{"id":253,"date":"2009-11-19T15:19:25","date_gmt":"2009-11-19T14:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/?p=253"},"modified":"2019-11-06T17:45:03","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T16:45:03","slug":"the-user-experience-of-ticketmaster-ruins-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/19\/the-user-experience-of-ticketmaster-ruins-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The user experience of Ticketmaster ruins Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

I told you it was coming, and here it is \u2013 Ticketmaster\u2019s design faults from a user centred perspective have annoyed me enough to blog on them. And then deliver the killing blow by suggesting how they could be improved. If you\u2019d just let me buy those Paul McCartney Tickets, it wouldn\u2019t have come to this!<\/p>\n

\n
\"No-one

No-one will simply be having a wonderful christmas time this year.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To demonstrate my point, let\u2019s walk through two interactions. For each one, we will see how the user\u2019s interaction with the website takes place, note any issues or redundancies in the process, and then suggest how they could be improved.<\/p>\n

An ideal scenario:<\/h4>\n

In this first scenario, I\u2019m buying tickets to see Brighton based singer songwriter Chris TT<\/a>. Due to the fact that the tour has just been announced, and that he is nowhere near as popular as he should be, there are still tickets available. So I go to Ticketmaster\u2019s website (.co.uk, not .com. It wont realise you\u2019re looking in the wrong region).<\/p>\n

Here are the steps involved in buying tickets<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Look for the artist I\u2019m after \u2013 He\u2019s not on the front page, so I\u2019ll use search.<\/li>\n
  2. Having searched, I\u2019ve found Chris TT. I click his name.<\/li>\n
  3. It presents me with a list of venues\/dates. I scroll down to the one I want, and click \u201cfind tickets\u201d.<\/li>\n
  4. It then asks me to select how many tickets I want, and how much I want to pay. I make my selection, and click \u201cfind tickets\u201d.<\/li>\n
  5. It loads a captcha. I type in the words \u201cbrighton rock\u201d and click \u201ccontinue\u201d<\/li>\n
  6. It loads a loading screen. I wait.<\/li>\n
  7. It loads up and tells me it found my ticket. It asks me if I want GB shipping, Northern Ireland Shipping, Republic of Ireland shipping, or to another country. I make my selection and press continue.<\/li>\n
  8. It then asks me to log in, or register. I select register and continue\u2026<\/li>\n
  9. \u2026. Onwards through the many address entry screens, until I\u2019ve got my ticket<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0
    \nSo what were the problems, and how could they be improved?<\/p>\n

    This was an ideal case scenario, and so we should expect the simplest and easiest interaction. There were still however a few problems:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. I had no idea whether the venues\/dates were sold out. This should be indicated on the page when selecting the venue\/date.<\/li>\n
    2. I had no idea which ticket price ranges were sold out or in stock. This should be indicated on the page when selecting the ticket price range.<\/li>\n
    3. The captcha comes before deciding whether I want to buy the tickets or not. It should come after I\u2019ve decided I want to buy.<\/li>\n
    4. I had to choose which region I wanted the tickets shipped to. Later I had to type in where I lived. Could the system not use this information to auto-calculate which shipping region applied to me?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u00a0<\/p>\n

      A less than ideal scenario:<\/h4>\n

      This is the real scenario, and my reason for writing this post. Paul McCartney tickets went on sale at 9am, and I was sat in front of a computer (kindly assisted by Anna Fuller<\/a>) refreshing and waiting for the tickets to go on sale.<\/p>\n

      Here are the steps I followed:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Look for the artist I\u2019m after. He\u2019s not on the front page, so I\u2019ll use search<\/li>\n
      2. Having searched, I find Paul McCartney. I click his name<\/li>\n
      3. It presents me with a list of venues\/dates. There is only one. I select it.<\/li>\n
      4. It loads a page that says \u201cthese tickets have not gone on sale yet.\u201d<\/li>\n
      5. I press refresh<\/li>\n
      6. Go to 4.<\/li>\n
      7. Eventually, the event is open, and it asks me how many tickets I want to buy, and what do I want to pay. I select \u20182\u2019 and the mid price range. I press \u201cfind tickets\u201d<\/li>\n
      8. A captcha comes up, I enter \u201cglass onion\u201d, and press continue<\/li>\n
      9. It loads a loading screen. I wait.<\/li>\n
      10. It tells me no tickets could be found, and suggests searching for \u2018best available\u2019.<\/li>\n
      11. I press back 3 times<\/li>\n
      12. It asks how many tickets I want, and how much I want to pay<\/li>\n
      13. I select \u20182\u2019 and \u2018Best available\u2019. I press \u2018find tickets\u2019<\/li>\n
      14. \u00a0A captcha comes up. I enter \u201cjohn is better\u201d, and press continue<\/li>\n
      15. It loads a loading screen. I wait.<\/li>\n
      16. It tells me no tickets could be found, and suggests searching for \u2018best available\u2019.<\/li>\n
      17. I lose all hope of ever getting tickets, but press back 3 times, to see if any single tickets are available.<\/li>\n
      18. It asks me how many tickets I want to buy, and how much I want to pay.<\/li>\n
      19. I tell it \u201c1\u201d and \u201cbest available\u201d. I press \u2018find tickets\u2019.<\/li>\n
      20. A captcha comes up. I enter \u201cpaul is dead\u201d and press continue.<\/li>\n
      21. It loads a loading screen. I wait.<\/li>\n
      22. It tells me no tickets could be found, and suggests searching for best available.<\/li>\n
      23. I give up.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        \u00a0<\/p>\n

        \n
        \"Sorry

        Sorry paul<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

        So how could this process be improved?<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. First of all steps 7-23 could have been avoided by a simple note saying \u2018sold out\u2019.<\/li>\n
        2. In fact, since it looks like the event was sold out before it went on sale (due to presale I guess?), steps 3-23 could have been avoided by saying \u201csold out\u201d.<\/li>\n
        3. Since there was only one date, I should not have to select the date after selecting Paul McCartney. It should automatically load that date.<\/li>\n
        4. Again, the captcha should come after having searched for tickets.<\/li>\n
        5. The page should not let the user select price ranges that have no available tickets.<\/li>\n
        6. After my first search failed, I shouldn\u2019t have to press back three times to search again, I should be able to do it from the page I\u2019ve landed on.<\/li>\n
        7. Even better, if it fails to find your ticket selection, it should search \u2018best available\u2019 automatically.<\/li>\n
        8. It should stop suggesting \u2018search for best available\u2019 if I\u2019ve just searched for \u2018best available\u2019 and it\u2019s found nothing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          \u00a0
          \nBecause the tickets are released at specified times, the website suffers a huge rush at these peak times. The fact that each page takes a few minutes to load does not make all the needless navigation the site makes you do easier. This stress is made worse by the site\u2019s user experience issues, and buying tickets through Ticketmaster is a lot more frustrating than it needs to be.<\/p>\n

          I decided to phone the phone line instead. It gave me an automated \u2018you will be placed in a queue\u2019 message, and then went blank. No hold music, no \u2018you are ninth in the queue\u2019 message, nothing. I had no idea if I was still connected or if it was broken. After around 5 minutes waiting on this very expensive number, still with no noise at all, I gave up.<\/p>\n

          Bah Humbug!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          I told you it was coming, and here it is \u2013 Ticketmaster\u2019s design faults from a user centred perspective have annoyed me enough to blog on them. And then deliver the killing blow by suggesting how they could be improved. If you\u2019d just let me buy those Paul McCartney Tickets, it wouldn\u2019t have come to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-user-research","tag-bad-ux","grve-entry-item","grve-blog-item"],"yoast_head":"\nThe user experience of Ticketmaster ruins Christmas - Steve Bromley - User Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/19\/the-user-experience-of-ticketmaster-ruins-christmas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The user experience of Ticketmaster ruins Christmas - Steve Bromley - User Research\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I told you it was coming, and here it is \u2013 Ticketmaster\u2019s design faults from a user centred perspective have annoyed me enough to blog on them. 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