Case Studies,Web Design,Web Development
Dating back to the 1800s, Amersham Band has a storied history to accompany its now thriving, modern brass-band present day. With over 200 current players and an architect-designed bandroom in the heart of Amersham Old Town, the group not only performs across the region and nationally but also hosts concerts, educational programmes, and offers a range of bands for all ages and abilities to join.
After a tender and consultation process, Satur9 was chosen to help improve Amersham Band’s online presence.
Fred Harrison, Trustee for Amersham Band, explains:
“We were keen to create a new on-line identity for the band which was modern and distinctive. Although not local to us, [Lewis] took the time and trouble to visit the band and to understand the ethos and values of our organisation.”
Amersham Band already had effective branding being used across their materials, but their website needed to better reflect this and become more engaging to users. Compounding this challenge, the website admins had been encountering issues surrounding security and site-breaking updates.
Travelling waves and curved-edges are used throughout to reflect the taper and wrap of traditional brass instruments.
The project brief was all-encompassing, and so Satur9 designed and built an entirely new, fully-bespoke WordPress-based website which the team could administer and better manage going forward. The site structure and messaging was re-orientated with greater emphasis placed on the band’s defining values: education, community and innovation.
The client was also keen to emphasise fun – music, after all, brings with it a sense of joy and togetherness. For the design, brand-aligned blues were made the centrepiece of the colour scheme, balanced by golds for action points, with soft beiges and motifs taken directly from the bandroom itself. Video, audio, and vibrant photography were placed front-and-centre to complement the range of information the website contains.
Describing this process, Fred continues:
“Lewis created prototype templates for us to review and was happy to encompass our feedback. He has a great eye for design and detail, taking care over fonts, colour schemes and the visual look and feel. Lewis created a comprehensive tutorial video which was helpful as a training aid for our marketing team. He was also very responsive to fixing bugs and making minor changes, often creating fixes within the same day.”
Amersham Band uses the website to publish news and events updates, as well as profiles of their team members and bands.
Care was taken to ensure the website’s key directives were met: of raising awareness around activities and events, encouraging participation, promoting ticket sales, and fostering community engagement.
On the technical side of things, several features and improvements were introduced. These included:
Fred, in closing:
“Our new website has had great feedback from our own members and the wider community and we are continuing to receive high levels of contact enquiries and ticket sales. Lewis was great to work with – he is highly professional, reliable and flexible in his approach. I have no hesitation in recommending [Satur9] for web design projects.”
The project was delivered on time and on budget. It was a delight to be involved with such a vibrant group and to get to see (and hear) the wonderful work Amersham Band are doing. If you are interested in having music for an event or even joining a brass band, you could do worse than to take a look at amershamband.com.
Is your website tired-looking, or needing to perform better? If you want to talk to us about feeling proud of your website again, get in touch today.
branding, clients, cms, design, mobile, web development
