Making letters come to life online

Letters Live curates events at which the world's most incredible letters are brought to life by a diverse array of outstanding performers.

Making letters come to life online

Letters Live curates events at which the world's most incredible letters are brought to life by a diverse array of outstanding performers.

Letters Live has a fantastic reputation and huge amount of support from celebrities including; Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliet Stevenson, Ian McKellen, Kylie Minogue, Russell Brand, Caitlin Moran, Matt Berry, Louise Brealey, Tom Sturridge, Ellie Bamber, Tom Hiddleston, Sally Hawkins, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Stephen Fry, Jude Law and Sir Ben Kingsley. the concept is simple amazing readers read amazing letters - if you've never caught one of their shows head over to the site a book some tickets (if you can get them before the sell out).

We met the team at Letters Live through our work for the Women's Prize for Fiction. They enlisted our help on web development, design and user experience. The mission was to improve the website and give the Letters Live audience an online experience that was as compelleing as their live event programmes.

The challenge

When we started work, the Letters Live website offered the user a basic presentation of events. It posed a number of challenges to the user and administrators including:

It was very hard to navigate and explore
The design of the site and the graphics on it were not very strong
The website was hard to update from an editorial point of view
The site had limited SEO value
There was a lack for video evidence of the live events

Our solution

We tackled the challenge head on and completely re-built the website from scratch to solve its usability problems and improve user experience. The process covers discover, wireframes, design and then custom code and CMS deployment.
We also created the option for the team at Letters Live to simple expand the capabilities of the website in the future including merchandising sales functions and blogging.

The key improvements we made included:

Overall user experience with a focus on converting signups and ticket sales
Great use of animation and front end graphics to better reflect the Letters Live experience as a dynamic live event
Made the website multimedia focussed to better utilise video and imagery
We re-created specific pages for readers that have participated or been involved in Letters Live events. These pages include biographies, galleries and detailed information to showcase the celebrities involved and enhance the Letters Live image
We created a listing page which shows all past and upcoming events which people can navigate and catch up on

Benedict Cumberbatch at Letters Live event

Not only did Carswell Gould help Letters Live by conceiving, designing and building a brilliant website that offers our audiences awesome digital experiences to complement and promote our awesome live events, but they somehow managed it during a pandemic. The launch of our new website is a hugely exciting and positive moment for Letters Live and we can't wait to move forward to the next chapter of our story

Said Shaun Usher from Letters Live

Success

The Letters Live website now reflects the experiential essence of the live shows and is much easier to navigate. Users can now get a taste of the Letters Live experience online and find everything they need to catch up on past events. Best of all the site allows the business to promote sell and celebrate their amazing events. See for yourself visit the site now.