TICKETMASTER

"Working with our partners to envision the future of live entertainment is what drives our team. Building the technology and service to seamlessly connect fans with the events they love is our passion. We are relentless in our pursuit to develop the innovations that will unlock unforgettable experiences for fans."

Statistics

Averaging 120 million visitors over the past 3 months

Average visit duration: 4 minutes and 1 second (04:01)

3.4 stars on Trustpilot

Top 3 countries that make up web traffic

Top 3 countries: US (86.1%), Canada (4.4%), and UK (2.0%)

Biggest demographics: 25-34 (28.5%) and 18-24 (21.7%)

Points of Interest

Face Value Ticket Exchange

An artist-driven marketplace where fans can sell their tickets to other fans at face value. Ticketmaster’s Face Value Ticket Exchange is free to use for buyers and sellers.

SafeTix™

SafeTix feature encrypted, changing barcodes and “tap and go” NFC technology, which prevents tickets from being screenshotted or photocopied, virtually eliminating fraud and counterfeiting.

Smart Queue™

Instead of a rush to the onsale that favors the bots, Smart Queue drops fans into a virtual queue requiring each user to sign in and provide a unique phone number for validation.

UX Insights

Click an image to learn more. Click again to go back.

Features

Smart Queues which curb bots by requiring sign-in and verification before purchase
Ticketmaster Request lets users skip queues and request tickets ahead of time
SafeTix uses "encrypted, changing barcodes" to prevent screenshotted or photocopied tickets and fight fraud
Ticket insurance with covers sale price, fees, and even other expenses like parking, up to $10,000
Paperless since 2008

Ticket request appears to have only been done for a Madonna event in 2019, with no other results coming up when the term is searched.
Users cannot directly follow an artist to stay updated on tour information
Digital tickets aren't as seamless as advertised
No confirmation that SafeTix is supported by all events, or if the user can even find out
Tickets can be transferred but included purchases cannot be
No travel accommodations if rescheduling is required.
Exorbitant fees and transparent attempts to upcharge customers
Customer support is negligent at hard to reach
Insurance process can be cumbersome and does not guarantee refunds

Accessibility

Nice big centered call to action on homepage for searching and finding tickets
Dedicated FAQ section for information on purchasing accessible seating
Navbar provides constant access to essential features
Multiple ways to reach help section

At 100% zoom must body text is pretty small
Sign-in popup on mobile continually appears despite closing
Prices not localized (USD only, or CAD for Canada)
Sitemap missing on mobile website
Back button doesn't work when on seat selection because it is opened in a new tab
Poor space distribution on mobile between venue diagram and ticket selection

User Flow

Allows sorting by price or best seating
Can filter out resale tickets
Seating chart allows zooming in per stadium section for detailed seat selection
Allows viewing prices with fees added in

Seating chart does not scale well on mobile devices
Site is laggy and slow, resulting in botched transactions for buyers AND sellers
Individual seats are small and difficult to click or select, and are not shown on mobile!
Zooming in and out of seating chart is slow, and mouse wheel is even slower
Doesn't automatically show you prices with fees included
Promises made but not kept

Navigation

Neatly sectioned entertainment categories
Good filters to make finding tickets easier
Nice clear sitemap on bottom of all pages

Fonts are all the same size and weight throughout different sections, resulting in no clear visual hierarchy
No personality to any artist pages
Scroll heavy site with no back-to-top
Big gaps on desktop site from poor responsiveness
Glitchy UI components

Analysis

What can be said about Ticketmaster that hasn't been said before? They are the antithesis of what Swift Tix is trying to be.

In addition the substandard UX detailed above, Ticketmaster is a corrupt monopoly that takes advantage of the fact that, as far as most people are concerned or aware of, they are the only option for purchasing tickets to their desired events. Yet most users, especially those on the short end of the stick, are intimately aware of their practices.

In recent years, undercover investigations have confirmed much of the public's suspicions regarding Ticketmaster. In stark contrast to when their former CEO Irving Azoff said scalping and reselling should be "illegal", they have begun to prefer these markets over the general public onsale market of everyday ticket buyers. Core features like the controversial, well known "Dynamic Platinum Tickets" take advantage of the innate volatility of general onsale allowing customers to pay completely different prices for the same seats and shows! Ticketmaster has no buyer protections- not even vetting listings or event details, and the price you see and click on isn't even guaranteed to be the final price you pay (before fees of course). This is directly from their purchase policy:

TicketMaster terms of service describing lack of price guarantee

The biggest smoking gun of all is an undercover investigation conducted by CBC, which uncovered how Ticketmaster actually forms relationships with top resellers and scalpers, turns a blind eye to their practices and numbers even if it violates the terms of service, and provides them with TradeDesk, an invite-only inventory management system that allows scalpers to buy, list, and manipulate the prices of large quantities of tickets! This site is mentioned nowhere at all on their website, even under the Reselling FAQ section, and it violates their own statement to CBC where they say, "We also do not determine when tickets are available for purchase or how they are allocated."

More interesting details have been put out in a claim filed by ticket brokerage Prestige Entertainment, who uses bots to scalp tickets but claims to have the aid of Ticketmaster. This section succinctly explains how TicketMasters abuses this conflict of interest for their own benefit:

"When TM sells a ticket to a reseller, it not only collects the full commission from that primary sale, but it has a significantly higher chance of that ticket being placed on one of its secondary ticket exchanges — after all, resale is what resellers do. TM then receives a second, ‘double-dip’ commission on the resale of that ticket. TM’s ticket listings for popular shows are often dominated by tickets on its resale exchange — tickets which originally came from its primary exchange and thus for which it is getting double-dip commissions."

They maintain a monopoly, take advantage of consumer trust, and are the chief reason why so many genuinely passionate and excited music fans can't go to their desired shows. There is a lot to learn from here that Swift Tix aims to get right - the UX side of it is just the tip of the iceberg, because at the end of the day, the user experience of a ticket sales website doesn't end until you walk through the doors of the venue.

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INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE

The key foundation for Swift Tix to be successful was determined to be a mix of these three qualities: immersive, secure, and smooth. These were the three criteria that all design decisions had to meet.
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Note: Accessibility is a requirement for all 21st century design projects. That is - it's an implicit guide that must be satisfied in each step of the process.

Feel free to click any of the images below to view at full size.

Site Map

ORANGE indicates a link to a new page. PURPLE indicates a link to a new page that is also the child of another page.

Buyer Flow

Simplification and streamlining of the checkout process was a primary objective, followed by interconnectivity between the various modes of event discovery.

Seller Flow

Yup, this isn't an exaggeration or anything, selling is this simple on Swift Tix. Mainly because you can only sell tickets you've bought on the site, which adds an innate layer of security and confidence to all transactions since the primary market is always thoroughly vetted and legitimate!

It also saves you time with listing details - just enter the price you want to sell at and you're good to go!

Low Fidelity Wireframes

If you’ve used one of the prototypes or skipped down to the final mockups, you might be scratching your head at how different these look. Truth be told, my first design ideas were pretty barebones and didn’t become more creative until I picked apart the websites of my competitors.

HOME PAGE

My initial design included a static navigation bar and was more influenced by shopping sites like Grailed rather than Live Nation. Compact squares that showed the location, artist image, artist name, and price range of available tickets seemed like a quick, efficient way for the user to get a good summary of relevant information.

PRE-SALE

One of the items on the navigation bar was a COMING UP section that made browsing & joining upcoming ticket pre-sales a simple one click process. I organized under one tab and provided each with a PRE-SAVE button. I realized a showy design could only work by minimizing the actions to get from A to B.

This is the original concept for browsing listings on mobile. Similar to the above, very bare bones and ultimately felt too much like a mundane reconstruction of the designs of my competitors. This concept felt forced - it wasn't friendly and crammed the screen.

Stubs was the part of the user's account that held purchased tickets. It seemed obvious on mobile devices to make the ticket take up the length of the screen. Playing with size this way was one good step in the right direction that helped me later on.

High Fidelity Wireframes

My dissatisfaction with the low fidelity wireframes made me go back to the drawing board completely. I thought about the audience described in the user persona - this was a site for music lovers. And being a music lover myself, I started to think about how the information architecture could speak to fans the same way good music does.

I began by retooling the home page with useful, focused sections that were expanded to full pages if necessary. This helped me form a much more practical site map than I had originally designed, while still allowing me to be creative. Click to enlarge the images.

The RECOMMENDED FOR YOU section shows musicians you might like based on your concert history in a playful bubble layout, with additional details available upon hover like rating, genre, number of shows & tickets, and even a blurb for some of the bigger artists.
The ALL GENRES section shows artists performing near you based on the genre icon that you click. You can then directly go to any of the artist’s landing pages via clicking on them.
The PRE-SALE section is a preview of the PRE-SALE page. It’s a slideshow that shows some of the popular pre-sale events available for signup. Clicking the “Sign Up” button (not functional in this prototype) would let you begin the sign up user flow on the spot, or you can click the image itself to visit that event’s section on the PRE-SALE page.
The FESTIVALS section is a preview of the FESTIVALS page. It shows the 4 biggest festivals happening near you, and hovering over one of the panels reveals some standouts among the setlist to pique your interest.

The original “home” page was refactored into an appropriate SEARCH page because I decided that each artist should have their own personally designed landing page. This ARTIST page provides all the musician related information and actions a user would need in a sleek, accessible fashion:

the artist’s bio summary
immediate access to the show in your city or the next 2 closest ones
reviews
highlight videos
similar artists you might like
options to turn on ticket notifications, join their email list, or hide the artist site wide.

This section near the top is what I like to call the MARQUEE SECTION. It’s another slideshow type component but it’s reserved for artists that partner and promote directly through the site. In addition to being the first thing visitors see, they get a blurb summarizing their event along with a button that users can click to browse tickets for that event. Also, either in place of or addition to their usual landing page, they get a custom designed spread as seen in this example here with Jorja Smith.

Similarly, Swift Tix would ideally partner with players in the festival circuit as well. Most of these festivals don’t have much of a say in how their tickets are sold on third party vendors, so working with them directly to create custom landing pages that reflect their brand would help them cater more to their demographics. The top half will always be a information section that doesn’t really vary much, so the bottom half is where the collaboration really begins.

I wanted to showcase how the look, concept, and involvement might vary from event to event. For example, Rolling Loud features more color & interactivity with those clickable blocks than Made in America, who opted for something more slick and simple. You can visit these landing pages along with a few others from the FESTIVALS page. Functionally, they share design language that reminds the user they are browsing Swift Tix, but the rest of each page's aesthetic is indelibly tied to that event's brand.

If this site became a reality, there will need to be a core part of the team that focuses solely on the aesthetics. Other ticket sales websites are unabashedly ecommerce apparatuses, but Swift Tix was created with the understanding that music fans are already looking to make a purchase, so if you focus more on the environment you provide them rather than their pockets, they’ll be more eager to provide you with business again and again.

User Interface

The first guiding principle mentioned above was immersion because the platforms of Swift Tix's competitors echoed none of the passion or excitement that is associated with live events, especially concerts. To stand out among the crowd of ticket sales platforms, the user interface was designed to feel warmer, friendlier, and more reflective of its overall purpose: to help the user form another amazing memory from attending a music event they find on the site.

Shapes and Icons: Soft shapes like circles and rounded rectangles were used for buttons, image borders, controls, and interactive components. Quickly identifiable and rounded icons were preferred for the menus, genres, and recurring elements like reviews and artist page controls.

Note that these icons aren't all of the same set or style - from an initial glance, they seem vastly different but through careful distribution they all succeed in establishing the tone of their associated website area:

GENRE
Playful and colorful

MENU
Flat and straight edge, direct

SITE POLICIES
Scratchy & evocative

REVIEWS
Simple, denotes certain action

Fonts: Multiple fonts of various styles - fun, sans serif, monospaced, etc. - signal different categories of information and calls to action. For example, "Titan One" is only used on buttons, while "Vast Shadow" is used to emphasize important contextual information and switches within a page or overlay. These are all the fonts used along with their semantic meanings:

‍Colors: In general different shades of French Vanilla, gold, and brown were used to create comfort, be easy on the eyes, and disappear when serving as the backdrop to more vibrant colorful elements, images, or controls. Conversely to achieve this end, harsh colors like black and white, along with typical marketplace colors like green and blue were avoided. Black is only used to denote that the user has "stepped out" of the main site, like with overlays as well as all account related settings and information.
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All ARTIST pages are given a distinct light background color to symbolize how each artist is unique - their artist images are chosen to carefully complement these colors as well. The following colors were chosen for the 12 available sample artist pages:

RED - Kanye West (power, bold, daring, Akira)
BLUE - The Weeknd (longing, melancholy, moody, atmosphere)
YELLOW - SZA (exciting, artistic spark, live sensation, electric vocals)
PURPLE - Beyoncé (royal, queen, powerhouse, dazzling)
ORANGE - Rex Orange County (summer, indie, his name, warmth)
SEAFOAM - Lil Uzi Vert (alien, not of this earth, extraterrestrial)
PINK - SoFaygo (his brand colors, his hair, glitzy music, bubblegum)
BLOOD ORANGE - Ed Sheeran (his hair, acoustic, fall, vocal ballads)
MINT - Jesse McCartney (energetic, young, poppy rock, boy band)
INDIGO - Elton John (savant, artsy, icon, heavyweight)
TURQUOISE - Freddie Gibbs (introspective, smooth, soulful, lyrical)
LIME - Tyler, the Creator (eccentric, artsy, stand out, wild)

The 4 ticket types all have different colors as well:

STANDARD - regular tickets part of general public onsale
RESALE - tickets available on the secondary market sold by other fans
PLATINUM - standard or resale tickets that include other benefits like parking passes, early entry, special merch or discounts, etc. (NOT RELATED TO TICKETMASTER PLATINUM TICKETS)
VIP - tickets that come with VIP event benefits and packages

And finally, the last major use of color was for the ratings that accompany every ticket:

PRICEY - you can probably find a better deal. Avoid this.
OKAY - not the best or the worst, pretty mediocre deal. Keep looking.
GOOD - nice and fair, should fit your bare minimum expectations.
GREAT - a stand out deal. Great bang for your buck, might be the one.
STEAL - among the best deals for this event. You should buy this now.

Interactivity: The various components throughout the site are what give it life and make it feel alive. To appeal to the sentiments of music fans, a design team would create different themes and types of stylized interactive controls that are capable and unobtrusive. This doesn't mean they need to be subtle, only that they fit within the design language, do not distract the user, and do not impede their core function.

Here are a few cool examples:

MARQUEE component - highlights different artists with a brand image, blurb, and button to their special artist page
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ALL GENRES component - uses bubbly icons for each genre that refresh the section below with available artists near the user, if there are any
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FESTIVALS component - jumbotron that highlights the biggest festival partners with explorative previews of performing artists
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ABOUT US page - really play up the musical inspiration and use nice, vivid instrument art for user to discover the points of difference for the platform
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Mobile Design: The mobile interface was designed to make the most of the limited screen size of a mobile device. The main approach here was trying to logically condense as much core information for each part of the website as possible into a single screen, allowing the user to easily traverse from one area of the site to another by simply swiping around.

Additionally, the creative spark was carried through as faithfully as possible. Smooth, bouncy animations clearly indicate the contextual shift per swipe, and content has been rearranged and resized to responsively adapt to the proportions of a mobile screen. However, this doesn't mean all components look and behave as shown above - especially because the mobile prototype created only has enough functionality to complete the buyer flow.

The framerate is a little wonky because these are GIFs but you should get the basic idea. Feel free to play around with the actual prototype to see for yourself.

General Navigation (Mobile)
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Buyer Flow (Mobile)
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A11y Considerations

on all pages. 1 always takes you to the top, 0 always takes you to the bottom, and any page sections in between are distributed as needed from 2-9.

on all pages except the home page so users can always retrace their steps no sweat.

is available on all pages so that if a user moves their cursor or finger and holds it near the very top of their device’s screen, they will be smoothly taken back to the start of the page.

means regardless of the device users browse on, Swift Tix has been designed so that fonts, images, seating charts, buttons, and other controls all scale properly to the available device dimensions so that everything stays easy to read and discern and the immersive environment never falters.

to limit scrolling and clearly signify the semantic weight and meaning per screen. The mobile websites of Ticketmaster and Stubhub suffered from trying to downscale and cram their desktop design into a tiny cellphone, especially with the seat selection screen. Here pages have been resized accordingly, pop-ups have been strictly avoided, and the need to zoom has been minimized.

Sticker Sheet

You can see all the assets and controls I used to create this mockup below. All venue schematics, artist images, and festival/tour brand images were pulled from Google:

OVERVIEW

THE PROBLEM

THE GOAL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE PROBLEM

THE GOAL

This allowed me to pinpoint 3 pain points.

From the interviews and pain points, I was able to paint a clearer picture of my audience through this persona.

ASPIRATIONS

FRUSTRATIONS

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Statistics

Points of Interest

UX Insights

Features

Accessibility

User Flow

Navigation

Analysis

Statistics

Points of Interest

UX Insights

Features

Accessibility

User Flow

Navigation

Analysis

Site Map

Buyer Flow

Seller Flow

Low Fidelity Wireframes

HOME PAGE

PRE-SALE

High Fidelity Wireframes

User Interface

A11y Considerations

Sticker Sheet

STUDY DETAILS

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

HOME PAGE

MARQUEE

SEARCH & ABOUT US PAGE LINKS

RECOMMENDED

PARTNERED FESTIVALS JUMBOTRON

PRE-SALE SECTION

BROWSE BY GENRE SECTION

SETTINGS DROP DOWN MENU

ABOUT US - WHY WE STAND OUT

ABOUT US - BUYING AND SELLING

ABOUT US - FAQ

SEARCH - HOTTEST ARTISTS

SEARCH - RESULT FOR USER SEARCH

FESTIVALS

FESTIVALS (CONTINUED)

FESTIVALS - POPULAR

FESTIVALS - ALL OTHER FESTIVALS

COACHELLA LANDING PAGE

COACHELLA PASSES SECTION

PRE-SALE

MARQUEE ARTIST SPREAD - TOP

MARQUEE ARTIST - VENUE

MARQUEE ARTIST - TICKETS

MARQUEE ARTIST - TOUR INFO

ARTIST PAGE - THE WEEKND

ARTIST PAGE - NEARBY SHOWS

ARTIST PAGE - REVIEWS & HIGHLIGHTS

ARTIST PAGE - ARTIST TOOLS

ARTIST PAGE - REVIEWS DIALOG

ARTIST PAGE - TICKET SELECTION

ARTIST PAGE - SEAT SELECTION

ARTIST PAGE - CHECKOUT

ARTIST PAGE - ORDER CONFIRMATION!

MY TIX - POST PURCHASE

NEXT STEPS

COMPETITIVE POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

WHAT I LEARNED

ALL DOWNLOADS

THE END