Portfolio > SALA Festival > Mobile Website

Paradiso Group Website Case Study

The South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival is Australia’s largest visual arts festival. Established in 1998, the festival is held every August in venues all over South Australia.

In 2011 the Festival had 543 exhibitions in venues across SA, featuring the work of over 4,132 amateur, emerging and established artists.

Create a brand new website for SALA with an easy to use content management system
Create a separate Festival website, with a mobile optimised template
Incorporate useful search functions into the mobile website
Allow for ‘Near Me’ GPS function to be used from the mobile template

Strategic Plan: Early in the planning stages of the entire project it was identified that a mobile website would be beneficial to allow the Festival Site to be better accessed by users ‘on the go’. Like the Festival site, this was designed around the 2011 poster, but was also focused on being easy to navigate in a mobile browser (typically smaller screen resolutions). Planning was undertaken to scope out what information mobile users would want to access, and how to display this information in the best manner.

Design: DBG consulted with the SALA team to work out what information would be most important for users who were ‘on the go’. It was highlighted that users would want to be able to Search the Festival, Browse the Festival by Medium, Category or Location, view ‘Exhibitions Near Me, look through Other Events, view the Full Website and Contacting SALA. The Exhibition pages themselves had to be redesigned in order to ensure the most important information was displayed within the smaller mobile resolution.

Functionality: The search and Browse functions both pulled data direct from the regular Festival content management system, but the intuitive ‘Exhibitions Near Me’ function was set up slightly differently. When clicking this button, the website taps into the mobile device’s GPS capability to map out exhibitions nearby – displaying them as small flags on a map that users could click to view the full Exhibition details.

The very first mobile website for the Festival has allowed users to gain immediate access to the Festival in a very easy way, which enabled them to get out there and experience more of the Exhibitions. SALA reported high numbers of users accessing the site via a mobile device, and are excited about what further developments can be added in 2012 to take it to the next level.

“SALA could not have selected a more perfect partner as DBG for our web development. Through a spirit of collaboration, clear vision, concise communication and calm, DBG delivered all that was asked of them; against the odds of both tight time frames and restricted budget. Together, what we have created is a website that has the functionality for our business needs now and for years to follow.

The professional and personal investment DBG has made to ensuring SALA maintained continuity of service whilst delivering a bold new website has increased our reputation and brand awareness across multiple and diverse markets both locally and nationally.”

Penny McAuley, General Manager – SALA Inc.