Fun with Theatre TKTS
Society of London Theatre (SOLT) has operated the TKTS ticket booth in Leicester Square since 1981, however until 2020 it had never sold a Theatre Ticket online.
Originally named the half-price ticket booth it re-branded as TKTS in 2001 to tie into the ticket booths of the same name
Whilst TKTS had always had a web presence at tkts.co.uk. Historically part of that agreement was that the brand would only sell 'On-The-Day' tickets at a discount in-person using a stand-alone ticketing system.
We were tasked to explore how both online and in-person sales via API connecting to the venue box offices could be achieved.
Whilst its primary role is as an on the day distress sales channel offering the best savings. All sales inventory full price, dynamically re-priced and discount tickets would be offered to the customer at the same price both in-person and online.
Gap Analysis
We analysed the existing marketplace and discovered that 6 disparate ticketing systems were in use in the West End.
We initially took a staff centric approach and explored whether we could utilise the existing Theatre Ticketing system at the Ticket Booth (one of the six mentioned above) in order to quickly bring online sales to market using the incumbent platform which was otherwise very feature rich. Perceived benefits of this included:
Continuity for the onsite team with no need to learn new software
Minimal process adjustment
No changes to accounting processes
Those conversations however revealed that SOLT would need to invest heavily in creating a piece of bespoke middleware to facilitate online sales at the scope of prices we would be required to sell - requiring this ticketing system to communicate.
This piece of middleware would ultimately be very costly to maintain and would compromise the UX of the online offering.
With the online offering ultimately expected to deliver greater long-term revenue a change in approach was required.
Tendering For A New Ticketing System
SOLT had previously had a process of tendering for individual promotions on a promotion-by-promotion basis.
Before embarking on the tender we looked at operating as affiliate of each venue, however the logistics and overheads required to do so were prohibitive at that time.
With the knowledge that the incumbent Ticketing system presented significant challenges we took the opportunity to re-tender for all of SOLT's ticketing business to find a ticketing provider for all of our ticketing brands & promotions.
Key deliverables included
Facilitate sales via API rather than via traditional allocation for all sales channels
Have connections into all existing and future West End Venues
Handle a high volume of transactions for our large promotional sales (Kids Week & New Year Sale)
Provide a platform for all of our day to day ticketing needs
Provide consolidated ticketing
Allow SOLT to clearly show a percentile discount for on the day ticket sales
Provide customer service support and functionality for all of SOLT's brands
Provide a platform for in-person sales
Form a long-term partnership with SOLT over the course of the contract to deliver new features and functionality
Rather than specifically looking for a ticketing system we opened the tender up to ticket agents and technology companies with existing West End Experience.
A New Supplier
After reviewing the tender responses a new ticketing supplier was selected. See Tickets who had proven experience working on SOLT's high volume promotions and also had pre-existing integrations into 4 of the 6 ticketing systems we required and had presented a vision for in person ticket sales based on a modified version of the e-commerce platform.
Both SOLT and See then collaborated on a combined deep dive Gap Analysis of what would be required to deliver the new TKTS platform to form the project timeline for the TKTS in-person platform.
Key gaps that needed to be plugged included:
Ability to offer both Open (anyone can sell) and Exclusive (to TKTS) Inventory on the sale platform
Ability to sell both on the day and in advance tickets in person
Ability to sell both on the day and in advance tickets in person
Presentation of On the Day Discounts
A mechanism for selling and redeeming Theatre Tokens
Integration of See's ticketing system with an EPOS system (Adyen)
Significant increase in the frequency of Pricing Data Imports into See Tickets to ensure on-the-day prices are as close to real time as possible (this would involve See re-building their import architecture to allow for syncing data for different systems concurrently)
An Unexpected Challenge
Whilst conducting the deep dive into the new functionality it became apparent that TKTS's traditional model of showing a % discount on all ticket prices was not going to be straight forward.
This was previously not picked up to a nuance of communication in the functional requirements 'can the ticketing system show discounted tickets' rather than 'can the ticketing system clearly show a percentile discount for all prices to the customer'.
In the data returned from the API's SOLT was unable to see the original Face Value for the price.
For a ticket that was discounted by 50% we expected to see the following for each price:
Face Value = £50, Ticket Cost = £25.00
Whereas what we were seeing was:
Face Value = £22.50, Ticket Cost = £25.00
Identifying that % discounts were our USP with over 50% of our sales being for discounted tickets and that if we could achieve for all systems this is would give us a significant market advantage a solution had to be found.
We hit upon the idea of offering the tickets at two prices and performing a comparison across the ticket cost of both prices to construct the discount:
Discount Price: Face Value = £22.50, Ticket Cost = £25.00
Full price Face Value = £50.00, Ticket Cost = £52.50
These prices could be combined at time of import into SOLT's ticketing database and a single discount price shown to the end customer.
Designing a new UI component & search widget
Previously any date search that was performed on the OLT site only returned shows that were playing within that timeframe based upon their opening and closing dates.
Looking at other key competitors we could see that they were subject to the same limitation so we had the opportunity to be best in class.
Using data extracted from custom events we had set up in Google Analytics we are able to determine search lead time (ie: how many days gap) between the two dates selected and extensively tracked user sessions in HotJar.
We also cross compared whether searching by show name was more important than by date.
Due to the large tourist market that the site supports we found the optimal hierarchy to be:
Discounts > Date > Time > Show
However the default search result sort order should subsequently be sub-sorted by Show name A-Z as when presented with a date based selection users would then revert to selection by name.
Messaging Empty States
From a search results perspective we applied the logical hierarchy
Show > Performance Date > Performance Time
We paid particular attention to empty states to denote an time the ticketing API failed to a valid response, but required context for the user to correctly interpret.
Messages for the following conditions were identified and custom messaging created for each:
No shows available for the given date
No performances available for a given show for 1 or more of the given dates
The show is not playing on the date selected as it does not play on that Day of the week.
Additionally as users would be able to skip our detailed show listings in exchange for a faster checkout process, we needed to ensure that selected fields from our CMS. These needed to be made we’re easily accessible directly from this page when in single date search mode. These attributes would be specific to each show such as a synopsis and age & content guidance without bloating the pricing view.
Additionally in order to streamline the workflow for our content team and not bloat our information architecture we settled on using the shows SEO meta-description as the synopsis.
Open Inventory v Exclusive Prices and Discounts
A limitation of the overarching ticketing system is that 'Open' and 'Exclusive' seating cannot sit on the same seating plan as the inventory on completely different API profiles.
To address the business and the venues need to sell the exclusive inventory first we put in a method of determining which instance of the performance was on the 'exclusive' API profile and promoting the display of that over any 'Open' inventory so that customers would never see two instances of the same performance.
Presentation of Discount Prices
Through surveying our customer base we were able to conclude:
Where a discount exists advertise only the discounted prices with a specific percentage discount against each price as our research had shown that TKTS customers were more focused on Value than bottom line price
For full price tickets, in the case where a percentage saving could not be shown we decided to revert to price range as user research had shown that price was more of a sales driver when a discount was not present. This also had the benefit of pulling focus onto the discount prices, encouraging shows that were not discounting to consider dong so and therefore maximizing sales
Outcomes
With TKTS now fully integrated into the OfficialLondonTheatre website, the Ticket Booth re-opened and shows returning to the stage as part of the government reopening plans. TKTS has become an essential component of SOLT's strategy for getting the industry back on its feet capturing the customers pent up desire for spontaneity.
