Helping Fairgoers Discover More
The Big Sky Country State Fair, in Bozeman, MT brings together western culture and family entertainment for the five-day community celebration.
At the Big Sky Country State Fair, you'll find a true Montana Ranch Rodeo, big-name concerts that are free with gate admission, free entertainment throughout the grounds, a top-notch carnival and of course, amazing fair food.
Before Cardsetter
Before Cardsetter, the Big Sky Country State Fair was using a content management system built specifically for the fairs and festivals industry. But, the General Manager at that time, wanted something different. After visiting with the Cardsetter team during the development of the beta of the product, she recognized how Cardsetter's features could provide fairgoers with a more immersive and intuitive experience while on the website.
She also loved that Cardsetter could easily adapt for each day of the fair, highlighting what was most important when it was most relevant.
Fair websites typically organize content in a traditional format. Often with a slider at the top of the site and content siloed into sections like "entertainment," "deals," "schedule," "competitions," among others. But, this traditional way of organizing information requires the fair audience to visit several sections, often going several navigation layers deep, to find information. It makes it impossible for the audience to discover more things to do at the fair because they usually don't visit every section of the fair website.
A Feed of Fair Fun
With Cardsetter as their website platform and content management system, the Big Sky Country State Fair arranges their site more like a social feed of fair fun and information. With many of their attendees using the website on their phones while at the fair, a mobile-first design and layout is the right approach.
Up at the top of the homepage, they place popular guest information like the admission prices, hours, and map.
As the audience scrolls, they find a comprehensive overview of each day of the fair. For each day, the day's highlights are organized into a horizontal scrolling deck. So, fairgoers can see the night show for the day, the gate and carnival deals, and anything else unique to that day of the fair. If they continue scrolling, they'll see the days full schedule and any other information the fair wants the fairgoer to discover.
Further down the page, they'll find the next day's highlights and information and so on.
Fairgoers Love It
The fair can help guide their fairgoers to more fair fun too! On each attractions page, they place a horizontal scrolling deck at the bottom with more things to do at the fair. The fair takes every opportunity to make sure their attendees can see all that the event has to offer, encouraging them to stay longer. And, Cardsetter makes it incredibly simple for them to do so.
Cardsetter makes it easy for the fair to get their sponsors noticed too! Rather than having a generic "sponsors" bar at the bottom of the page, sponsor logos can appear right on the card for their sponsorship. They get noticed and are more directly associated with their sponsorship.
In 2018, the Big Sky Country State Fair noticed that they handed out dramatically fewer paper guides as their fairgoers chose to use the mobile-first website instead.
The Big Sky Country State Fair enjoys the freedom to arrange their website based on the needs of their fairgoers. As the fair adapts over the five days, the website can adapt to showcase the most relevant information. And, fairgoers appreciate the ease of finding the info they care about most in a mobile-intuitive format.
