Emerging festival ticketing technologies and new applications of existing technology are some of the biggest trends in the festival industry. With the right festival ticketing and registration mix, you can gather data to enhance the festival goer’s experience, reduce ticket fraud, and decrease entry waiting times.
Enhancing the Event-Goer Customer Experience
An intuitive ticket search and event registration process sets the stage for what the festival experience will be in the minds of prospective attendees. Traditionally, the ticketing process looks something like this:
- A prospective attendee visits the festival’s official website and selects a ticket type.
- The attendee then downloads a registration form, fills it out and sends it to the event organiser.
- Once the registration form is processed, the tickets are mailed to the attendee’s shipping address.
- On the day of the festival, the attendee waits in line for the event staff to check them in.
Event Espresso offers a festival ticketing system for WordPress websites that allows you to enhance the event-goer’s customer experience through online event registrations. It automates the event registration process and allows you to collect payments directly through your site. Instead of mailing attendees their tickets, you can give them the option to print their tickets at home and scan them using a mobile device at check-in.
Why Customer Experience Matters
Why does customer experience matter to festival attendees? According to Seth Shoultes, co-founder at Event Espresso, which is a festival registration plugin for WordPress, “It is not the biggest of the festivals that delight attendees, nor the one with the most attractions, but the one that is most engaged with their visitors.”
Shoultes adds, “Festivals aren’t about creating the biggest spectacle or employing cutting-edge technology. It’s about entertaining people, and people can be fickle. Festival organisers who are able to evolve their offering to suit the fluctuating preferences of their target audience are the ones who will have the greatest impact on festival goers.”
Event technology enables event organisers to enhance the customer experience by removing friction from the event registration process. Giving festival-goers the option to register for the festival and purchase tickets online saves time and improves their perception of the festival in the attendees’ mind.
Implementing a Multi-Tiered Ticketing Strategy
Developing a multi-tiered ticketing strategy for your next festival and executing it using the Event Espresso plugin for WordPress can help you enhance the festival goer’s experience.
Here’s what you need to do:
Tip #1: Offer Different Types of Tickets
Creating different types of tickets (such as single-day, multi-day, group, junior, weekend, or all-inclusive) can help you increase sales and make the ticketing process simpler at the same time. The built-in Multiple Ticket and Pricing Options feature lets you offer prospective attendees a variety of tickets and provide premium experiences to those who want them.
Tip #2: Make the Registration and Checkout Process Seamless
You can configure the Event Espresso plugin to automatically send attendees their tickets after they’ve completed their online registration using the Printable Tickets add-on.
If you’re selling tickets for a multi-day (or week-long) festival, you’re going to need a way to let attendees register for multiple events at a time. The Multiple Event Registration add-on allows attendees to register for different events in one go.
Making it easy for attendees to find and buy tickets to your festival directly from blog posts, social media platforms, and search engines effectively shortens the ticket purchasing process.
Event Espresso also supports festival ticketing for nonprofits which allows you to raise funds and accept donations directly through your WordPress website.
Tip #3: Check-in Attendees Quickly
The Barcode Scanner add-on lets you add barcodes to the tickets you send attendees. This way, you can use a simple barcode scanner or mobile app to check-in attendees at the door instead of having your event staff manually verify each ticket.
Gathering data is an integral part of hosting a festival. It lets you gauge the success of your event and gives you insight into what you can do to improve it in the future. With the Mobile Attendance & Ticketing Apps add-on for Event Espresso, you’ll be able to transform your mobile device into a fully-functional onsite attendee management tool.
Tip #4: Festival Registration Analytics
Keeping track of everyone who attended your festival can be a daunting task – especially if you’re manually registering attendees. Event Espresso comes with an Accurate Attendee Manager that lets you view your registrants’ details quickly at a glance.
The plugin’s built-in Transaction Reporting module gives you a quick view of the total number of registrations and transactions per event.
Key Takeaways
You certainly don’t need to have a big budget to set your festival up with event technology. Event organisers are taking advantage of tools that facilitate festival ticketing using WordPress to enhance their attendees’ experience.
Author: Adam Parry
Adam is the co-founder and editor of www.eventindustrynews.com Adam, a technology evangelist also organises Event Tech Live, Europe’s only show dedicated to event technology and the Event Technology Awards. Both events take place in November, London.
