Playwrights Canada Press needed a website that could bring efficiency to daily operations and end the tedious task of repeating ONIX processes for different platforms, a duplication of work that can eat up priceless staff hours. But there was much more to the site than that. Since its launch in 2018, Playwrights’ direct website sales have nearly doubled year-over-year. How did it happen? We sat down with the Playwrights Canada team to talk about how their website has helped them achieve their business goals.
“Since 2020, our website has been our second biggest ‘customer’ after Amazon, outpacing Indigo sales by quite a bit,” says Publisher Annie Gibson. “And since returns from website sales are few and far between it means those sales are safely part of our income — we don’t have to worry that they’ll be taken away six months down the road.”
“I was so sick of duplicating work for the website,” said Blake Sproule, Playwrights’ managing editor and digital director. What he’s referring to, as many a publisher can sympathize with, is what he had to do when working with their previous site: enter title information separately in a title information database and then again by hand in the website’s content system. ReaderBound solves this problem with a sophisticated import process that pulls title information directly from the publisher’s ONIX database, and syncs it automatically to the website (without any additional data entry or intervention required). Clients can load their entire catalogues into the system in a matter of minutes. And those title listings are then updated on an ongoing basis. In fact, ReaderBound cycles new or updated title information into the website every 24 hours, day in and day out.
No more security worries
But ONIX troubleshooting was just the tip of the iceberg because Playwrights had faced a frightening situation in December 2017, right in the middle of the busy Christmas season. Blake explains: “We got hacked, not once but a couple of times. And the developer disappeared. Not only was the broken website which cost us sales – the cart broke down and we could find no way of fixing it – but we were living in constant fear of getting hacked again.”
Editor’s note: We hasten to add that while the site was down as a result of these hacks, no customer information was compromised during these outages.
Especially with that earlier experience in mind, we were pleased to be able to assure Playwrights that ReaderBound security and hosting protocols and support team keep our clients’ sites running night and day. We literally have one team member working through the night because that someone is in Australia (hi Ben!). Every site is deployed on a managed server with a high-quality commercial host. A rolling backup service maintains a full backup of the live site. There is a separate staging server for quality assurance and testing, and all server systems and security are actively maintained by the support team.
“You never know how important security is until you have a breach,” said Blake. “There’s peace of mind knowing that the ReaderBound system is really strong in this area.”
More purchasing options
“We have a few different audiences,” notes Blake. Two of the most important are (1) theatre programs in schools and universities and (2) directors and theatre companies looking for plays that suit their casting needs. “That’s why we were really intent on having a user-friendly way for these groups to find exactly what they need.”
As a result, we built the Playwrights Canada site with browsing features geared to different use cases. There are bundles for universities, for example. These bundles are set up in two different ways: some are ordered for direct shipment to the customer while others, by agreement with the university or college in question, are bulk-shipped to the academic department at the institution, to be picked up there by each student. The motivation here is to boost convenience and reduce cost the student.
“One of the biggest takeaways has been that customers like buying ebooks directly through the site,” says Annie. “A lot of the profs who put our books on course lists order the print editions through their campus bookstore but also let students know that ebook editions are available through the site. The cheaper price is very attractive for students!”
Tailored customer experiences
Playwrights wanted to showcase the rich diversity in their catalogue. Rather than relying on the limited BISAC codes in the Drama category, they implemented custom subjects that feature playwrights from different parts of the country (i.e., Northern Playwrights), different cultural backgrounds and marginalized groups (i.e., Black Playwrights and LGBTQ+/Queer Theatre), age groups for school and educational purposes (i.e., Theatre for Young Audiences or plays for teens), and specific interests such as Puppets & Puppetry, Deaf Theatre, and even Super Short Shows.
Beyond these meticulously defined categories, Playwrights has done something even more targeted to their customer base. They have used a second custom subject scheme to identify the cast structure in each play they have available for purchase. So, for example, if you are looking for a play with a small cast of two male characters, there’s a category for that. Or four female and three male: there’s a category for that. There are dozens of options. Playwrights knows their audience better than anyone else. They speak to the community of theatre companies, drama programs, and theatremakers. Their custom subjects answer the question: what do our customers need to hunt through our list of books?
“We’re thrilled by the customization that Readerbound brought to our site, in particular the addition of the “Browse by Subject” and “Browse by Cast” features,” says Publisher Annie Gibson. “We were able to add our own subjects to each book in ONIX so directors looking for a romance, a super short play, or theatre for young audiences are able to see the list of everything we’ve got in these categories. The casting information is very specific to plays and incredibly useful for school or groups with defined sets of actors to find plays that meet their needs. That information is held in ONIX and fed directly to the site so again we’re able to maintain a single database with all this information.”
These custom subjects and cast member features are available throughout the site; visible on the category pages, search results, and title listing pages. Customers can access these identifiers and click and follow to see more no matter how they enter the site.
“We also see lots of community theatres buying single ebooks at different times of the year,” adds Annie. “I can tell the same person is buying a book, coming back and buying another one, searching for a script that they can propose for production.”
A surprise benefit
On the old Playwrights Canada site, different editions of a book were represented on multiple pages, with the connections between them were not always visible. Customers looking at a paperback edition of a given book could be totally unaware that it was also available as an e-book. On the new ReaderBound site, all editions are clearly shown on one title page.
“We’ve seen a definite boost in ebook sales,” said Blake. “It’s a great thing to have the different formats of books all listed on the same book title page, to capture any and all kinds of sale from customers with different needs.” He continued, “And we’re seeing better sales performance in general, year-over-year.”