Sydney Royal Easter Show

A new home for Australia's largest ticketed event

First held in 1823, the Sydney Royal Easter Show is Australia’s largest annual ticketed event, attracting over 828,000 attendees on average and bringing over $247M to the Australian economy. The Show is a celebration of Australian culture, from rural traditions to modern-day lifestyles, providing unique experiences for everyone

Stakeholder workshops to align roadmap and FY plan

Insights on the current customer base now and into the future

Refreshed personas reflecting today’s show patron

Newly designed  website to address customer needs

Created ‘whats on’ itinerary and way finding map 

The situation

The Royal Agricultural Society engaged Studio LDN to build insights across customers and exhibitors to ensure continued growth and relevance in the live events space in a competitive market.

Customer research was conducted to educate necessary updates to their current digital presence but also to formulate a digital strategy roadmap for the Sydney Royal Easter Show website. The aim being to commence the move from a once-a-year tradition to 365 day educational and inspirational resource.

Commencing with stakeholder and customer workshops to truly understand how customers engage with the brand, we identified needs and wants that would support and validate a digital uplift across all touchpoints.

Helping the Sydney Royal Easter Show support their customer needs throughout the year

The process

Prioritising the business needs

Whilst the Sydney Royal Easter Show has had many years of great success, with millions of attendees at their shows year-on-year, the business was seeking clarity regarding user experience across their website and app engagement, pre-event. By conducting stakeholder workshops we identified key areas across the journey that needed addressing in order to improve the experience for users leading up to the event and after. This created more opportunities for retention and engagement strategies across the business.

Identifying customer needs

Customer interviews illuminated key traits, behaviors, goals and needs of the users. The need for the website to tell the story of agricultural excellence, the rich history of the show as well as clearly helping to way-find the experiences to be found on the day, were the key points validated by research. Bringing the country to the city and educating attendees on ‘what’s on’ in a relatable, inspirational and fun way was key to the success of the website.

Designing the solution for customers

By creating a mobile first, accessible design with a simplified architecture, which provided a robust and clear home for event information and allowed for better planning and wayfinding, we were able to design a solution that would drive more engagement and overall satisfaction. With the premise of ‘explore’ we created the ability to drive excitement about the show, sell more tickets and allow users to have a more personalised experience.

Built for scale and flexibility

To ensure greater engagement with customers and more flexibility for content authoring by the Sydney Royal Easter Show team, we ensured the design offered maximum content management capabilities with plenty of content authoring around event information, news and updates. This allowed the business to promote the great work they do as well as allow users to access more timely and relevant information.

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