Fans are the beating heart of our industry, so giving them the very best experience, from first click to entering the stadium is vital to ensuring fan loyalty and helping to drive revenues for our partners. Ticketmaster continually invests in the fan experience by reviewing the industry and broader ecommerce environments to understand the latest trends and fan behaviour to optimise fan experience.
Following the recent transformation of Ticketmaster Sport’s fan ticketing site, we talk to Christine Lanoy, Senior Vice President of Design at Ticketmaster to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes and how this new front end came about.
Ticketmaster Sport has recently undergone a huge transformation of the ticketing site for white label clients and fans, can you talk us through how and why this came about?
The redesign of Sport XR has been a long time in the making. What most people don’t realise is what it takes to overhaul such a complex e-commerce platform. Our brilliant team of product managers, designers and engineers have been chipping away diligently for years to be able to overhaul the final piece, i.e. the top layer — the fan experience.
We’ve been tackling this transformation in several key phases: First, by laying down the foundation by changing the language in which the platform is written into a more modern and flexible one. By doing so, we are able to move and deliver faster for our fans and clients. In parallel, we had been conducting research and tests with both fans and clients to find where their biggest pain points were across different journeys and scenarios.
Over the years, we’ve collected a lot of valuable insights by speaking directly to fans and our partners right across the industry. By combining this feedback and first-hand knowledge, we were able to isolate our precise points of attack to build the best possible user experience for fans and clients.
As a result of this transformation, what can fans expect from the work of the teams involved?
A seamless integration of function and style. As I was mentioning phases, this phase of the fan experience optimisation focused on the overhaul of our purchase experience.
Out of the very long hit list we had, the most important requirement of them all was to boost our purchase funnel performance — especially, shortening the number of steps required for fans to get through to checkout. Also, becoming more performant on our mobile experience was especially important, so that fans don’t have to pinch and zoom on their tiny screens trying to find a seat on the interactive seat map. If a fan knows his or her preferred seating area, we can now get them from the Event Details Page to Checkout in 3 clicks. We’re super proud of that.
Moreover, we made sure that our clients can tap into more advanced branding capabilities so that they can engage with their fans more naturally and have their home pride stand out. Also, we’ve integrated more upsell/cross-sell capabilities throughout the platform so that the fans and clients can both benefit from all the opportunities that match day has to offer.
Visually, the team have captured the energy and excitement of live sport in the UI. The rounded corners and the architectural grandeur of a stadium. Athleticism of the font. Spaces for large, live action imagery reminiscent of the wide open pitch. These are all minute details, but they all add up to the feeling of a modern day sporting experience.
Can you elaborate on the research process and how Ticketmaster establishes the best product for fans and clients?
Through our deep relationships with various clients, we were able to get access to fan data as well as the opportunity to meet and speak with their fans directly — to get their feedback prior to the design process and to validate our solutions after the designs had been created.
For example, one of the key segments that our clients wanted us to cater for were disabled fans. We’ve been working closely with disabled members of several UK clubs to find out their ticket purchasing and game day needs and how better we can help the Clubs support them.
We’ve also conducted audits of Sport XR with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), one of UK’s leading sight loss charities and largest community of blind and partially sighted people, to get better insight as to how we can improve our interfaces and experience for the visually impaired fans.
We have established a baseline and infrastructure from which we can build in more helpful features for our disabled fans with varying needs. We’ll continuing improving the experience for these fans as we evolve the platform.
A lot is said in the industry about great fan experiences, how does Ticketmaster stay ahead of the curve here?
By listening to our fans and clients continuously, which is possible only through the relationships we’ve built over the years with the clubs and fans.
What is not obvious in the final interface/end product is that design is, in fact, a series of nuanced decisions, adjustments, and changes. Design, at its core, is the best possible choice at that moment in time with all moving variables and constraints taken into account. Even when we ship products, our efforts don’t end there: We are constantly evaluating and weighing up its value and purpose to make sure the decision we made is still the relevant one at this point in time.
We continuously obsesses over our stats and conduct multivariate testings on features that aren’t doing as well, so that our performance is adjusted and improved as we go — just as players and coaches do every day to improve their game.
As we tackle the next phase of the redesign process, the Event Discovery and Post-Purchase journeys, we hope to be able to work with even more clubs and fans to be able to create more compelling and useful experiences for them all.
Find out more about Ticketmaster Sport’s new white label fan ticketing site.
