THE USE OF ONE CLICK IN TICKETING

Within the world of e-commerce one of the most dominant movements in simplifying the checkout process has been that of “One Click.”

The concept that you should be able to buy a product with a single click was popularised by Amazon and has become a worldwide trend and recognised as an Ecommerce Best Practice.

Yet few ticketing agents use it, and those that come closest are selling General Admission events or incredibly simple customer journeys.

In this blog, The Ticket Factory (TTF) , part of the NEC Group, reflect on the benefits of "One Click"...

Once logged in to The Ticket Factory site, the customer journey for concert ticketing has five steps, as outlined below, these five steps are virtually identical to the five steps encountered in the customer journeys across the ticketing industry.

Five steps:

1.  The customer picks an event

2.  The customer selects ticket type and price

3.  The price and seat is displayed back as confirmation

4.  The customer selects postage options

5.  The customer chooses how to pay, and pays

The question is, how much further can we simplify this journey? Do we want to? And is “One Click” the answer?

Why don't more ticketing sites use one click?

Simplicity

One Click can simplify the customer journey, However, a fundamental requirement of one click is that you know what you are going to purchase, so for example on Amazon you search for an iPad, and Amazon display every possible variation of iPad, you pick from the search results the iPad that is the exact colour make and model you want, and then with “One Click” you choose to buy it.

But the key here is that you have no choices, you can’t choose to buy two iPads, or what kind of delivery you want. The reason this is possible is that retail products don’t have many options, search for iPad and you will see a list of iPads, and every variation of colour/size/functionality is listed separately within the search.

Ticketing sites don’t work like that, we don’t list every single seat in the search results, so instantly one click becomes harder, you search for a performance, not a seat, as people don’t know what seat they want, they often don’t know what price or seats are on offer until they have selected a performance so searching for a Performance -> Block -> Price -> or Performance -> Price -> Block becomes more standard in the ticketing journey.

Once you have picked a seat you then make a final few choices such as whether you would like ticket protection and parking, then you choose 'Print at Home' or 'Standard Delivery', and pay.

All of these choices make one click harder, how can you make seven choices with one click, and would you want to?

Repeat Business

Amazon trades off repeat business, around 50% of Amazon customers buy a product off their website once a month or more, around 20% purchase once a week…

Over these short timeframes saving address and payment details is critical, as data remains fresh and very little customer information changes.

The average credit card expires in three years, that means an average Amazon customer would have to re-enter all their card details every 36+ purchases, and the promise of “One Click” and saved payment details saves them having to enter it over 30 times…

Within the ticketing world things are very different, as the frequency of customer purchasing is much less regular.

Over these sorts of timescales saving payment and address details becomes problematic, “One Click” can lead to purchase errors as customer’s address, surnames and card details change, cards expire, and customer frustration increases

As mentioned, the average credit card expires in three years, that means an average customer would have to re-enter all their card details every three or possibly two purchases, and the promise of “One Click” and saved payment details would potentially cause more frustration than no expectation in the first place.

Does a lack of one click cause issues at TTF?

Interestingly the steps after the customer confirms their product choice are our lowest rates of abandonment.

Of the people that click the “get tickets” button, only 1.5% abandon at the point of entering their card details (compared with 21% who abandon before confirming their product choice, but after choosing seats and seeing the potential prices / fees).

Backing this up, there are no recorded complaints or customer issues around the complexity of entering a card number, and no customers have ever requested it as a feature…

So, the overwhelming response is that a lack of One Click is not currently causing TTF any issues.

How could TTF implement one click?

But assuming that we still want to adopt one click, contrary to potential issues, how might it look? How might TTF implement a successful version of one click?

- Move to a search for seats model, so every available seat is listed individually with every available price

- Remove customer choice, such as ticket protection and delivery method

- Implement an Ultra Best Available model, so that once you search for an event the cheapest tickets available are preselected, the cheapest delivery option is chosen, and saved payment details to pay for the item (closer to a one-click experience)

- Implement alternative payment options to allow a simplified customer journey

- Rely on third party one click

 As you can see, there’s a host of considerations within ticketing which means that “one-click” may not always be the optimal solution, with customer choice also key.

The Ticket Factory is committed to delivering a flexible, seamless customer journey that works for clients and their customers, so please do get in touch with them if you’d like to discuss further: www.theticketfactory.com/workwithus/contact-us