What is Peppered? – Website management made for live event venues
Embarking on our journey in 2000 as a Netherlands-based web agency, Peppered swiftly became synonymous with cutting-edge web development tailored specifically for the performing arts industry. Recognising the need to adapt to the ever-evolving digital landscape, we transitioned into offering Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions in 2015, marking a pivotal shift in how venues manage their online presence.
Today, with over two decades of expertise and a clientele spanning 90+ theatres, concert halls, and cultural organisations, Peppered is now part of the CultureSuite, which stands as a trailblazer in delivering bespoke digital solutions.
At CultureSuite, we're not just in the business of building websites; we're a group of thinkers, designers, and tech experts pushing boundaries for the arts, culture and entertainment sector. We understand that a venue's online platform is more than just a virtual storefront – it's a dynamic hub for engagement, ticket sales, and community interaction. Embracing the ethos of design thinking, we've built a suite of marketing tools that empower venues to sculpt their digital identity with unparalleled flexibility and future-proofing.
Our suite of tools is designed to be your venue's digital Swiss army knife, equipping you with everything you need to captivate audiences, drive ticket sales, and elevate your brand presence.
Integrations
Peppered integrates with all major ticketing systems, payment providers, event planning tools, CRMs, and ad platforms. If there's a tool we're not yet connected to, we'll set it up for you at no extra cost.
Syncing your website with your ticketing and event management system is essential for effortless website management. It minimises the need for you to make reactive changes. So when tickets sell out or events undergo changes, your website automatically updates, freeing you to focus on strategic efforts.
Flexible building blocks
Peppered employs flexible building blocks to simplify website construction. With a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, you can effortlessly structure and rearrange pages to your liking. Each building block can be scheduled and personalised for specific audience segments, offering unparalleled versatility and efficiency in website management.
For example, you might have a major event coming up that you’ve been planning for. Perhaps you plan to change the homepage to reflect this and give the event more prominence.
Rather than remembering to switch the changes on, you can schedule it to go live for a specific date and time. This works particularly well if updates are supposed to go live during the weekend or any other time that's inconvenient for you.
There’s a lot of versatility and flexibility when using Peppered’s building blocks. Our goal here is to minimise operational drag and enable you to manage your website more proactively.
Event filtering
To enhance user experience, Peppered allows you to organise events based on genre, type, or any other relevant category. By utilising existing metadata, visitors can easily filter out events they're not interested in, ensuring a seamless browsing experience and boosting ticket sales.
This is especially useful for entertainment venues that host a wide variety of events. It transforms the web experience from overwhelming to simple in a single click.
Personalisation
Elevate user experience with Peppered's personalisation tools. By leveraging a centralised data centre, you can tailor your website to different audience segments, delivering relevant content and promotions. Whether it's targeted promotions, exclusive access, or customised content, Peppered empowers you to create a tailored experience for every visitor.
This is all done with Peppered’s visitor tags. There are a wide range of tags available including members, donors, returning visitors, and even detailed tags such as labelling a particular visitor as a classical music lover.
You can even control access to entire pages based on visitor tags. So you might want to restrict access to early-bird tickets to members only or only allow donors to access exclusive live streams, and even have whole sections of your website dedicated to internal staff only.
Accessibility
Reach and engage with a diverse audience using Peppered’s accessibility tools. We follow WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.1 Level AA to ensure nobody is left behind when it comes to enjoying arts and culture.
This means Peppered websites always: meet text contrast guidelines; have appropriate alt text for images and buttons; provide alternative content for video-only or audio-only elements; have keyboard-only navigation; and meet many other technical guidelines to ensure your website is widely accessible.
Analytics
Understanding your website traffic is essential for ongoing updates and editorial decisions. Knowing where your traffic comes from and which content or events your audience engages with most gives you powerful information that will inform future strategies.
That’s why Peppered can integrate with analytics platforms such as GA4. It also connects seamlessly with Google Ads, supports Meta’s Pixel tracking and comes with a cookie management system built in. This makes it easy for you to unify all your digital marketing tools and why Peppered is an all-in-one solution for the arts, culture and entertainment sector.
24/7 multi-lingual support
At Peppered, we’re committed to minimising technical turbulence for you and your team. That’s why our multi-lingual support team offers round-the-clock support with fast SLAs.
This is especially important during onsales and other busy periods. So the Peppered team is always available to help when you need us most, giving you peace of mind.
Building your website with Peppered
Peppered websites are structured around four main content types: pages, stories, performances, and people. These building blocks offer unparalleled flexibility and efficiency in website administration, allowing you to create dynamic, engaging content effortlessly.
- Pages – This is your main ‘evergreen’ page content.
- Stories – This is your storytelling content. It can be in the form of written articles, videos, audio clips or interactive graphics
- Performances – These are your events, which are pulled in via ERPs or event management systems like YesPlan or SalesForce. Then we add in data from ticketing platforms such as pricing, availability, seatmap, tickets sold etc
- People – This is a central database for cast members, performers and any other people involved in the production or performance of events.
These building blocks mean you can administer them in one place, but they can appear on multiple pages around your website.
For example, a performance page might contain related trailers or behind-the-scenes content made via Stories, as well as highlighting the show’s cast members via the People block. You could also have a People page that shows Stories that a cast member features in as well as Performances they are part of.
The rest of your Peppered website is made up of blocks from our Parts library. This covers everything from newsletter sign-up forms, sidebars, banners, media galleries, read more widgets, and anything else that helps make up a website.
Parts help make website management flexible, customisable and efficient. That means they can be changed and ordered according to your needs – there are no limitations. But they can also pull existing data from integrated software so that content changes can be automated, such as buttons changing to ‘selling fast’ or ‘sold out’ automatically based on information from your ticketing system.
Peppered’s fundraising funnel
For venues focused on fundraising, Peppered offers personalised fundraising campaigns tailored to each audience segment, maximising fundraising efforts and engagement.
So whether it’s a general website visitor, donor, or member, you can show tailored messaging that will optimise your fundraising efforts.
Community-led roadmap
We're proud of our vibrant community at Peppered. Through our community platform, CultureHub, venues can share insights, collaborate, and shape Peppered's development roadmap. Together, we're building a stronger, more sustainable arts and culture sector.
We believe that learnings about audience development discovered by a major venue in New York, London or Amsterdam could be passed down to smaller venues around the world, thus helping the entire arts and culture sector to grow together.
On top of that, our development roadmap is led by our community. That means anyone can make requests for new features and quality-of-life changes on Peppered. Larger venues may want to see a particular feature get developed more urgently. They can sponsor these requests so that they get released sooner. Once released, the entire Peppered community can then make use of this new feature.
We want to nurture this cooperative model to enable the arts and culture sector to thrive more sustainably.
Tech stack migration
Migrating to Peppered is seamless and hassle-free. Whether you opt for porting your existing website over, refreshing your existing website design, or a full website rebranding, our team ensures a smooth transition to our all-in-one digital platform.
- Port: If you’re happy with your existing website design, we can simply port you over to the Peppered platform where you can make use of our features. This is the simplest and quickest way to migrate your tech stack.
- Refresh: As well as bringing your website onto the Peppered platform, this method gives you access to our in-house design team who will create a new aesthetic for your website. Any changes made will align with your existing brand guidelines, but we can ensure your new website matches the latest website accessibility guidance, create new assets and generally give your new website a fresh breath of life.
- Rebrand: We’re always happy to work in tandem with branding and design agencies to give you a beautiful and powerful new website adorned with all the theatrical flourishes.
All-in-one digital platform (right out of the box)
Every feature of Peppered's website builder comes standard with no hidden costs or extra charges. You can also add our digital signage and mailing tools as part of the package. With them, Peppered has everything you need to thrive in the arts and culture sector.
And that's just the beginning. Our Professional Services team will guide you through setup, training, and ongoing support, ensuring you get the most out of Peppered.
This is all backed up by a multi-lingual support team who are available round-the-clock to minimise technical turbulence. We also encourage you to contribute to the community by making feature requests that will not only help your venue grow but help other venues around the world too.
This is the Peppered way. And it’s why some of our clients have been with us for over 20 years.
Next steps...
No matter what stage you're at in your search for the perfect web platform, we'll help you get the information you need to make the right decision for your venue.
- Are you an existing Peppered user?
Don’t forget to check our community platform, CultureHub, where you can get insider knowledge about how to get the most out of Peppered or add new features to the development roadmap. Log in to CultureHub. - Like the sound of Peppered?
We’re proud of how easy we make it for venues to manage their website. That’s why live event venues around the world trust Peppered. Book a demo to learn more. - Still learning about website builders and digital tools for venues?
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