Background
I want to start off with an interesting story on how Interware came up with a novel new approach to buying a ticket online, by just employing, one click of the mouse. We call this new service, one click registration!
First, a little background on our company, Interware.Net Inc. Interware is the name of our company while e-RegisterNow is the name of our event ticketing system. I am the managing partner at Interware and here’s the story on how we invented, one step registration.
e-RegisterNow is a ticketing platform for selling tickets over the web. It’s a very good cloud based service which allows consumer shows, museums, aquariums or any similar organization to sell their entry tickets over the web using a PC browser or mobile device in real time. This event ticketing software has been selling tickets online for more than 15 years. Our standard approach consists of going through a series of four html pages, with the final page being the one that displays the actual ticket and receipt. During the process, a purchaser needs to visit each page and fill out all of the compulsory data on that page. The process takes about 3-5 minutes from start to finish. If the purchaser is missing some compulsory information, an error page, alerts the user as to what the missing information is, and the purchaser gets a chance to click back and fix the issue. The purchaser whether doing the transaction on a PC or using a mobile phone, makes between 4 to 6 clicks of the mouse during the entire process. The process does not require the purchaser to login first.
How Express Ticketing came to be
Recently, a former client, asked Interware if it were possible to create an express ticketing service which would allow patrons to buy their tickets and enter the show as quickly as possible. The client said that they are currently heavily invested in another ticketing service which makes it compulsory for a patron to first acquire a login and password before they are able to buy a ticket. For a patron, just wishing to visit the client’s exhibits, the time to buy a ticket for someone without a login and password climbs to over 10 minutes. The current ticketing vendor informed the client that it wouldn’t be possible in the short term to change their software’s feature, which compels a patron to begin the ticket purchase process by first logging in.
The client, being a little skeptical, decided to reach out to Interware and ask if our company was able to develop an express ticketing service without the requirement to login first. Without delay, we mocked up our standard 4-6 click, html series of ticket registration pages. This was done in one day and the client was informed and given a test account in order to try things out. The e-RegisterNow pages didn’t require an initial login in, and the whole process was timed to take about 3-5 minutes for a patron to perform. The next day, the client was happy with what they saw and informed Interware that they would get back to us soon. Suddenly, their existing ticketing vendor began having second thoughts about whether they could develop the same thing. No doubt a change of heart due to the fear of possibly losing their long-term client. As the managing partner at Interware, I knew too well what this means in business. The fact that the original vendor was reconsidering the scope of the development needed to come up with their version of express ticketing, meant that they were going to squeeze out all competitors especially Interware.
I called, an emergency meeting at Interware, and asked everyone to attend. I explained that we were going to lose this express ticketing opportunity unless we could come up with something else. I said we were faced with an “innovate or die” scenario. At the emergency meeting, after explaining what we were up against, I reminded everyone that the client was asking for “express ticketing”. The word, express, to me meant “fast”, in fact “as fast as possible”. Out of the blue, I asked our team, is it possible to build just one html page with all the questions we need on it, and just one button to process the credit card. After an awkward pause, our chief web designer said, yes it is possible. At that moment, a new product was born! Our team hustled and we mocked up a model of how, one page registration, would work. I called, the client back and said upon further reflection, our team would like to propose a second solution. To my surprise, we were able to a build things so light and free, that when the process button is pressed, it took only 2 seconds for the transaction to roll over. That’s the truth, that’s how we innovated quickly on won the contract with the client to offer express real time ticketing. The video below shows you how our new event ticketing software works. Our team was so happy that we built express ticketing into our current e-RegisterNow product, so that all current e-RegisterNow clients can use it. The one click registration can also be used for non-ticketed events.
Advantages
Our new innovated approach to online event ticketing has the following major advantages:
– It’s fast for performing online registration or selling tickets online, takes about 2 seconds after the data has been entered.
– It handles surges well. Surges occur when ticketing opens with a bang, like when you’re selling online concert tickets. The approach uses a *.dll (i.e. a dynamic link library) approach which results in the program,mobile.dll, being loaded once in RAM and servicing purchasers on a thread by thread basis
– The web design is quicker, and for event organizers things can be setup quickly since there is only one html event page to mock up.
– Customer service is also minimized.