Bringing SXSW to Europe: Delivering a high-traffic, lead-generating website on a tight deadline

Navigating tight timelines and high expectations to build a seamless digital experience for SXSW London 2025.

TAIT, renowned for creating world-class entertainment and immersive events, approached us to build a website for the first-ever SXSW festival in Europe, set to take place in London in 2025.

With only weeks until the international announcement, the challenge was to design and develop a high-performing site while the creative identity was still evolving and with multiple stakeholders involved. With anticipated high site traffic, it was also essential to ensure the site’s performance and infrastructure could handle traffic surges. 

Given the tight deadline and constraints, we worked with TAIT to identify seven key audience archetypes.

The needs and motivations for these archetypes formed the foundation for lo-fi wireframes, that allowed us to secure approvals on site structure and development specs and brief KesselsKramer on content requirements, even before the creative direction had been finalised. Without direct access to all stakeholders, communication was carefully managed to keep the project on track. 

Once creative direction was confirmed, we transitioned from wireframes to high-fidelity designs, collaborating with KesselsKramer to ensure the site design was in sync with the wider marketing material. Whilst designs were being approved, we kicked off the development phase, setting up the site infrastructure to ensure it could handle anticipated traffic spikes.

By building a solid foundation early on, with signed off wires and content structures, we were able to keep the project on track without compromising quality.

To manage the high traffic anticipated during the international SXSW London 2025 announcement, we built the site using Next.js for the front-end using Prismic.io to manage the small amount of content required. This setup ensured flexibility and scalability, while Cloudflare's caching layer added an extra layer of performance optimisation.

The site achieved its primary goal: capturing leads. Within the first 24 hours of launch, the site gathered over 7,000 email sign-ups for ticket and sponsorship news, with a continuous increase in the following weeks and months.

Our internal project delivery process allowed us to carefully manage timelines, milestones, and stakeholder expectations to successfully deliver a site that not only met the tight deadline but also performed flawlessly under the weight of global attention.