A members-only platform, built from the ground up

Stage Audience is a private, members-only service that fills unsold seats for theatres and live events, predominantly across London and increasingly further afield, giving members a great night out and venues a full house. By 2017 it had grown beyond what running everything by hand could sustain, and it came to us to change that. It has since become one of the most substantial platforms we have built.

Working together: Since 2017
Platform: Bespoke, Ruby on Rails
Access: Private, members only

The starting point

A discreet service, run entirely by hand

Stage Audience came to us in 2017, an established members' service still being run entirely by hand, with no system behind it. It needed a way to take bookings online without losing the personal, private feel its members valued.

The priority was to automate the busywork so the team could keep up as demand grew, while keeping the whole thing quietly out of public view.

How it grew

From a website to a platform

We started with a WordPress site and a booking system behind a secure members' login. It did its job, and it did something else too: it became a catalyst. The service grew quickly, and before long it needed more than an off-the-shelf setup could give.

So we ran a discovery process to map out how the whole service really worked, then built a bespoke platform on Ruby on Rails around it: a single place to manage everything, with the room to keep growing alongside the service.

What we built

A platform built around the whole service

Membership, end to end

Enquiries, applications, invitations and approvals in one flow, with renewals handled automatically so the team isn't chasing them.

Listings from a venue library

A full collection of venues, each with location, Google Maps and What3Words, transport links and facilities, so a new show can be listed in moments, even at short notice.

Booking and accounts

Members book online and see all their bookings in their account, and each show page pulls in dates, venue details and reviews to help them choose.

An email campaign builder

A built-in builder for the alerts that go out through the day, so the team can put a campaign together the moment new seats become available.

Payments, two ways

Card payments through Stripe and PayPal, handled securely at the point of booking.

A built-in help desk

Member support and the team's inbox in one tidy place, so every enquiry is easy to stay on top of.

Why you won't see behind the login

The Stage Audience homepage is public, so we can happily show it. The members-only platform behind the login is another matter: in a competitive market, its inner workings are deliberately kept out of view. We think a client's hard-won advantage is something to protect, not put on display, so beyond the front door you are reading what the platform does rather than seeing behind the curtain.

We came with a brief, and instead of simply building it they asked the right questions and worked out what we really needed. The email campaign facility in particular has transformed how we reach our members, and they've been there ever since, developing new features as the business has grown. We wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

The Stage Audience team

Let's talk

Outgrowing a manual process, or a site that can't keep up?

Some of our best work starts as a simple website and grows into something far bigger. If you are wrestling with a process that has outgrown its tools, we would be glad to talk it through.

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An illustration of the kind of homepage we design and build