Why After Digital uses Peppered – a SaaS platform to build new websites

Over the years, we learned that the traditional model of heavy investment into a website every three to five years is unsustainable for venues and their suppliers. While the need for a beautifully designed website requires investment, the features and functionality of a website for arts, culture and entertainment venues shouldn’t, but often do.

Many website platforms, CMSs and tech stacks simply aren’t made to handle the processes required for running a website for arts and culture venues. Onsales seasons bring unique challenges where ticket numbers move quickly, and sometimes event details can change last minute. It’s not sustainable for teams to reactively update websites based on these changes, which is why their websites need to be synced with event management systems to ensure ticketing information is always up-to-date.

But why set up these processes every time a new website is built? It only adds extra cost and burden to the digital operation of venues. You wouldn’t develop a new ticketing system for every new website, so why should each website be painstakingly built from scratch?

It isn’t sustainable to fund or build websites in this way, especially when the cost of the build does not include ongoing maintenance, support and provisions for new features that help venues grow. 

So, what’s the alternative?

Introducing Peppered

The story behind Peppered isn’t too dissimilar to ours. Based out of Rotterdam, Peppered started building bespoke websites for a wide range of sectors in 2000 before specialising in arts and culture venues. Over the years, they also wondered whether there was a more sustainable way to operate rather than charging clients to rebuild the same features (think ticketing integrations and automation based on event data) every time they needed a new website. 

In a sector with so much funding pressure, they wanted to forge a new path that encourages digital sustainability for venues. So in 2015, Peppered brought together all their learnings about the needs of live event venues and built a software-as-a-service (SaaS) website platform. 

A few years later, we had the opportunity to work on the Peppered platform when they asked to collaborate with us on de Doelen’s website. Right out of the box, it came with all the essential features that we know every venue needs. This includes:

• Integrations with third-party platforms such as ticketing systems, event management tools, CRMs and many others

• Automations based on synced data from these integrations allow teams to plan and work more efficiently.

• Personalisation tools to boost audience engagement and optimise ticket sales

• Accessibility best practice in line with WCAG 2.1 Level AA

• Flexible building blocks that are fully configurable, and can even be scheduled so that your team can work more proactively.

• A centralised data centre which can distribute content to external feeds via the Peppered API. This can send content to Google, Meta, UiTdatabank and many others.

• Access to a community platform that includes venues from around the world, where we encourage knowledge sharing about how to get the most out of Peppered and venues can inspire each other with ideas for maximising ticket sales. We want to nurture a community that lifts each other up.

• The licence to contribute to the development roadmap, where updates are released every three weeks. You can even sponsor updates if you need something developed quickly, but if it’s something that all venues could benefit from, we might simply build it out of the roadmap budget.

• Access to round-the-clock, multi-lingual support with fast SLAs.

This meant we could spend more time designing and less time rebuilding features in a new tech stack. This cost-saving is then passed onto the client with a much smaller monthly licence fee without any surprise billable hours.

The collaboration was a success and when the project concluded, we realised Peppered is the way forward. We loved that so many essential features were available right out of the box. It meant building cultural websites was more affordable and projects were delivered quickly.

Furthermore, Peppered nurtures a community of users where knowledge about using the platform is shared and strategic insights about running a venue can also be spread amongst the community. 

During the project, we realised we shared many values and philosophies about digital sustainability for live event venues. And we wanted to continue working on a platform that helps ease the cost of investment into digital technology for venues.

So in 2023, After Digital and Peppered merged to form CultureSuite – a collective of thinkers, designers, and tech experts pushing boundaries for the arts, culture and entertainment sector. In the face of a challenging economic landscape and funding cuts, we’re on a mission to make digital more sustainable for live event venues.

With the two brands merging, it means we can synergise Peppered’s technical dexterity with After Digital’s strategic and design excellence, providing new and existing customers with a powerful combination of expertise with a sharp focus on helping the sector thrive. 

Another way we’re currently enabling this collaboration is through our community platform, CultureHub, where venues and institutions around the world can reflect on and share their learnings. But our cooperative ethos also gives venues the chance to put ideas and features onto the development roadmap. That’s why we love Peppered – it’s designed by venues for venues.