Websites are an important sales tool yet often don?t work as well as they should. Roger Tomlinson looks at some of the problems that customers face when using arts websites and suggests a few potential solutions.
Pity a beleaguered venue manager, who may have a website, and it even appears to work. But now everyone seems to be telling him/her that it needs to be ?fully accessible? and pass ?usability tests?. And benchmark comparisons show it is not doing as well as others. As Kieran Cooper pointed out (ArtsProfessional issue 70, March 22), on the Internet ?things change faster than in the real world?, including user expectations. For many arts organisations there seems to be a conflict between what the organisation thinks their website is for and what their users actually want.
Few arts organisations quote e-commerce as the primary purpose of their website, yet analysis of server logs shows that users concentrate on seeking What?s On information and looking up ticket sales. In London in 2003 many arts organisations reported on average that over 20% of their tickets were sold online, some up to 60%. For many arts attenders, this is an important added value sales channel, with them as the purchaser in control. Venue managers are now recognising that purchasing tickets is the preferred activity of the majority of web users, and they need to focus the functionality of their site around this. A major redevelopment of the Royal Festival Hall website (http://www.rfh.org.uk) focused on what users want; and the website for de Singel in Antwerp is a great example of everything being aimed at serving up useful information to potential attenders (http://www.desingel.be).
How do you shop?
Is your approach to shopping logical and reasoned? Are you methodical and systematic? For most people the answer is No. But your behaviours are considerably restricted on the web because the ?catalogue? is set, and the information is limited to what the vendor thinks is of interest to you. A logical process has necessarily to be imposed on the purchase. But Internet ticket purchase is mail (or telephone) order by another method: tickets have to delivered, or arrangements made for collection, though the ?collect from the Box Office? option can be onerous if 35% of your tickets are sold online and all the purchasers turn up 15 minutes beforehand. So arts organisations selling successfully on the web have a new terrestrial problem ? ticket collection kiosks.
Optimising for sales
Only a small proportion of those who start online ticket purchase transactions finish them. Users visit websites to obtain more information. If they don?t find what they want, they leave. Does the transaction process put them off? Is it too complicated, involving too many steps and inputs? This is an area where venues are experimenting to see what they can do to improve results. A few simple rules apply:
- Minimise the number of pages to be viewed and the number of mouse clicks required to find out What?s On and buy tickets
- Make it obvious and quick to find ticketing from every page of your website
- Don?t make the users repeat actions or get caught in circular processes - for example, if they look at What?s On and identify event, date and time, then the link to ticket purchase must not require them to repeat this process
- Speed is essential ? design pages to download quickly and make suppliers reduce delays while pages interrogate the Box Office system
- Minimise the data input you need from the purchaser and keep it simple.
- Ask yourself ? would you find it easy to use? Have you given the user the information they need to confidently complete their purchase?
If you visit arts organisations? websites, many will have problems that prevent progress with transactions. Event details often list a whole season, and despite most events having passed, it is necessary to scroll down to reach current events. Events often have inadequate information and links may be wrong for events originally put on the website many months earlier ? a typo here is not a misspelling but a failed link. Details of dates, days of the week and times are often not presented clearly or with alternative formats such as a simple listing or a calendar. If these formats are offered, the actual dates and times are usually not links straight to the appropriate point in the booking process. Clearly this is a major area for design improvements, which both web developers and ticketing system suppliers need to work on.
Exit points
Many potential purchasers leave at the payment screen ? 99% for some organisations. There are a number of potential reasons for this, especially worries about credit card security and issues of form filling. Perhaps it is the first time they have seen the total cost with fees or the first time they have seen actual seat numbers. Or perhaps they are using the web as a price and availability check before phoning the Box Office? What we do know, is that for those few venues where they are given the choice of the actual seats, more people choose to complete their purchases ? over 50% more in some cases.
Ticket prices on the web and the charging of fees for online sales are clearly issues for some members of the public. Should web prices be lower than purchases through other channels because they do all the work and notionally save on staff? It is the practice of many commercial companies to discount prices for sales over the web, with easyJet taking £5 off web fares, even on their lowest prices. Without a price reduction on the web, or with a convenience fee added on top, many people seem to prefer to speak to Box Office staff?
This summer, Arts Council England will publish The Guide to Developing a Website by Roger Tomlinson and Vicki Allpress. e: rtomlinson@actconsultantservices.co.uk. There are sessions about optimising websites and making them more effective and accessible at the Tickets.com conference in Nottingham, on May 13-14. For further details contact Nathalie Peacock t: 01908 232404 e: npeacock@ticket.com