Atlanta Jewish Film Festival

The Challenge

The original AJFF website had significant issues with ticketing inefficiencies, unclear navigation, and an awkward and unwieldy schedule of events and films. These issues hindered older audience members (age 50+) who make up 66% of the total viewing audience. Simultaneously, AJFF was attempting to engage a younger demographic without much success. AJFF urgently needed a site with a hassle-free ticketing system, a design that appealed to both younger and older audiences, and a user-friendly navigation for all visitors. AJFF administrators also required an easy-to-use Content Management System for updates.

The Goal

Cool Blue’s design team created an interface that was edgy enough to appeal to younger visitors, yet consistent and easily understandable for an older audience. Our development team successfully integrated a third-party ticketing solution with an elaborate Content Management System (CMS) framed in Drupal. This feature included a highly customized calendar that allowed film schedules to be updated easily and frequently.   Cool Blue also ensured that one entry of a film’s information into the CMS would distribute the data to all possible schedule views, which provided consistency and manageability for the client.

The Results

Cool Blue successfully delivered all objectives on time to meet the client’s marketing drivers. As a result of the new and improved AJFF website, the 2009 festival experienced a 13.5% increase in ticket sales (14,138 to 16,051 tickets sold) when compared to sales in 2008. The “Print at Home” ticketing fulfillment option resulted in 85% of purchased tickets – reducing the labor-intensive “Will Call” system by 78% and providing considerable AJFF staff resource savings.

As the film festival has grown in both offerings and attendance, Cool Blue has ensured its website has grown with it – and has continued to deliver success for AJFF.