Case: INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
The International Film Festival Rotterdam and Level Level join Rotterdam forces!
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is the largest film festival in the Netherlands and a leading cultural platform that is accessible to everyone. To ensure this accessibility, the new website needed a stable and user-friendly foundation.
Making the difficult easy, that was our goal!
Behind the scenes, this was (at times) a complex operation. 😉 As the technical coordinator, we ensured the integration of various systems, so everything works together seamlessly. It’s crucial to prepare the site for peak performance, especially during moments of high traffic and spikes in ticket sales, such as the start of ticket sales for the festival.
The new website is now ready for the future! But our collaboration with IFFR has only just begun.
“Level Level is an equal partner in dialogue, down-to-earth, no big egos, service-oriented doers. I believe this is also reflected in the result. Simple and solid.”
Dynamic online identity
IFFR saw the new website as an opportunity to give a boost to its online identity and branding. Additionally, there was a clear focus on accessibility – the platform must be accessible to everyone. That’s where we come in!
To get to the heart of the IFFR identity, several sessions were held with the client to define the brand values and establish the online style. There were also multiple customer journey sessions to gain more insight and understanding of the different target audiences. In the case of IFFR, there are more than 10 different target groups, including: industry professionals, partners, Tiger Members, regular visitors, and volunteers. It is essential that the online identity resonates with these diverse audiences.
In addition, it is important to have an inspiring foundation throughout the year, while also allowing space for the festival’s annual style to take centre stage, without the need for drastic changes to the website’s structure. The festival must be put in the spotlight every year!
“Great that we can manage many aspects of the website through the intuitive CMS.”
The year-round style has a calm foundation consisting of the colour palette: black, white, and shades of grey. Additionally, IFFR blue is the secondary colour that makes call-to-actions stand out. The festival style changes every year, based on the current IFFR festival campaign. The basis for this change on the website lies in the colour palette and accompanying graphic visuals.
Together with IFFR, a clear online design strategy has been established, which will serve IFFR well in the coming years!
A strong foundation
IFFR has a wide variety of target audiences, each with different user needs on the website. Visitors ideally see the information that is relevant to them based on their account and the rights associated with it. This created a pleasant experience for the visitor, but also resulted in a lot of (unnecessary) complexity on the website side. During peak times, it also led to issues with the website’s speed.
Another factor contributing to this complexity is the various connections between the website and external third-party systems. For example, due to dynamic ticket buttons, there are many checks back and forth between the website and external systems. This demands a lot of resources from the website and impacts its speed. A key objective of the new IFFR website was to simplify this process.
Simplifying often sounds like an easy task, but to simplify, the complexity must first be fully mapped out. Together with IFFR, we got to work and developed a plan for a Minimal Viable Product (MVP). The starting point was to simplify and, where possible, untangle connections with third parties. This keeps the management of the website straightforward and the performance fast.
This has resulted in a stable foundation with as few account-related personalisations as possible. The account-related actions now occur almost entirely within the environments of the third parties (Fiona, Ticketworks, and Medialoc), which are also designed for this purpose. This keeps the management of the website clear and the performance swift!
Management and collaboration
In addition to a stable foundation, it was also a goal for IFFR to improve collaboration and the management of responsibilities among the suppliers with the new website. As the website manager, Level Level, together with IFFR, acts as the ‘hub’ to coordinate this and bring the various parties together. It is important for us to have a good understanding of the strengths of the external parties and to remain open to their input. This way, all parties can focus on what they do best, allowing us to strengthen each other and, in turn, enhance the quality of the website.
In the lead-up to the festival, this collaboration will intensify even further. We are certainly looking forward to the continued preparations for the festival and the joint monitoring moments during, for example, the start of ticket sales in January.
On to the next festival!
We are very proud of the result and have achieved the objectives: a stable and future-proof foundation is in place for the coming years. In addition to the result, we are also proud of our collaboration with IFFR and the contribution we are making to the Rotterdam cultural sector through this project.
Of course, there are always wishes, and these will be addressed in a development process. We certainly can’t wait for the next festival, but we’ll have to be patient for a little while longer. The next festival will start on 30 January 2025, and by the end of this year, the website will undergo its festival transformation!
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