Having a mobile friendly website has been a subject of discussion for the last decade, with the increasing use of tablet and mobile devices to make purchases. Gone are the days of firing up the PC to book trips, holidays and days out, with a phone or tablet close by, most of us will book using our mobile devices. That means your website, ecommerce shop and online ticketing system have to be mobile first, not just mobile friendly.
Mobile responsiveness has increased in importance, not only according to Google’s algorithm but also to users experience in recent years. It is no longer good enough to offer a lesser experience on a mobile device compared to those on desktop.
Think about it this way, who is most likely to be visiting your website? Families on holiday or locals searching for days out, most people are on the go and booking tickets to visit you will be one of the many things they do that day. Your aim is to make it as easy and simple as possible for them to book with you and avoid them dropping off your site. First thing to make sure is that your book tickets button is easy to locate on a mobile device. Placing such an important button in the header or footer of you mobile page will mean the user can click directly into the online ticketing process.
The next thing to do is make sure that your online ticketing system is built not just responsive in it’s design but mobile first. What do we mean by mobile first? “Mobile first”, as the name suggests, means that the online ticketing platform is built to be used on a mobile device first as mobile has a lot more restrictions in terms of screen size etc. Once the mobile site has been designed you can then create the alternative versions for users on tablet and desktop devices. Designing your ticketing platform this way ensures that user experience on a mobile device is at the heart of the user journey increases the chances of them purchasing tickets on your site.
Don’t worry, we’re not saying that your visitor attraction needs to invest huge amounts of time and money in development, that’s what online ticketing providers should have done already for you. All you need to do when looking for a new ticketing platform is ask if it’s been built to be mobile first. Simple.
Chances are you haven’t tried out your user journey to purchase tickets for your attraction in a while and for most of you reading this you’re even less likely to have tried to purchase tickets for your visitor attraction on a mobile device. So, if you do nothing else today, test it. Grab your phone or tablet and see what that user journey is like on your mobile devices. There may be some quick fixes that could help smooth it out like image size or too many options to show on screen, these issues just need an image to be reduced or a decision to show less options. There may also be some big issues, those stumbling blocks where you can’t quite zoom in or easily access information about your tickets might be putting potential visitors off and we recommend getting them sorted ASAP.
You can also ask your marketing team about your analytics, that’s something free that every website has access to from Google. You can look on there to see how many people access your site from tablets and mobiles. If your user journey isn’t great and you have over 50% of traffic coming from these devices, you’re going to need to have a longer think about what you do next. That could be a huge amount of tickets that you’re missing out on selling.
It’s not just your tickets either, if you have an online shop this could be happening there too, again check out the user journey and have a look at your analytics to make sure.
VisiSoft is built to be mobile first ticketing system not just mobile friendly. If you’re thinking about how to improve your visitor journey, then why not take advantage of our free online ticketing journey review here, where Lee Drew, Head Of VisiSoft will audit your online ticketing process for free and send you a recorded video with areas you could improve your process.