The Beauty of a Website

A website can be the best boon to a festival or event or it can be its worst nightmare. Websites are designed to communicate with readers of the website. If the site isn’t up to date or has incorrect information, the ramifications can be very serious. Take for example “the Festival that wasn’t there”. When we search for festivals we might want to visit, we go to their website. I am sure that we are not alone in doing this. We had found this particular festival in the “Festival & Events in Ontario” Guide. It looked like a great festival to visit. We hadn’t been to that region or to that kind of event, so it was a perfect festival to consider. I checked out their website and it still looked like a good festival to attend, so we put it on our “to visit” schedule. The day before our visit, I re-checked the website to see if there were any changes. Everything seemed okay. The website was the same as the first time I had looked at it. I always print off a copy of the website for reference during our visits. It was going to be a 4 hour trip, so we got up early so that we could have enough time to visit the festival properly. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we took our time traveling, enjoying the sunshine and the picturesque scenery. All was well, or at least we thought, as we drove into the town where the festival was taking place. We drove into the downtown area looking for festival signs along the way. There were none! We decided to drive around the town looking for the festival. We couldn’t find it! Finally, out of desperation we drove back to the downtown area and found the local tourism office. Fortunately the office was open, so I asked Judi to go in and ask where the festival was being held. She came back to the car with a long face. “It’s been cancelled!” were her first words as she got back into the car. Then she went on to say that the tourism girl had told her that we weren’t the only ones looking for the festival. Approximately 50 other people had made the same enquiry. That meant that over 50 people had driven to town and had left very disappointed. They were upset no only with the festival organizers, but with the town in general. How many of these people would think twice about coming back to that town to attend a festival, any festival. How many other people did they tell their missing festival story to? It’s like a rippling effect! Everyone involved, organizers and town officials alike were tarred with the same brush. No-one looked good. The solution was very simple update or delete the website. If the organizers wouldn’t or didn’t make the change, the town or its tourism department should have. The tourism department should be aware of all festival and events happening in their town and know who to contact when problems arise. If this had happened in this case, a simple website update, 50 plus people would not have traveled 100’s of unnecessary kilometers. Updating your festival’s website is not only “good business”, it is a common sense courtesy to your customers and patrons. Make sure you give your webmaster the information he/she needs to update the site and then make sure the webmaster makes the changes immediately! There are no excuses for an out-of-date festival website.