Ticketbud Tidbits EP 14 – SHOW NOTES… Taste of Mexico Food Festival

Aaron Jimenez (Marketing and Membership Associate) and Conner Moncrief (Development Associate) from Mexic-Arte Museum. Hosted by Ticketbud CEO Kayhan Ahmadi.

Taste of Mexico podcast photo

Listen to the Podcast

Event Organization: The Mexic-Arte Museum

This week we were joined by two event organizers from the Mexic-Arte Museum located on 5th and Congress here in Austin, Texas. The Mexic-Arte Museum was founded in 1984 by three artists, Sylvia Orozco, Sam Coronado, and Pio Pulido to share the art and culture of Mexico with Texas.

The Museum is a non-profit organization with the mission of cultural enrichment and education through the collection, preservation and presentation of traditional and contemporary Mexican, Latino, and Latin American art and culture. The museum exhibits art by established and emerging artists and also hosts events during the year such as  Taste of Mexico and Day of the Dead festival.

Event: Taste of Mexico

From humble beginnings in 1998, under a different name, Taste of Mexico has evolved from a small community event to an experience more and more people are excited about participating in.  The culture and cuisine of this event is an extension of what the Mexic-Arte Museum brings to the Austin community.

This annual Austin food festival brings together inspired executions of Mexican cuisine from over 35 central Texas restaurants, food trucks, and vendors. Paired with a diverse bar of fine Tequilas, Mezcales, wines, beers, and other refreshments. This year’s festival features a variety of interactive activities and demonstrations exploring the influence of Puebla in Mexican cuisine.

Aaron and Connor explain how the event showcases the diversity and intricacy of Mexican cuisine, rebelling against the idea that Mexican food is just Tex-Mex.  They have curated the best of Mexican food that Austin has to offer. People can expect to see some of the bigger name Mexican restaurants they are familiar with, as well as discovering amazing smaller restaurants and food trucks they perhaps haven’t come across.

The event shows that Mexican food is of the people, it’s influenced by region, family histories and ingredients. It isn’t static, it evolves and continues to change over time. Part of the experience  of this event from year to year it that there will continue to be new interpretations of this delicious cuisine.

Event Goals

Aaron and Conner explain that they have two key goals for the event. One is as a fundraiser for Mexic-Arte Museum’s exhibitions and art programs. The other is community engagement and outreach. This event is a great way for the museum to engage with the local community in a new way. Their aim is to connect with a wider audience, including members of the community that may not have visited the museum before. The festival experience gives people a taste of Mexican culture, designed to entice people to learn  more about the other cultural experiences the museum has to offer.

Fundraising

All proceeds from this event go back into the community to fund Mexic-Arte Museum’s Exhibitions and Award Winning Art Education Programs. This includes the Mexic-Arte Museum’s nationally recognized Screen it Program, which introduces youth to basic screen printing techniques and careers in the art field. Screen it! received the 2016 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program award, a project of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities presented by Honorary Chairman, Michelle Obama.

Vendor Participation

Aaron and Conner explain that for some of the more popular well known restaurants, their participation is about a desire to connect directly with the community in a different way. For the chefs that are usually back of house, this event allows them to interact and talk about the food they create and why they’re passionate about it. For the smaller players it’s very much about discovery, an opportunity for them to get more people to know who they are and what great food and experiences they have to offer.

Event Promotion

Influencer marketing has definitely played a role, according to Aaron and Conner. Relying on influencers to tell the story of your brand. This meant working collaboratively with the chefs and restaurants participating in the event to help get the word out, together amplifying the reach of the event.

Taste of Mexico is also creating and sharing a series of micro documentaries with five of the featured Chefs. The documentaries are featuring Puebla, getting chefs to discuss their influences and where they see the cuisine going.  This gives people some additional insight into the cultural experience and who will be there, before attending the event.

Event Sponsorships

As the event is a fundraiser for the museum we have to make sure it’s profitable. Sponsorships can be a challenge for events, so revamping the sponsorship program played a significant role in the event planning. Creating closer relationships with sponsors has been important to ensure each sponsor is getting the most out of the partnership.

Learn more about what Taste of Mexico do to create tailored sponsorship packages that keep sponsors happy and new sponsors eager to sign up.

Ticket Pricing

It is important to Taste of Mexico to be both profitable and accessible. They explain how sponsorships play an important role in subsidizing tickets prices, ensuring the event remains affordable to the community. They evaluate ticket pricing each year by assessing the cost of the event, reviewing ticket sale numbers for the previous year, and factoring in sponsorship funds. This helps identify a ticket price that is affordable, that covers costs and still raises money for the museum.

Event Details:

Wednesday May 1st 2019, 5:30 pm –  9:00 pm
Brazos Hall – 204 E 4th St, Austin, TX 
Get your tickets for this tasty festival

Taste of Mexico

Taste of Mexico

11 Things to Look For When Choosing an Online Ticketing Platform

There are a lot of different options when it comes to online ticketing. Choosing the right provider can be difficult. It’s important when comparing options to find out what’s really included. Some providers will offer what looks like a low rate, but are withholding some of the most basic features and tools you need. This either restricts you or immediately pushes the price up (after you have signed up of course).

Here’s a guide that will help you ask the right questions to get the online ticketing you need.

  1. Customer support included! Some providers charge a premium for customer support. If you’re new to online ticketing you want to have a real person you can call to get help right away.
  2. Price transparency and get started without credit card details. It’s not a good sign if it takes more than a couple of minutes to understand the total cost for the features you need. You also want to be able to create an account and try the platform, to ensure it works for you before spending money.
  3. It’s quick and easy to create your own event page. You want it to be user friendly to create a great looking branded event page with tickets and social share options.
  4. No account needed for ticket buyers. You don’t want ticket buyers to have to create an account before buying tickets. Adding extra steps loses sales.
  5. Unlimited ticket types. Don’t pay more to have different ticket types (child, student, adult, or early bird sales and complimentary tickets etc). Some providers restrict this to one ticket type and charge a premium for more. Most events are going to need more than one ticket type. It helps you sell more tickets.
  6. Flexible payout options. Many providers make you wait until after your event to get paid. You should be able to access your funds early to cover event costs. (FYI Ticketbud offers daily, weekly or monthly payouts).
  7. Mobile optimized. Most consumers research events on mobile devices. Ensure event pages and checkouts are mobile optimized to help you sell more tickets.
  8. Promotional features. You’ll want tools to help you sell tickets and measure promotional efforts. Things like social share buttons, facebook pixel integration, custom link tracking, website widgets, options for incentivized pricing, referral and promotional codes. (If any of these are unfamiliar, you will want a provider with customer support).
  9. Inbuilt communication tools. An engagement centre to send targeted invites, communicate and build relationships with attendees, and manage attendee lists for follow up (including post event surveys).
  10. Free mobile check-in app. Scanning tickets at the door quickly and easily from any mobile device.  
  11. Ensure you own your data and all reporting is included. Make sure you get complete access to comprehensive reporting and all your attendee data without paying more for it.

What do you get with Ticketbud?

Our customer support is worth mentioning again. Ticketbud’s customer support is what sets us apart. We are there every step of the way. Our customers have unrestricted access to real help, real people and real answers. Ticketbud is a user friendly, all-in-one event management and ticketing platform with all-inclusive pricing and customer support. Organizers are in control with flexible payout options providing early access to funds, and access to powerful tools and integrations. Ticketbud also offers the flexibility to customize, including white-label solutions.   

Ticketbud helps you create an amazing event landing page and set up unlimited ticket types. We equip you with tools to help enhance promotions for your event. We have an inbuilt communication centre where you can send invites, communicate with attendees and gain feedback with post event surveys.

We’re also there for the event day logistics, providing a free app for quickly scanning tickets, manual check-in options and guest lists, as well as rentable devices and mobile point of sale for on the door sales. We offer robust reporting features which are easy to use and interpret, giving you highly valuable insights. Learn what drove the most sales for your event and have complete access to your attendee lists and data.

We would love to show you more. Request a demo of the Ticketbud platform today!

Get the most out of Ticketbud’s Organization Features and Showcase Pages

Getting Started – User Accounts:

When you sign-up to Ticketbud you get allocated a User Account. With this User Account you can create as many events as you require. Those events live under your User Account.

Create events from your user account.
Create events from your user account.

Creating an Organization under your User Account:

Under your User Account you can also build what we call an “Organization”, this allows you to create events linked specifically to that Organization. You are able to have multiple Organizations under your User Account. For example multiple businesses or charities you work with.
When you build an Organization, you automatically receive a Showcase Page (which you can choose to use or not). All the events for that Organization will be displayed on that Organizations Showcase Page.

Creating Organizations and Showcase Pages
Creating Organizations and Showcase Pages

The Organizations feature is ideal for multi-day events:

The Organizations feature can also be used to manage an event like a multi-day festival. For reporting, accounting, and entrance/box office purposes, multi-day festivals can benefit from having each day of their festival created as an event page, these then live on the Festival’s Showcase Page. All promotion for the festival would direct to the Showcase page, allowing customers to choose the day they want tickets for.
Each day of the festival can have its own ticket types and event description. This allows the organizer to have higher pricing for peak periods, without having to worry about people trying to use a cheaper ticket on a premium day. The ticket would flag as the wrong day on scanners.
This option provides organizers with more detailed reporting. Access reports specific to each day of the event, or an overview of all events run by that Organization (in this example, the whole festival).
If you wanted to have private hospitality packages during your festival you can set that up as a separate event that is private/invite only. This allows you to invite sponsors to participate in different packages that won’t be visible to the public.

Create Day Passes as Events
Create Day Passes as Events

Separate point-of-sale reporting option:

Events generally sell tickets at the door for a higher price (to encourage pre-sales and to make event day operations more manageable). You can simply add a POS ticket type to each day of your event, which would be locked and not visible to the public.
However the organizations function also gives you the option to set up separate POS reporting. This enables you to quickly extract POS data across all the days of a multi-day event. This involves creating a new ”Organization”,  duplicating your events and setting them to private. Your door staff will then use this for POS sales onsite (not visible to the public), as seen in the diagram.

Use the Organization feature to manage online pre-sales and POS on the door.
Use the Organization feature to manage online pre-sales and POS on the door.

Example Multi-day Festival Showcase Page:

BalloonFestival-Showcase
_

BalloonFestival
Event Tile View

BalloonFestival-Cal
Calendar View

 ]]]]> ]]>

Ticketbud Announces Integration with Event Protect, the Industry Standard Protection for Event Cancellation

Ticketbud event organizers can now opt-in for comprehensive ticket revenue protection with Event Protect. This is a game changer for organizers, minimizing financial risk in case of unforeseen cancellation. The full value of a ticket transaction is covered by a low fee, built into ticket prices. This real-time coverage is based on the exact number of tickets sold, meaning you only pay for the coverage needed. This offers a more cost effective method of coverage for organizers, compared to the more expensive event insurance options.

Protect your investment

Everyone wants to see their event be a great success, however responsible organizers realize the need to protect their investment. Events often include significant sunk costs, with set-up and fit-out expenses, as well as prepaid venues, talent and suppliers. Event Protect reduces the risk of financial loss if the event has to be canceled, disrupted or rescheduled due to circumstances out of your control. Displaying the Event Protect logo on your event page increases consumer confidence. It assures customers that direct refunds will be provided quickly and transparently in the case of unforeseen cancellation.

“With events, there are always factors out of your control. We’ve seen it all, sudden heavy rains flooding fairgrounds, squirrels chewing through electrical wires, major suppliers falling through or high winds blowing over tents and making venues unsafe. With Event Protect and Ticketbud, attendees get fast refunds and organizers are protected financially. Ticketbud is the largest ticketing platform in the US to rollout this service. After successfully piloting with key clients, Event Protect will soon be available to all organizers”.

Kayhan Ahmadi, CEO of Ticketbud.

Key Benefits:

Austin’s Largest Holiday Lights Festival: 

“We produce a large outdoor holiday festival that is at the mercy of the elements, which is why we were thrilled to add Event Protect to our ticketed offerings in 2018. When city officials had to close the park one evening due to high winds, ticket purchasers were protected.” 

Teri Smart, VP of Marketing, Forefront Networks.

How does it work?

Ticketbud connects to the Event Protect Platform via API enabling all transactions to be underwritten in real-time by their panel of A-rated insurers. This allows the full value of the transaction to be insured, including processing fees or any extras if booked as part of a package. If an event is canceled, ticket holders complete a simple Event Protect form authorizing direct refund to them, leaving organizers with no additional costs. This peace of mind is another reason event organizers choose Ticketbud.

Comprehensive Coverage

Full comprehensive coverage for all types of events. Examples for cancellation include, but are not limited to:

Find out more about Event Protect

Ensure Wi-fi Connectivity at Events with Portable Cellular Routers

Don’t lose wi-fi connection when you need it most.

Ticketbud has expanded its rentable device range for events to include new portable cellular routers. The Pepwave MAX BR1 Mini is easy to transport and use, creating a reliable wi-fi hotspot for your event. Ideal for large-scale events, or events in remote areas. It increases wi-fi range and capability for ticket scanning and onsite ticket sales. These devices reduce the risk of lost wi-fi connection, avoiding point-of-sale and check-in delays.

“The BR1 mini is an industrial-grade lightweight router for easy transportation. Put simply, this device helps the internet live where it otherwise would not live. Because of its inbuilt wireless radio and antennas, the router has a much higher signal strength, increasing  wi-fi range and capability. It’s easy to use, you just plug-in, connect to wi-fi and go.”  Rob Nussbaum, Technology & Telecom Consultant, JackBaum Group

The device runs sim cards for two cellular networks, automatically switching when needed. This provides a fail-safe should one network go down, minimizing the risk of losing connectivity for onsite sales and ticket scanning.
These devices can be used as the primary router for offsite locations or as a failover backup connection. If your primary connection fails, you can swap over to the MAX BR1 Mini’s 4G connection. The only time the wi-fi router wouldn’t be sufficient is if your event was in a very remote area where there was limited access to cellular towers, in which case you may need satellite access.   
Hyper Connected Failover Solution – Diagram

The Specs

The Pepwave MAX BR1 Mini is a 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) mobile wi-fi router.

The BR1 Mini offers redundant SIM slots with automatic switching, DC or terminal block power capability, advanced GPS fleet tracking, and remote management, all packed into a durable metal enclosure. (Verizon certified).

Pepwave MAX BR1 Mini wi-fi router
Pepwave MAX BR1 Mini wi-fi router

Available For Rent

We recommend ordering hardware devices a minimum of 2 weeks before your event, allowing some buffer time should there be shipping delays. This will also give us time to talk with you about best practices for using the wi-fi router at your event.
Ticketbud has a range of hardware devices available for rent from the Ticketbud Store.
Ticketbud Store Rentable Devices for Events]]]]>

Increasing Dine-In Revenue In A Take-Out World

Full-Service Restaurants Bite Into The 50 Billion Dollar Event Market.

Are restaurants in danger of being ‘Amazoned’ by the rapid rise of online food delivery? Savvy restaurateurs are capitalizing on the rising popularity of events to entice customers to dine-in.

While e-commerce competition has completely changed the face of retail, restaurants for a time seemed to escape the same fate. However, consumer demand for online food delivery is now growing 300 percent faster than dine-in ordering, and is fast eating into profits. 

On the surface it appeared that apps like Uber Eats and Grubhub were providing a great new revenue source for restaurants. However many restaurants are reporting a decline in overall profit, particularly due to the loss of alcohol sales, with more transactions going out the door. With more customers drawn to the convenience of home delivered food, restaurants are increasingly turning into production lines, losing ground on in-store sales. Dine-in meals offer greater value to restaurants and the decline in dine-in customers is impacting the bottom line. 

Particularly popular with millennials, online food delivery is still in the early stages of growth, at 6 percent of the total market and estimated to reach 11 percent by 2022. Morgan Stanley projects this market has the potential to grow from 11 billion to as much as 210 billion, which is 40 percent of the total restaurant market. While a strategy to cater to this market is clearly important, restaurateurs are testing new ideas to entice customers back to dine-in.   

Restaurant operators are realizing they need to adapt fast before their businesses become unprofitable in the future. Many are now looking to capitalize on the 50 billion dollar US events market and the rising popularity of experiential events. 

People are increasingly searching for new experiences and events. According to Google, mobile searches for “events/attractions” plus “near me” have grown over 500 percent from 2016 to 2018. While 51 percent of all mobile searches on Google are for restaurants. With 35 million people discovering public events on Facebook each day, now is the time to be promoting event dining experiences. Restaurants need to promote more than a menu online, offer an experience to entice customers from the comfort of their living rooms. Unique experiences gain consumer interest, a special event or curated dining experience creates an occasion people want to participate in.  

Across the hospitality industry, from bars, family restaurants to fine-dining, managers are looking to experiential event dining to give people a reason to leave the house. Ticketbud works closely with hospitality venues to create and manage in-store events, with packages and campaigns that can be created across multiple events and locations. 

“Prepaid events not only bring people in-store, they offer predictable revenue with cash in advance. Our restaurant clients report greater attendance for prepaid events, with less than 2% no-shows. Offering patrons a prepaid booking and exclusive menu package can capture them for hours, increasing in-store alcohol sales and a chance to promote new menu items”.

Meredith Smith, Director of Operations, Ticketbud.

Partnering with Ticketbud for in-store dining events 

Ticketbud partners with businesses to create event solutions and packages to fit individual business needs. A successful event partnership offers our clients opportunities for customer engagement, creative new marketing initiatives, customer data, increased in-store revenue and predictive sales for budget forecasting

We only make money if you make money. Unlike restaurant reservation booking tools, there is no subscription requirement and organizers can build our very low fees into the ticket price. There is also no additional hardware required to execute an in-store event with Ticketbud. We understand the pain points restaurant operators face with training staff on new POS or online ordering devices. We cut that out entirely, making for a smooth and seamless online and in-store transaction. 

Ticketbud offers white label custom solutions or ready to use templates for event promotion pages. Our branded Showcase Pages provide a space for event organizers to cross promote all their events and include an interactive calendar to view all upcoming events. Our platform and check-out is mobile optimized to ensure we maximize sales from mobile devices.

We cater to individual or multi-location event campaigns, with unlimited ticket programming for a variety of packages and experiences to be offered. With real time reporting and simple to use check-in options, Ticketbud makes event hosting a smooth experience. The insights and data gained through event registrations is a great opportunity to learn more about your customer base and is of significant value for future promotions. 

Get in contact with the Ticketbud team if you would like to learn more about hospitality event opportunities with Ticketbud.

Ticketbud Migrates to Google Cloud to Help Power Large Events

It’s important for Ticketbud to have scalable infrastructure to cater to large events and peak sales times. Hosting our infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) ensures this scalability, processing tickets quickly and reliably during peak periods for even the largest of events.

For Ticketbud, migrating over to Google Cloud offers significant benefits for our company and our development team, but ultimately our event organizers and their ticket buyers. Google Cloud provides greater stability, speed and performance. It offers massive scale that’s elastic, so we can use it when we need it. As a ticketing provider, we have to be ready for those big on-sales and peak volume times when thousands of ticket buyers are making purchases at once.

Hosting a Dockerized application on Google Cloud gives our platform flexible scale to handle the largest events at any time. Most new SaaS businesses are now building their infrastructure using Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or another cloud hosting provider. This current best practice provides even small companies with incredible scale and reliability, that previously would have been too expensive to maintain.

Companies that have been around before the cloud hosting wars, are now migrating their development and hosting over to one of the big cloud providers. The question then becomes who to choose in today’s cloud wars. Which is the best cloud platform for your business? Who offers the best value and tech? There are hundreds of articles weighing the pros and cons of AWS, GCP and Azure. Picking the right provider comes down the the needs of the individual business, and each will weigh the pros and cons of providers differently.

Ticketbud moved to Google Cloud because it best fit our needs and we preferred its user friendly interface. We wanted a provider that would help us take advantage of the latest best practices and technologies, specifically Docker and Kubernetes. Containerization with Docker allows us to standardize the deployment artifacts across all developer environments, development, staging, and production.

Google is also the creator of the planet-scale container orchestration tool Kubernetes. Kubernetes solves the problem of easily deploying code out in a rapid and consistent manner. It also allows the infrastructure to be elastic, automatically scaling up and down with user demand. It cycles out unhealthy servers and replaces them with healthy ones. Since Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is considered the Gold Standard for Kubernetes, it was ideal to be on both Google Cloud and GKE.

Once we decided on Google Cloud, moving our PostgreSQL instances from manually configured, bespoke servers to a CloudSQL instance was a logical decision. GCP’s CloudSQL offloaded the overhead of operating a highly-available database with features such as multiple availability zone redundancy, automatically scaling disks, and daily worry-free snapshotted backups. Code commits are automatically picked up by the CI/CD system and deployed into Kubernetes.

The infrastructure can now grow with Ticketbud’s needs, letting Google and Kubernetes manage the details. This means that our developers now have more time to focus on creating great new features for our customers.

Special thanks to Victor Trac at CloudKite who led our transition to containerization and Google Cloud. CloudKite is a DevOps as-a-service consultancy based in Austin, TX. They are Google Cloud Certified.

Ticketbud launches a mobile optimized ‘Events Showcase Page.’

The new Events Showcase Page provides a branded ticketing experience, with greater cross promotion across multiple events. The ‘Events Showcase Page’ is the latest feature to be announced, as part of Ticketbud’s revitalized event management and ticketing platform. Event organizers gain a free customizable space to promote all their events.

This new feature is particularly valuable to organizations running multiple events (and those spanning multiple days), allowing ticket buyers to view all events quickly and easily. The page includes an interactive calendar view feature, which can also be embedded on an organizers website. Links have been added at key points in the customer journey to increase cross promotional opportunities.

“This year Ticketbud is rolling out major platform updates, with enhanced interfaces providing a mobile optimized experience for ticket buyers. We’re giving event organizers the best tools to sell tickets where the customers are, on their mobile devices. After recently launching a mobile optimized checkout, we’re now launching an enhanced interface at the the other end of the funnel. This branded page enables event organizers to showcase all their events.It’s perfect for multi-day festivals, venues, a large multi-location brand, or organizations holding multiple events per year.”

Kayhan Ahmadi, CEO of Ticketbud.

The new Events Showcase Page includes:

Be one of the first organizations to get a new Events Showcase Page. 

Contact us and a team member will help set it up.

Customer Feedback:

“The cross promotion between festival events is invaluable, and the interactive calendar view provides a user friendly option for ticket buyers to see the events on each day.”

“Alaska World Arts Festival runs 100 events across 50 venues in Homer Alaska, over two weeks in September. The festival features music, dance, theater, film, visual arts, literature, and comedy events. We needed a solution that enabled us to profile the festival, it’s wide range of events across multiple days, and sell tickets easily. Ticketbud’s new showcase page allows us to promote all our shows and events on one festival page.  Having no prior experience with a ticketing platform, the customer support I received getting set up with our showcase page and ticketing was greatly appreciated.” 

Organizer of Alaska World Arts Festival.

Preview of Events Showcase Page

Event Showcase Page list view

Event Showcase Page calendar view

Visit Ticketbud today and request a demoIt’s free to sign up and start planning.

For assistance setting up an Events Showcase Page, please get in contact.

The Future Of Event Ticketing Is Mobile

Increase ticket sales with a mobile optimized checkout

Mobile is changing the way consumers are researching and buying tickets for events. With more consumer time being spent on mobile devices, one of the biggest opportunities for growth in event ticketing lies in the mobile experience.

Mobile devices are the preferred way to access content online, with more searches now taking place on mobile devices than on desktop computers. While consumers do much of their pre-purchase research on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), to date there has been a lower conversion for people completing purchases on mobile. Complicated checkouts are a major factor in around 69% of purchases being abandoned at checkout. A mobile optimized checkout, must be a priority.

Mobile isn’t just the future of e-commerce, its impact is being felt in the present and absorbing a greater share each year. Mobile is becoming the primary driver of e-commerce growth with year-on-year statistics showing more consumers are making mobile purchases. During November and December 2018, mobile devices accounted for 59% of e-commerce traffic and 40% of completed purchases. However this gap in consumer time spent on mobile versus their purchase dollars spent, continues to narrow. Various sources project that mobile commerce sales worldwide will reach between 54% and 73% of total e-commerce spending by 2021.

What’s driving the increase in mobile purchases?

The shift in mobile purchasing can be attributed to factors such as streamlined mobile checkouts, more responsive mobile websites and apps, and even increased screen sizes. This growth is expected to continue in 2019, with young consumers a driving force behind mobile purchasing. However it’s important to be aware that mobile consumers will abandon transactions quickly if the experience is difficult or flawed.

With an audience on mobile ready to buy, the purchase process just needs to be simple. Enhanced user interfaces and creating mobile optimized experiences are significant to this. Adding greater payment flexibility, including one-click payment options such as Apple Pay and Google Pay creates another advantage, especially in event ticketing.

How does a streamlined checkout and one-click payment increase ticket sales?

There are two factors at play:

  1. Reducing friction at checkout – Any step along the path to purchase that gives the customer difficulty or time to rethink the purchase, is going to impact sales. Making the path to purchase frictionless by removing hurdles and pain points makes it easier for people to buy.
  2. The cashless effect reduces the pain of paying – The less visible the transaction, the easier it is for people to purchase, reducing the negative association we have parting with money. The ‘Cashless Effect’ suggests people spend more when they don’t see their cash being handed over. This effect has been shown with credit card transactions and now the ability to pay with the click of a button (or TouchID) makes payment even less visible. The less time spent thinking about the transaction (imputing credit card details for example) the easier it is to buy.

The appeal of Apple Pay and Google Pay for customers: 

Event organizers with the most to gain

A mobile optimized one-click checkout is particularly important to event organizers that rely heavily on mobile sales, such as multi-day pop-up events, hospitality and events targeting millennials. However with such a wide consumer base on mobile, taking advantage of impulse sale opportunities is valuable to all event organizers.

With an audience researching events on mobile devices, a seamless purchase process with fewer clicks and pain points will see an increase in conversion rates. There is therefore a significant advantage in partnering with a ticketing company that has mobile checkout experience top of mind.

Ticketbud commits to an advanced mobile experience in 2019

In 2019 Ticketbud has launched a mobile optimized checkout flow and enhanced user interface, with Apple Pay and Google Pay fully integrated in the checkout experience. 

For event goers – a mobile optimized checkout means the ticket buying process is made quicker and easier.

For event organizers – this translates to increased ticket sales, converting more people from the event page by reducing difficulties at checkout.

Ticketbud is committed to continual platform enhancements and mobile optimization. We are set to roll out a series of platform enhancements in 2019, to further improve the customer experience for both ticket buyers and event organizers.

Ticketbud mobile optimized checkout with Apple Pay integration