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Image of a Dance production at the Southbank Centre

Southbank Centre

Building a strong online presence to reach a culturally and geographically diverse audience

The Client


The Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest arts centre. Based in London, it spans multiple venues. Providing one of the most diverse and culturally rich arts programmes in the UK.

The Southbank Centre’s website is their primary source of engagement and income. With over 6 million visits generating over £10m per year.

The Challenge

The Southbank Centre covers several venues and a range of world-class art and culture. They were looking to expand how people were able to access and interact with their content.

They needed their online presence to extend the whole of their customer journey. Providing an inspiring and effortless experience for their visitors. With the aim of increasing conversion rates and revenue.

iPhones showing the pages from the Southbank Centre's website

The Solution

Our team wanted to reflect The Southbank Centre's spirit in the look of the new site. We partnered with leading Dutch design agency, Fabrique (best known for award winning site design of IKEA and Rijksmuseum) to create a fresh design.

A key aspiration of the project was to improve user experience and engagement. Our solution was to deliver an accessible open source Drupal website. Integrating with the internal systems via API. This setup allowed us to present real-time events data to visitors. Linking straight to ticketing and purchasing to improve revenue generation. Device optimisation was also crucial. We chose to use a Drupal solution. Ensuring that visitors received the same engaging experience whichever device they were using.

As The Southbank Centre covers a breadth of different art forms and culture. It was important that the site give the same broad range of content to visitors. Working with The Southbank Centre's internal team we developed a content strategy.

Our approach split user needs into depth levels of 'skim', 'swim' and 'dive'. Allowing us to satisfy visitors who wanted core information. As well as guests who might require detailed information and richer supporting content. This approach enabled us to meet the needs of all audiences visiting the site.

To keep visitors engaged, we also implemented a dynamic content linking. This allowed us to present them with related content and extra context.

We reviewed existing content and auto-migrated it using a scripted, repeatable process. This helped us to ensure a seamless migration.

The end result was a dynamically visual site. Which has helped The Southbank Centre to connect with their audience.

Macbook showing pages from the Southbank Centre's website

The Website

Southbank Centre website homepage

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