We are delighted to launch a new website for Kansas City’s Te Deum, an exceptional musical ensemble focused on sacred music from a variety of musical traditions.
The initial goal was to share the feeling of attending a Te Deum concert, which we have been fortunate enough to do several times. A subtle collection of colors, evocative photos, and an elegant stacked design brought the right feeling to the website.
At the same time, we made sure to use our SEO expertise to make the website findable. Offering visitors a terrific experience was a shared goal. We worked closely with the Te Deum team to get every detail just right.
Listen to the choir to get the full experience.
Functional changes
Te Deum had not updated their website since 2012. They needed new ways to sell concert tickets and albums, take donations, and share news about the ensemble.
WordPress websites have the advantage of using plugins — a library of software — to provide functionality that can cost thousands of dollars extra in a traditional website. Te Deum had some specific ideas about how they wanted their events and ticket sales to look, though.
With a custom design and a combination of plugins and custom posts, we were able to create an events page that satisfied the client’s aesthetic preferences.
The classic Events page (shown below) still exists on the site for people who prefer it, and can be reached from a sidebar link. But the presentation of the concerts on the Concerts page shown above is completely custom.
WordPress allows generation of pages like an Events or Shop page automatically. This way, organizations that will be keeping up their websites in-house can add an event or product and know that the main page will be updated automatically. Tech skills required are at a minimum.
In the post editor, special elements have their own boxes with instructions to make it easier to add new events.
A page of embedded videos allows visitors to hear the ensemble. Again, WordPress functionality makes it easy to add multimedia.Te Deum has a wonderful collection of high quality photos, graphics, recordings, and videos, and the WordPress platform allows them to make good use of these assets — now and in the future.
Calls to action are present on nearly every page, making it easy for visitors to buy tickets and albums or to donate to the organization.
We used WooCommerce to create a more robust check out option for Te Deum. They wanted visitors to be able to purchase concert tickets, special events tickets, and CDs in a single transaction. They also had specific ideas about how they wanted the check out process to look and feel. Customization allowed them to gather specific information from customers and to get very close to the exact look and feel they wanted — without the expense of custom development.
It has been a pleasure to work with Te Deum, and they report that their organization is excited to have a beautiful new website.
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