A fertile future for a 200-year-old organisation.
Freshening up the UX for clarity and consistency across an entire brand family.
THE BRIEF
Connecting Australia with year-round events for a stronger agricultural future.
There’s more to the RAS than the Easter Show. The brand family encompasses the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW, the Sydney Royal Easter Show, Sydney Showground and competition entry portal, CAS. Sudo Roux has been working on a multi-year transformation of the brands, which needed better UX across the board. A cohesive brand experience that promoted events and venue space for 365 days a year rather than just the 12-day Easter Show. With added simplicity for the user and time savings for the client.
Sudo Roux led the opportunity to gather insights across our customers and stakeholders to drive the uplift in customer experience. In fact, they drove us forward reassuring me we could work at the pace required without compromising the looming ticket sales milestone in early February. They have immersed themselves as an integral part of the business the entire way.
The Royal Agricultural Society of NSW
An influential force in the development of Australian agriculture.
Cattle. Sheep. Alpaca. Beer. The RAS hosts competitions to support the government’s goal of improving food standards across the country. Since 1822, the NTP has existed for the future of sustainable Australian agriculture. A 7-year hoarding of website pages held the organisation back. It was trying to operate with a clunky, confusing and hard-to-navigate site.
The sydney royal easter show
A rite of passage for Sydneysiders.
Australia’s largest annual ticketed event that was first held in 1823. The Sydney Royal Easter Show welcomes almost a million guests each year, but was doing it with an outdated website and legacy software. It was long-due a tune-up that prioritised the customer’s needs.
The Competition Administration System (CAS)
Now welcoming florists, farmers, woodchoppers.
The CAS is a portal for people entering RAS-run competitions, from florists to farmers. A smaller piece of the project, the CAS needed an upgraded design for consistency across the brand family, and to make it easier for competitors to sign-up to their chosen contest.
SYDNEY SHOWGROUND
Versatile venue space for hire.
An impressive patch of land near Olympic Park, Sydney Showground leases venue space to businesses. Welcoming everything from music festivals to trade shows, it collects revenue for RAS, supporting Aussie agriculture and rural communities. The Showground aims to keep bums on seats and feet on grass beyond the Easter Show period.
After multiple interviews, we knew the website needed to serve many uses for its many user segments. Organisers need to know a space is fit for purpose. Exhibitors need details from electricity points to delivery areas. Visitors want event times, ticket prices, parking information.
Crafting experiences that are clear, consistent, connected.
Connections had to be made. Between all brands in the family. Between users and their end goals.
Research into user flow and journey mapping helped us shape a custom design framework, applied across every brand for consistency. This presented a clearer front end that helped website visitors find what they were looking for while helping the client author content quickly and autonomously.
Consolidating processes. Streamlining content.
Users were getting lost in mega-navs and pointless content. We simplified the journey through improved architecture and easy-to-navigate menus. Less twists, turns and giving up. The RAS homepage now heroes events, getting the client closer to their goal of becoming a 365-day-a-year business.
By culling unnecessary pages, the RAS website dropped 70% of its page weight. We split the site by department: RAS Foundation, Education, Competition, Heritage. Flipping the switch from an internally-led design to a user-led one, we made the experience more consistent for visitors. They can now explore the website by going straight to the department they need.
Toolbox
Where design meets tech
Optimizely
HubSpot
Mapbox
DXP Strategy and full stack overhaul
CRM, Marketing automation strategy, implementation and integration
Wayfinding design and implementation
Momentum Technologies (Ungerboeck)
360० VR Video
Event system integration
Walkable tours of each venue for Sydney Showground
User-first features that uplift CX.
The initial scope was to improve the IA and UX but never touched on adding new features. Turned out, new features would be one of the best ways to improve the online experience. Every type of visitor can now easily access what they need without endless scrolling, back-tracking, and back-and-forth with the Showground’s team.
We gave Sydney Showground a non-intrusive but impossible-to-miss search bar so users can easily find a suitable venue for their event. A ‘What’s on’ section just below the fold means visitors don’t have to scroll far to find upcoming events and expos.
Organisers and exhibitors land on the site for information about accessibility, marketing, health and safety. Pre-transformation, they had to wade through a dumping ground of PDFs. Now, we’ve organised the planning essentials into dedicated toolkit areas.
A venue page overhaul made it easy to navigate and consume information in this key section of the site. Interested organisers now benefit from extra filtering capabilities, a walkable 360 tour of venues, and downloadable images. Who said finding a venue and getting sign-off from the boss had to be a slog?
Efficiency from the inside-out.
Lost users equal extra admin. We embedded internal tools and processes to take a load off our client’s plate and help users reach their goals without the hand-holding.
We plugged all forms into our client’s CRM, so every enquiry goes straight to one place and is ready to pick up and act upon. The Competition Administration System was integrated into HubSpot to give the marketing teams instant insights into a user’s interests and habits.
The right place at the right time.
A whole change in the Showground’s site design and architecture means users can get where they need to go quickly. Whatever mode they’re in – organising, visiting or exhibiting – better search, improved filtering, and homepage highlights help them complete their goals. Automation and better use of the client’s CRM put enhanced customer service at their fingertips. And to loop this back to the beginning: Simpler journeys and UX lead to more year-round events that create funds for Australia’s agricultural future.
Let’s talk.
Untangle your organisation’s challenge. Re-imagine the customer experience.
It starts with a call to Sudo Roux: 1300 753 499