The Canadian Opera Company

The Situation:

How do you improve your customer’s online experience with your brand when you don’t know who your online customers are? The Canadian Opera Company (COC) knew their website needed to change, but were lacking information about their online customers. They didn’t know where to begin.

What they did know was that the website didn’t support the COC’s overall business goals: to drive subscriptions and donations. They wanted a site that could meet their customers’ needs while extending the opera experience into an online environment.

The Solution:

Using the Digital Mosaic, as well as data gathered through audience feedback and interviews, Delvinia determined that there are two key COC customer groups sharing a few key characteristics: time-starved professionals interested in a more efficient online experience, and socially-inclined city dwellers looking for a more engaging, interactive online experience. Despite being technologically savvy, less than 20% of the COC audience were transacting online.

With this in mind, Delvinia developed an overall digital strategy for the COC that would empower more customers to use the website to transact, to increase engagement through more interactive features, and to increase user satisfaction.

The website experience was redesigned to save time, make it easier to buy tickets and subscriptions, and to find information about performances. Layered on top of a sensible re-architecture and clean re-design were enhanced site components created in Flash to tell stories, encourage conversation, and deepen the relationship with the digital audience.

The Results:

Delvinia has touched and transformed every aspect of the COC’s digital presence. Since its relaunch in January 2009, we’ve seen great things happen:

  • Online sales increased 30%, and COC.ca became the primary channel for single ticket purchases
  • Website bounce rates decreased from 56% to 26% in the same period, proving that users are more engaged with content and can easily navigate toward their intended goals
  • Email subscribers increased by 30%
  • Clickthrough rates increased 10% overall

Based on Delvinia’s deep and accurate knowledge of the opera customer and through continued measurement analysis, we continue to provide COC customers with content and tools to engage and activate.

Services used on this project:

  • Digital Mosaic
  • User Experience Design
  • Creative Development
  • Technical Development