data.
Their growing team also works with large FMCG brands across Europe, as well as professional services. Due to an increased number of ongoing projects, Fablr recently grew its team to include Aly Sébastien, a talented digital product designer.
For more information, please visit www.fablr.co.uk.
