Upgrades to Telecharge.com!
10/29/2013
For the past several months, the Shubert Ticketing team has been hard at work on a website software release. It’s got some new features and improvements that we’re really excited about.
First, the 3-D seating chart. Take a look. You should see that it’s quicker, more responsive, and more accurate. It just feels crisp. It responds nearly instantly to your mouse. While these may seem like simple, surface changes, they actually required a major rewrite of the graphics rendering engine and the software which actually creates the 3-D space of the venue which you see on the screen. There’s faster graphics processing, and more streamlined data flowing between your mouse and the seating chart.
We’ve also made it a lot easier for customers to get more details about the available seats. The information about each available seat comes up when a customer mouses over the seat, so they no longer have to click on a seat to see the price. We’ve also increased the prominence of the link to see the view of the stage. Customers love this feature, but many haven’t been able to find it. Now they will.
One last major seating chart upgrade: when customers are picking their own seats from the seating chart, we’ve added price ranges next to each seating level, and a slider which lets customers choose which priced seats they want to see on the seating chart. We dim the seats outside of the price range selected by the customer, although customers can still choose those seats if they want. This makes it super-easy for customers to quickly see the range of prices in each level of the theatre for the performance they are viewing, and narrow down to the price and location they are interested in. At the risk of bragging, we’re also pretty sure this is the only price slider on a ticketing website which shows only the prices of the actual seats which are available, rather than showing generic prices which may or may not apply to the seats offered to the customer.
View the Price Slider Tutorial below.
These improvements to the ticket shopping process should have a very positive impact on sales, letting customers find their seats more quickly and easily, supporting price-conscious and location-conscious customers simultaneously.
In addition to the seating chart-related changes, we’re also going to be starting to sell tickets with promotional codes using the new website, under the address www.telechargeoffers.com. We’re starting with just a few marketing codes to make sure things are working smoothly, and then will slowly add more codes to the site. For now, there’s no need to change any of your offer advertisements—we’ll let you know when the time comes to make changes. We’re planning on continuing this soft-launch beta period through the end of 2013, and starting to sell all offers on the new website platform in early 2014.
In other news, we also recently launched iPhone and Android apps. You can browse events and purchase tickets via the apps. Take a look in the Apple and Google stores and download the apps when you get a chance. They also work on tablets, but are really optimized for smart phones.
For the past several months, the Shubert Ticketing team has been hard at work on a website software release. It’s got some new features and improvements that we’re really excited about.
First, the 3-D seating chart. Take a look. You should see that it’s quicker, more responsive, and more accurate. It just feels crisp. It responds nearly instantly to your mouse. While these may seem like simple, surface changes, they actually required a major rewrite of the graphics rendering engine and the software which actually creates the 3-D space of the venue which you see on the screen. There’s faster graphics processing, and more streamlined data flowing between your mouse and the seating chart.
We’ve also made it a lot easier for customers to get more details about the available seats. The information about each available seat comes up when a customer mouses over the seat, so they no longer have to click on a seat to see the price. We’ve also increased the prominence of the link to see the view of the stage. Customers love this feature, but many haven’t been able to find it. Now they will.
One last major seating chart upgrade: when customers are picking their own seats from the seating chart, we’ve added price ranges next to each seating level, and a slider which lets customers choose which priced seats they want to see on the seating chart. We dim the seats outside of the price range selected by the customer, although customers can still choose those seats if they want. This makes it super-easy for customers to quickly see the range of prices in each level of the theatre for the performance they are viewing, and narrow down to the price and location they are interested in. At the risk of bragging, we’re also pretty sure this is the only price slider on a ticketing website which shows only the prices of the actual seats which are available, rather than showing generic prices which may or may not apply to the seats offered to the customer.
View the Price Slider Tutorial below.
These improvements to the ticket shopping process should have a very positive impact on sales, letting customers find their seats more quickly and easily, supporting price-conscious and location-conscious customers simultaneously.
In addition to the seating chart-related changes, we’re also going to be starting to sell tickets with promotional codes using the new website, under the address www.telechargeoffers.com. We’re starting with just a few marketing codes to make sure things are working smoothly, and then will slowly add more codes to the site. For now, there’s no need to change any of your offer advertisements—we’ll let you know when the time comes to make changes. We’re planning on continuing this soft-launch beta period through the end of 2013, and starting to sell all offers on the new website platform in early 2014.
In other news, we also recently launched iPhone and Android apps. You can browse events and purchase tickets via the apps. Take a look in the Apple and Google stores and download the apps when you get a chance. They also work on tablets, but are really optimized for smart phones.