Six months since Lyric Stage’s new website and PatronManager-integrated ticketing journey went live, box office results have followed the theatre’s own ambitious programming – twice over.
In June, Alex Chisholm, Managing Director of Lyric Stage, told us that Something Rotten! had closed as the highest-grossing production in the company’s 52-year history. “Something Rotten! ended up being the highest grossing production in Lyric Stage’s 52-year history. Teamwork got us there,” he said at the time – crediting the result to the artistic and marketing and web teams behind the show, not to any single piece of the puzzle.
More recently, Alex talked about the impact of a fully responsive website – “With more new audiences looking for and finding us on their mobile devices, the streamlined discovery and conversion journeys definitely supported booking conversions.”
One detail that stuck with us: throughout the run, Lyric’s team refreshed the homepage hero image every Monday – new production photography, video, the latest reviews, Critics’ Picks – to keep the site feeling as alive as the show itself. It’s a small thing, but it’s exactly the kind of week-to-week flexibility and freshness a season needs, and it’s the sort of detail that’s hard to put a number on but easy to see the value of.
Momentum like that raises an obvious question: was it a one-off? August’s sale for individual tickets answered it – a 91% year-on-year increase in ticket sales, arriving on the back of exactly the kind of campaign-driven homepage and CTA work this partnership was built to support. “Leading up to the opening of sales, we aligned the look-and-feel of all digital and social comms to reflect the refreshed website – even the CTA buttons in e-mails now reflect similar web graphics,” Chisholm offered. “Small adjustments generated some big wins.”
Neither result belongs to a redesign alone. They reflect Lyric Stage’s programming choices, pricing strategy and audience relationships, working alongside a website and ticketing journey built to get out of the way of a sale: a streamlined PatronManager handoff, campaign-aware homepage messaging, and a booking flow that adapts as the season’s priorities shift. Chaptr’s job has been to keep the platform capable of matching Lyric’s ambition.
Curious about the digital foundation behind the scenes? Read the full case study, ‘Digital Presence Meets Ambition for Lyric Stage Boston.’