Portfolio > Adelaide Cabaret Festival

Australian Luxury Stays Case Study

The world’s largest cabaret festival, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, has been building its presence in the Festival State since 2001. The 2011 event will see numerous international chart toppers, Tony winners and multiple Grammy award winning songwriters descend into the Adelaide Festival Centre for 16 days of glamour, style, song and celebration.

To design a site fitting with the 2011 poster artwork for the festival
Provide an easy-to-use Content Management System so that Adelaide Festival Centre staff could control the entire website
Integrate with relevant Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube
Allow for a strong search functionality
Create a dynamic ‘Build Your Own Festival’ planner for website users

Strategic Plan: The objectives of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival website were clearly set out from the beginning – the primary aim of the website was to act as a sales mechanism for the purchasing of tickets. It was also required to showcase and present the acts and performances of the festival, to promote key sales initiatives, and give users the ability to share information with friends and family.

Web Design & Development: The 2011 Adelaide Cabaret Festival website was designed to have a modern experience, while retaining the core elements of the 2011 poster artwork, designed internally at the Adelaide Festival Centre There was many key elements that had to be included on both the homepage, and the individual show pages, and it was vital that navigation was clean and clear to ensure users had the best possible website experience.

Content Management System (CMS): Cabaret Festival CMS was built from scratch and completely customized to suit the unique needs of the Adelaide Festival Centre staff. The most important areas for staff to manage was the individual show listings. Each show had to provide all show details such as dates, times, ticket prices, duration and venue. These pages also had the ability for users to ‘Like’ on Facebook, Tweet, Email to a Friend, Print the page, or Add to Festival Planner. It was also important to give website users additional ways to access the artists through artist website links, Twitter and/or Facebook page links, and YouTube videos.

Special Functionality: The Festival Planner was specially built into the site to allow users to add a show to their own planner. This planner could then be shared via printing or emailing. The idea was to show users that they could attend a number of shows in one evening and encourage them to make an evening out of going to the Cabaret. Additional functionality was also built in the management of individual shows, allowing the Adelaide Festival Centre team to select certain shows that were complimentary or also showing on the same evening.

“DBG Technologies took our brief and delivered exactly what we wanted, within the time and budget allocated, which you don’t get very often from Web companies. They are great company to work with and nothing was ever too much trouble. Response times to queries were dealt with efficiently and you always felt you were a priority when spoken to. I couldn’t recommend DBG Technologies high enough, we are very pleased with their work and we have a great site."

Daniel Procter, Online Marketer