Developing a synchronised ticket booking flow for drive-in moviegoers
Bengie's drive-in was struggling to convert customers, who were directed to a third-party e-commerce store to book their theatre tickets. Our solution was to address the key issues on their website to ensure that the ticket purchase flow provides users with essential information so they feel secure, informed and trusting during their online ticket purchasing experience. Our solution aims to reduce the bounce rate, increase ticket sales and improve overall customer satisfaction rates.
Drive-in theatregoers need a simple way to book their movie tickets online and get the theatre information they need in a single transaction.
Due to time constraints, we prioritised the creation of a ticket purchase flow that would meet both the business needs and customer needs.
1. Top and secondary navigation optimisation to help find film showings
2. Inclusion of new features including movie trailers and car park bookings for a more interactive experience
3. Introduce responsive design for mobile optimisation
1. What are the barriers to purchasing movie tickets on the current website?
2. What is important for a great experience for a drive-in theatre webisite?
3. What are customers' met and unmet needs, both on and offline?
We took an iterative design process based on the double diamond model to ensure that design decisions were based on firm user feedback and quantitative research data.
An heuristic analysis was conducted in order to ascertain design limitations. We discovered that the homepage contains a clunky layout design paired with a garish colour palette, culminating in cognitive overload. The content was commonly superfluous, discouraging conversation.
Conducting 7 user interviews provided an alternate angle on the topic to help us better understand the problem. We wanted to know why people go to the drive-in and what keeps them coming back. It transpired that people meet a lot of needs by attending the drive-in:
“I really like [the drive-in] as a 360-degree experience: the meeting up, getting there, driving, having a chat, and the overall experience”.
However, things that could put people off are that “at drive-ins, you don’t know where you will be parked, it is first come first served” and going is “a lot more effort” than other more contemporary leisure activities.
To gain a deeper comprehension of the context, I conducted a survey of 15 individuals in order to find out what people’s drive-in behaviours are and the devices people use and discovered that 71.4% preferred to view the website using their mobile devices.
“I want my ticket purchasing to be easy and fast. If it’s not open seating, then I want selection”
Themes included:
We conducted contextual inquiries in order to see how people engaged with the site. This was to gain insights into the behaviours and feelings about the current site as well as to see if anyone ‘bounced’. The average time it took to complete the purchase path was 3.43 minutes, taking one individual 5.09 minutes. What should be a straightforward ticket purchase flow took 17.3 clicks on average. This, like our interview candidate succinctly put it, feels like altogether “too much effort” to put into your evening jovialities. Whilst this research confirmed all of our assumptions, it also drew our attention to the fact that ambiguous labelling and confusing site navigation lead many off to the incorrect area of the website.
Following our customer interviews and survey, we were able to draw out key themes from the qualitative data with an affinity mapping exercise. Then we drew from these themes to create a representative user persona.
Zach brought our target audience to life by articulating the core customer needs. If we weren’t solving their problems, we knew we were ignoring our research findings and forgetting what our main goals were. With our persona in mind, I felt equipped to enter the design studio.
As part of the re-design, our team helped to modernise the brand and improve UI components with a focus on font selections and colour palettes. Mood and style board explorations played an important role in decision-making on the direction that would be rolled out across web collateral.
This screen serves as a one-stop shop for the key preliminary information our users wanted to know about the drive-in. It allows customers to view a summary of what is on, what food and drinks are available, and how to get there, including a new google maps integration feature.
Looking at heuristics analytics and contextual inquiry findings we discovered some unpredictable behaviour patterns. With no way to read about the film, discover its rating, or view a trailer, users were bouncing off the site before completing a ticket purchase. The approach I took for the ‘Now Showing’ screen was to allow users to maintain their focus on the screenings and get the information they needed, by allowing them the functionality to browse and read more such as a film description, details of the director and actors, and embedding the official trailer from YouTube.
Book a double or triple feature film ticket, register your car and party size, select your food options and choose where you park onsite. Brought to life using clean and minimalist design in a 3 stage flow, all within the company websites so that customers do not fall off after being taken to the ticket partner site. Starting with several options, our team narrowed them down to a single low-fidelity wireflow. After we implemented our mood and style board we had a mid-fi prototype ready to test on users.
The testing highlighted a need for more information and some language tweaks, but ultimately it felt like the intentions of a moviegoer wanting to buy tickets could be met.
With a few options of where to take it, we went with the option that displayed breadcrumbs of where you are at and gave more detail on the payment pages. These assumptions would be followed up with further usability testing.
So as the credits roll, what are the most valuable takeaways that I gained from this, my first group design sprint? In the latter stages of usability testing, we ran only one of the three tasks that we started out with when exploring the original site. This lack of consistency came back to haunt us when we came to comparing the raw data. Running all three tasks each time would have made for better impact metrics - knowing that the usability of the site had improved across more areas of the site.
Asynchronous and remote working can pose a challenge, but it is very possible. With our team split across England, Mexico, and the USA we had to prioritise forward-planning, organisation, and effective communication. Thankfully we were on Slack, which made back-and-forth changes much more fluid. Through doing this, and through meeting more regularly for our stand-up meetings than you may perhaps be usually inclined to, we were able to mitigate those tricky timezone limitations.
And thirdly? I finally found out the answer to that classic joke “How long does it take three perfectionist ‘directors’ to screw in a lightbulb? Two weeks apparently. Turns out you can get the brightest ideas if you empathise, communicate and trust each other to do what we do best.
To develop the project and further reduce drop off rates I would:
To improve customer satisfaction and help Bengies stay competitive I put forward a few business recommendations:
I'd love to hear from you, whether you want to discuss an opportunity to work together, or you just fancy a chat and a brew.
Copyright © 2022 by Christie Rossiter.
