Asheville River Arts District Artists Association

The River Arts District Artists (RADA) is a membership organization established to promote the common interests and wellbeing of its 220+ artist members. The organization is dedicated to diversity, innovation, and positive expression to promote individual creative businesses in the River Arts District of Asheville, North Carolina. 

What We Did for RADA:

• Created a responsive, engaging design, including a beautiful style guide for consistency throughout the site.
• Complete overhaul of content organization and navigation strategy.
• Built a custom interactive map to facilitate customers visiting the district.
• Built a paid membership platform base allowing for paid subscriptions of 5 to 6 types and yearly renewals.
• Developed an artist portal to allow their members to easily publish and manage their profiles and events.
• Collaborated with an SEO specialist to ensure high performance of the site in search engines.

RADA came to FullSteam Labs with the goal to improve their website in a way that would both 1) drive traffic to the site and, ultimately, visitors to the artist district; and 2) improve artist involvement through creation of a paid membership portal and access to individual pages within the site.

Re-engineering RADA’s website provided a wealth of opportunities to take RADA’s presence in the Asheville art scene to a whole new level. An updated aesthetic and greatly improved user experience welcomes and instills confidence in new visitors and returning collectors, as well as provides an incentive for member loyalty and interaction. Priority was placed upon the elegance of the site’s aesthetic and functionality on mobile devices, encouraging new visitors to use the website’s online tools to navigate through the district in real time.

We restructured the sprawling content of the website to:

• convey a vibrant and active arts district;
• implement a custom mapping solution that allows potential customers to easily find their way to the studio buildings, know where to park, browse the artists, easily find open studio hours, and be enticed by events;
• and sign up for the newsletter to keep up to date on hot items.

By rebranding the website as a tool to drive sales, participating artists are greatly encouraged to keep their information current. Efforts for encouraging artist interaction, community member loyalty, and donor encouragement add to the site’s functionality and long-term value.

WEBSITE: RIVERARTSDISTRICT.COM