One of the UK’s leading ballet companies, English National Ballet has been opening ballet up to wider audiences for over 75 years. Their ambition is simple: ballet for everyone, everywhere.
Launched alongside a new brand identity, the website needed to welcome new audiences while serving loyal supporters.
English National Ballet wanted a site that matched their refreshed visual identity and felt more accessible to people new to ballet.
Key priorities included improving performance, sustainability and accessibility, simplifying the user experience, and creating space for richer editorial content. The site needed to balance commercial goals like ticket sales with the elegance and fluidity of the art form itself.
Working to a tight delivery schedule, we partnered closely with the ENB team from early discovery through to build.
Audience research, internal workshops and a content audit helped reshape the site around user needs rather than organisational structure. The final design reflects the new brand while making it easier to explore productions, learn about ballet, and engage with ENB’s work.
On the technical side, we delivered a flexible, block-based system that gives the team control to create audience-first content at scale.
First on the agenda was a series of internal workshops with the English National Ballet team, designed to evolve their content to place audience needs at the heart while still balancing organisational goals. This set the foundation for focus groups with both regular attendees and non-attenders, used to test and refine our assumptions about how the proposed site structure and updates would engage diverse audiences, especially those new to English National Ballet.
At the beginning of discovery, a preliminary content audit was conducted to help the marketing team get to grips with the scale of the existing site and its extensive historic content. This process allowed us to collaboratively identify key pages, assess what users would find genuinely valuable, and begin shifting from organisation-first to user-first messaging and structure.
Following the delivery of brand design guidelines, our team worked closely with EDIT brand studio to ensure that their designs were accurately reflected in the new website. The website design was informed by our findings from audience research and internal workshops, with elements like user journeys making it clear how and where visitors could find information easily and accessibly.
We then began technical work, scoping out the team’s requirements for the new website. Through this process, we identified several areas to develop or evolve, which would improve the functionality and usability of the site. Thanks to the development of 44 website blocks, the team then had a huge amount of flexibility to build out this audience-first content.
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The result is an accessible, elegant website that brings English National Ballet’s new brand to life, engaging both long-standing supporters and first-time audiences.
A Netflix-style browsing and playback experience makes it easy for audiences to discover and watch ENB at Home video content.
In-person class bookings are integrated via MindBody, creating a smooth journey from discovery to booking.
The site integrates with Tessitura and WooCommerce to support ticket sales, retail and other paid content in one cohesive experience.
Advanced, dynamically populated galleries allow content to update automatically, keeping pages fresh and easy to manage.
Donation and support flows were redesigned to feel clearer, more engaging and better aligned with user intent.
An optional embedded chatbot provides real-time support and guidance for users when needed.
