Murrumbateman Field Days - Development

Our Client

The Murrumbateman Field Days are a beloved event in the Yass Valley, welcoming around 18,000 visitors every year. A taste of country living for tourists, and a high-value exhibition opportunity for farming companies, the Murrumbateman Field Days are run by a dedicated team of volunteers to support the vibrancy and growth of the Yass community

Their Challenge

Organising event bookings and invoicing at scale took a long period of time and the event team were keen to reduce the administrative burden on staff. The office was moving to a new CRM software and needed a website that integrated with all their in-house management tools. They also needed a website with an easily accessible and updatable backend to ensure content was kept up to date

Our Approach

We were happy to help out and noticed other opportunities to improve their business. Their existing website was slow and difficult to navigate. We wanted to move the organisation forward into the next stage of their branding to exhibit how special the event is, emphasising the value to sponsors, and making navigation easier for visitors and exhibitors to find the information they needed.

We were brought onto the project just a few weeks before online exhibitor applications were due to open. Could we build a whole new experience in just a few weeks? You bet we could. Here’s how we did it.

Client Relations

We worked quickly and closely with the stakeholders at Murrumbateman Field Days to understand their vision to better engage with the community while embodying their brand identity. We worked with them to create the first concept for the new website that well represented the characteristics of their events.

Adherence to style preferences and requirements
Understanding of organisational goals and target audiences
Ongoing communication with multiple stakeholders from the organisation
Regular project management updates

Branding and Website UI Design

A great not-for-profit website communicates who the organisation is and what they’re about right from the word go. We created a completely bespoke design for the new Murrumbateman Field Days site, carefully using their logo elements and colours throughout the site to give it the real country feel of their branding. We restructured the previously static menu bar, to add sub-menus and home page links to help the audience efficiently find resources relevant to them

Incorporated the windmill motif from their logo to create filtered banners throughout the site
Feature image banners showed off the event, changing for each landing page to give a good overview of the scale of the event
Easy-to-use site navigation structure that allowed visitors, exhibitors and community members to find the information they needed intuitively

UX Design

We love polishing every detail, adding additional features to create a unique look and feel and provide a high-quality user experience. For the MDF website, we even coded mobile design elements that match your scrolling speed on the homepage. Our polishing details is what helps engage site visitors and makes the website stand out.

Custom animations on-site navigation buttons
Menu button transformation on the desktop version upon clicking
Responsive design across browsers
Social media integrations
Engaging image and banner scrolling

Integrations

We wanted to support Murrumbateman Field Days to streamline their workflow. We needed to allow exhibitors to book stalls and have the community able to purchase event tickets, all while making the process easy for administration staff to manage in the backend. We took into consideration the current CRM and payment gateway integrations they were using and helped the team to collect data and manage events through their CRM with integrated booking forms. As bookings are vital for the event, we also created backup redundancies in the application submission process as well, in case of errors with the CRM tool they used.

Integrated booking forms allow the team to track applications, site preferences, payment status and more
The booking form is also designed to take online payments as soon as people express an interest, with full eCommerce payment gateway integration
We resolved the issues from the old website of difficult navigation and pages not indexed on the navigation bars
We also avoided overwhelming visitors through progressive disclosure elements on each audience segment landing page

Mobile & Tablet Optimisation

One of the organisation’s aims was to effectively reach out to their community. With so many rural community members only using mobile phones to browse the web, we knew it was important to make the site work as well as possible across devices. It’s all about creating the best experience possible for users (and their thumbs).

We shaped each version of the website to ensure information displays well
Interactive galleries could be swiped by fingers as well as cursors
Fast loading content
Custom effects displayed well across devices
We even reduced scrolling fatigue by shrinking the embedded social media feeds in the site footer to icons only on the home page

Project Handover

Once the final HTML mockup of the website was approved by all stakeholders, we integrated the backend into WordPress as the best platform for content management. Once the project went live, we supported the organisation for a 2 month period. This support included 24/7 monitoring and bug fixing, as well as staff administration training. We trained relevant staff members and stakeholders of the MFD team in how to use the backend of the website. This gave them the power to edit and manage content on a day to day basis, plus a reference guideline document.

2 months of ongoing support
Website backend training session for all stakeholders
Training documentation

Ongoing Support

Along with the 2 months of ongoing support, we also continued to work with them for basic SEO, optimising their website for best performance.

Basic SEO
Meta title and meta description migration
On-page and off-page optimisation
Redirecting URLs from the old website to the new website
24/7 website monitoring

Want to work with us?

We love going that extra mile for not-for-profit teams to support their work in the community. Have a project you’d like to talk about?

Get in touch with Planet Media today. Contact us!

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