Feature
6 things we learned this year and some resolutions for the next
December 18, 2024
6 mins
Navigating the highs and lows of launching a new product isn't linear. It requires trialling, tweaking, and then trialling again. A significant part of our time this year was dedicated to exactly this experimentation in our continued beta period with a group of UK-based organisations. Workshopping new developments in this way led to invaluable partnerships that allowed us space to fail fast, learn fast in a real-world environment.
Early access beta wrapped up in August as we launched the full Action Links service with a refreshed subscription model and pricing plans for smaller teams with limited budgets, as well as larger venues that require ultimate flexibility. Since then, we’ve continued developing new functionality at speed and last month went live with our biggest-ever feature release to date.
Both of these steps forward were only possible by embracing the sometimes messy nature of iterative problem solving (listening to what organisations said they needed and then adjusting our offering to meet this). As we continue to extend our services further we’re committed to maintaining this dedication to research and development.
Some conversations take time, perhaps more time than you planned for. But guess what - the best things are always worth waiting for. We often meet with arts organisations excited by how Action Links can improve their digital services, but enthusiasm alone isn’t always enough to get a new procurement off the ground. Sometimes there are obstacles that slow things down (staff changes; budgetary pressures; or business cases that need to be formed). These are all factors that external suppliers cannot control, but that here at Action Links we can empathise with after previous experience working in-house at venues.
Nurturing conversations about new collaborations over a period of months means that we’ve now welcomed truly committed clients who have invested significant effort in championing Action Links within their organisation. They join our growing list of world-class venues working with us, including National Museums of Scotland, Shakespeare’s Globe, Museum Wales, Birmingham Hippodrome, Roundhouse, The Old Globe, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Get in touch for a demo if you’re interested in joining this lineup.
Every month we’re lucky enough to spend time giving demos to folks across the cultural sector and one of the things we've loved about these sessions is hearing their new ideas for the application of Action Links. Seeing arts organisations quickly grasp the potential of the product and then transposing that onto how it could be used to help deliver their specific activity, is exactly what we had hoped for when we designed the open-access, self-serve functionality that underlies our service.
By making our CMS integration tools as accessible as possible to our clients and removing the dependency on developer intervention, we've been thrilled to watch venues implementing creative usage of Action Links to service all sorts of ideas that came not from us, but directly from our client community (powering front of house digital screens; collecting attendance figures for free participation activities; and managing enrolment validation for workshops).
In the latter half of the year we launched an online Help Centre as part of our support service. This has enabled us to field bugs and issues more efficiently through tickets and easily keep track of communications without having to rely on sifting through unreliable inbox searches.
Critically, the Help Centre has also acted as a place of learning for us. It's allowed us to listen to the needs of our clients, spotting patterns (or indeed variations) in how different organisations need the product tools to function. This active feedback loop allows us to constantly revisit and update features so that we can improve the experience for end users.
Within the Help Centre, we also created a dedicated corner for knowledge sharing with step-by-step guidance articles such as how to apply CSS styling, through to how to add custom validation conditions to a form. We don’t believe in holding on to expertise too tightly - we prefer to empower our clients to learn and develop their own skills so that they can best serve their audiences directly.
As a remote-first team, we relish opportunities to have face time with our friends across the sector. This year we were lucky enough to visit the Tessitura Learning & Community Conference in Gateshead, Ticketing Professionals Conference in Birmingham, and most recently the Museums & Tech Conference, hosted by the Museums Computer Group - all with line-ups packed full of inspiring speakers.
2024 also saw Action Links go global as we opened up our services overseas and welcomed our first North American client, The Old Globe in San Diego, California. Transatlantic activity continued in August when we visited Washington, D.C. to take part in four days of talks and exhibits at the Tessitura Learning & Community Conference.
These opportunities to attend events in-person were a great way to meet new contacts and keep connected with the experiences of both venues (as our principle users) and other vendors - we all know nothing stands still for long!
One of the more philosophical hurdles we faced this year was how we can help influence digital innovation in organisations, from the position of an external supplier. Sadly many arts venues feel the burden of maintaining disjointed technical debt from legacy systems. This can mean that the appetite to take on a new SaaS product like Action Links is hesitant. On numerous occasions, we hear an assumption that new digital tools are painful to adopt and take months to roll out.
We have a job to do to challenge these preconceptions and reassure organisations that Action Links doesn't require a lengthy ‘project-based’ implementation with months of discovery and training. In fact, new Action Links clients can be up and running within a few hours of onboarding due to the ‘plug in and go’ nature of our infrastructure.
When trying to influence change, we’ve learned that direct dialogue with key stakeholders helps identify and address preconceptions like this straight out the gate. Equally influential is our client family already using Action Links, who we’ve been thrilled to see passionately advocating our mission amongst peers. Their enthusiasm has played a big part in our growth this year so shout out to everyone who helped spread the word.
We couldn’t end the year without a quick look ahead…
So here’s to more thinking big.
More answering the needs of users, not boards.
More challenging of the “but it’s not been done before” mindset.
And more collaboration with others, looking outward and forward.
Here’s to a happy 2025.
