South East Dance is an arts charity with a moving mission: making dance accessible to everyone, regardless of age or ability. They support dancers throughout their careers whilst championing the belief that dance truly is for everyone.
But it’s their community-centred approach that really sets them apart. Rather than running strict programmes, they collaborate with people to discover their relationship with dance, working alongside nurseries, schools, unemployment centres, other charities and community organisations to create meaningful opportunities for engagement.
The charity also operates The Dance Space, a purpose-built venue in Brighton that embodies their inclusive philosophy. The public can hire a fully equipped boardroom alongside state of the art theatres, whether you’re a freelance professional or a business needing space for meetings and workshops (no dancing required!).
This diversity of offerings presented a unique challenge for South East Dance, so a tried-and-tested UX audit was the right move to make. 💃
During our initial conversation with South East Dance, we understood that one of their current goals was to grow awareness and use of The Dance Space studio and meeting room hire. However, they had concerns that this side of their website might actually be working against their objective.
They had suspicions that their "Hire Our Space" page was making it difficult for users to navigate, with too many steps required to find specific information about space hire.
From their own investigation, they noticed that Google Ads were successfully driving click-throughs to their meeting room hire page, but this wasn’t necessarily translating into actual bookings. It was like watching someone nail the opening sequence of a routine and then find they’ve forgotten the rest of the choreography.
We decided to take a similar approach to past audits, where creating a proto persona can help our clients relate to their users. We needed to create something aspirational, to help them attract their ideal audience and achieve their organisational goals of growth.
Once their audience was defined, we conducted desk research by looking through similar websites online, and industry reports to identify common traits businesses in busy Brighton use to stay competitive. This gave us a baseline of what our aspirational target audience would be expecting when looking to book a space for professional purposes.
From here, we proceeded to audit the website from top-to-tail and really dig deep into the experience to understand what would support The Dance Space in attracting the right market and driving revenue for their charity. Armed with our research and a clear picture of who they wanted to reach, we were ready to identify opportunities for improvement.
We identified a pattern of information fragmentation across the site. This related closely to three key design heuristics: consistency and standards (heuristic 4), recognition rather than recall (heuristic 6), and efficiency of use (heuristic 7). Here’s what that looked like in practice:
Key details about meeting spaces required 4 or 5 clicks to access, eventually leading to information about one specific room. For professionals making quick decisions between meetings, there was an opportunity to shorten this journey and make information more immediately accessible.
Hire pricing was distributed across multiple pages and wasn't accessible via the main navigation. Bringing this information together in one predictable place would help users make faster, more confident decisions - particularly important for building trust when taking bookings.
The current process asked users to email enquiries rather than book directly. Whilst this worked, it meant busy professionals had to wait for a response to confirm availability and pricing. A streamlined booking system could capture interest in the moment and allow South East Dance to take bookings around the clock, not just during office hours.
“ASquared have really helped us with a thorough audit and some very useful and actionable recommendations to improve the UX of our website. They are excellent communicators and great to work with - we are looking forward to putting their suggestions into action!” - South East Dance
The good news? These findings weren’t fatal flaws. They were opportunities.
South East Dance has something genuinely special: a beautiful, accessible venue with a meaningful mission behind it. The foundations are strong, the space is there, and people are already interested enough to click through their Google Ads.
What they needed was a website experience that matches the quality of their physical space. By streamlining the booking journey, making pricing transparent, and clearly separating their different offerings, The Dance Space can transform those curious clicks into confirmed bookings. And that means more resources flowing back to support their vital work: making dance accessible to everyone in the community.
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Disclaimer: This UX audit research was based on evaluations and reflects findings and recommendations at the time of review.
We absolutely loved working with South East Dance and want to say a big thank you to their team for trusting us to do this work and for being so receptive to our feedback and suggestions.
If you're a registered charity and are interested in a complimentary UX review of your digital product, please get in touch.
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