Project Overview

Client: Forest Row Village Hall
Sector: Charity, Events, Venue Hire
MUT Roles: Conception, Design, Copywriting, Development
Project Time: 3 months

The Forest Row Village Hall has been hosting local community events since 1892. It is a registered charity in the UK, most of it's revenue is raised through the hire of hall space for events such as plays, concerts, parties, films, and classes. The Village Hall is managed by a Hall Manager and overseen by a committee of volunteers. The Hall Manager takes hall bookings and deals with the day-to-day requirements of the historic Grade 2 listed building.

Original Website

The original Village Hall website was a static HTML site. The business process was for potential hall hirers to download a booking form (Word document), print it and then deliver it to the hall manager's office, either by post or by hand. While this process has it's own personable charm, the website needed updating as well as streamlining business processes.

Information Architecture

The main reasons for visiting the Village Hall website is to make an event booking and to find out about an upcoming event. The main navigation reflects these user goals:

The footer navigation provides an overview of the information architecture:

Bookings Process

The bookings process was updated, an online form is now available for hirer's to complete, agree to Terms & Conditions, and submit. To communicate the process an entire page was created, see the Bookings Process.

Events Calendar

Interviewing the Hall Manager revealed that one of the most frequently asked and time consuming questions was the availability of the hall for hire. Part of a solution to this was building an events calendar. This would enable potential hirer's to refer to the calendar prior to requesting a date and time for their event.

Revenue Streams

The Events Calendar also provides valuable event promotion opportunity for event organisers. A basic event listing is provided free of charge for all events. Additional provision is made for "Featured Events", which, for a small fee, provides greater visibility for an event.

An additional revenue stream for the Village Hall is to allow local businesses to advertise their business on the website. The website attracts approximately 500 visits per month.

Responsive Design & Development

The Forest Row Village Hall website is built with Wordpress, creating a bespoke theme. Wordpress was chosen because of the need for the Hall Manager to update content as well as post new upcoming events. The website has been designed in such a way as to allow for rapid navigation of site visitors, catering to the two most common goals of making a booking and finding out about upcoming events.

Live Website iframe