A Fresh New Website For a National Performing Arts Charity
Introducing BYMT
British Youth Music Theatre (BYMT) is the largest commissioner of new musicals in the UK. Every year, the charity engages over 2,000 young people in workshops, auditions and summer camps to train and develop their skills in the arts, preparing them for a career on stage.
BYMT have gone from strength to strength over the past 20 years, and their famous alumni includes musician Ed Sheeran and actress Charlotte Ritchie.
/ A fresh start
Relocation. Reshuffle. Renewal.
In 2024, BYMT relocated their head office from London to Leeds. This move, coupled with a reshuffle of the core team, meant that the organisation was experiencing an exciting period of growth and renewal.
To reflect these internal changes, BYMT invited All Things Equal to pitch for the redevelopment of their website. We were honoured to join them on this important stage in the organisation’s history.
/ The brief
Key objectives
BYMT’s website is core to their operations, enabling parents and young people to book onto musical auditions and camps, as well as being the central platform to process donations from generous supporters. What’s more, the comms team is highly active in publishing content across social media and the website. This meant that the website needed to be fast, focused and functional, whilst retaining the unique, trustworthy brand identity that BYMT had built up over the last two decades. Some key objectives included:
Improved editorial experience
The existing website was difficult to maintain and severely limited the comms team’s ability to use the website as a marketing platform. The goal was to migrate from an old version of Drupal to a custom WordPress build to make content editing fast, easy, intuitive, and to support the comms team's goals.
Renewed navigational structure
The existing website had grown over time without much strategic oversight. It was difficult to navigate, and even harder to find important information. The goal was to not only simplify navigation, but to ensure the new website acted as both an archive for the organisation's 20 years history whilst reflecting the current team and ambitions.
Robust CRM integration
The existing website used in-built e-commerce features to sell places on camps and auditions. The goal was to decouple this functionality, moving to Beacon CRM to handle all data and payment processing, freeing up the website to be a lean, focused, marketing platform.
/ Step 1
Project scoping
Because BYMT is such a passionate, energising organisation to work with, we couldn’t wait to get stuck in! Our first task was to elect a steering group who would oversee development of the project. This included a number of the core staff team and trustees, and was supported by BYMT’s Youth Panel. Crucially, this ensured that all voices were heard. Each member was asked to complete a stakeholder questionnaire, which we then took to a group scoping session with the whole team. This process enabled us to develop a website structure and content map that would meet the needs of all users.
/ Step 2
Content production
Once we had established functionality, user needs and the overarching website structure, we developed content for a series of key pages. This involved understanding the user’s objectives, and developing a hierarchy of information for each page. We then used this content to inform the next stage of the process: visual design.
/ Step 3
Design direction
As form tends to follow function, this step included a set of mood boards and the development of a sophisticated, fully-branded design system. The design was component-driven, making content editing a breeze, and all pages remained consistent and beautiful in style.
The design assets were shared with the steering group and Youth Panel, with only minor feedback given. Overall, the response was highly positive, as indicated in this design survey question.
/ Step 4
WordPress integration
One of the biggest complaints about the old website was that it was difficult to update and manage. Therefore, we developed a highly intuitive, custom page builder so that BYMT could easily create visually-consistent content themselves.
We created a custom WordPress theme for BYMT, and developed an intuitive, lightweight backend that the team could use easily.
/ Step 5
Team training and launch!
Once the team had provided final feedback on the project, we ran a training session with the steering group to demonstrate website functionality and maintenance, as well as providing a tailored user guide for their staff.
All Things Equal did a fantastic job bringing precision and insight to our complex brief. They took the time to understand our organisation and made clarifying our diverse offer central to the structure and design of our new website and its integration with a new CRM. Audience specific journeys were thoughtfully considered, and the brand refresh has been praised as welcoming, professional, and inspiring - all qualities that we align closely with. We look forward to continuing our relationship and feel our website is in very safe hands going forwards.
/ Naomi, Marketing Manager, BYMT
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