Young Music Society
Location
Canberra, ACT
Year
2023
Services
Website Design
Social Media Marketing
Website
The Young Music Society (YMS) was established by Judith Clingan AO in 1969 as a non-residential music school for children.
It has since grown into a national award-winning, self-funded, not-for-profit society which musically inspires young Canberrans through music based arts activities and events.
The Society offers School Holiday programs throughout the year. Each program is designed to give students musical experience and opportunity in a supportive environment, guided by Canberra’s premier musicians and teachers.
With the 2024 YMS Summer School fast approaching, YMS engaged LeadGen Digital Services to redesign its ageing WordPress website.
The brief
The YMS site was simple for staff to update with required information, but was built on an aged WordPress theme and contained an excess of unnecessary or outdated pages and content.
YMS requested the following:
- Create a new, modern Canberra website design in time for enrolments for the 2024 Summer Holiday program.
- The website should be easy for parents to navigate and find the information they need.
- The website should be easy for YMS staff to update.
- Unnecessary content should be removed.
Here’s what we did
Simplify the website structure
We greatly simplified the website structure to make navigation easier for users and reduce the chances of staff leaving outdated content on the site. We reduced the number of pages from over a dozen to six: Home, About, Contact, Holiday Programs, Weekly Programs, and Newsletter. Two sub-pages were added, one to facilitate enrolments and one containing FAQs.
Borrow from best practice design
We researched leading youth music organisations and borrowed from their design elements while maintaining a unique brand and style for the YMS website. Key inspirations included the Sydney Youth Orchestra and Melbourne Youth Orchestra, which both employed a crisp, clear and professional design with tasteful use of colour.
Establish a unique visual identity
We introduced a modern, bold and youthful design for YMS, further developing the existing colour scheme and employing a combination of vibrant and cool colours against a white/grey background. Circular buttons were a unique design touch to create a memorable user experience.
Use a visual builder
We used the Divi visual builder to build this site, ensuring staff could easily update the content on the front end and get immediate visual feedback on the changes.
These changes ensured that YMS could continue to support young Canberrans through its musical programs on a not-for-profit basis.
Facebook marketing
With the 2024 Summer School fast approaching, YMS needed a way to get the word out fast and generate interest not only among existing members, but to a wider audience across the Canberra community.
LeadGen Digital Services assisted YMS with a ‘surge’ Facebook campaign aimed at generating maximum reach in a short period of time. LeadGen’s generated ad copy and creatives, targeted Facebook ads based on demographic and geographic factors, and tweaking the campaign based on initial results. This work resulted in nearly 600 additional clicks through to the website in 13 days.