5 Features in Your Event Booking System That Could Skyrocket Your Event Sales

Research suggests that for 48% of events, ticket sales compose 60 to 100% of the revenue!

Therefore, the importance of providing a hassle-free and seamless ticket booking experience cannot be reinforced enough.

Ticket windows for booking events are passé. Nowadays, people are logging online and carrying out a booking for various events – be it a professional conference or a music concert, online is the way to go for them.

For event organizers, it is important to ensure that the online booking system is convenient, provides all the event and venue details with pictures and videos, and offers the best user experience. Today, while event organizers put in a lot of effort and energy in creating a seamless online booking experience, not all the booking systems do the trick. Not if they do not have the required features that make the eventgoers make a beeline for booking.

Here are some of the top five features for event booking systems that have the potential to skyrocket your event sales.

Different Reservation Options  

Reservation options are applicable to a lot of the events, which have seats. The attendees would like to see what the available choices in the venue are and select specific ones before booking. For this purpose, your system needs to offer a visual representation of the seats available along with the seats that have already been reserved. This will help them claim the seats that they want to go with for the event.  For instance, you can color code the VVIP and VIP seats along with their location at the venue. This will give them a clear picture of what they are paying for. Additionally, they will be encouraged to make bookings in advance and grab the best seats.

Flexible Pricing Options

The visitors on your event booking system will be from all walks of life. Depending on the category,  the pricing of the tickets may need to vary (for example, there may be a special student discount). You also need to make it a point to create different ticket profiles on the booking software based on the seating arrangements, early bird discounts, age of the attendants, packages, discount codes, and so on. At the same time, don’t forget to mention what are the inclusions in the ticket. For such inclusions, some times, you may have to ask for specific additional information from the attendees (for example, their meal preferences or t-shirt size). Your ticket booking system should allow you to gather such information. All of this will encourage the attendees to book at the earliest so that they don’t miss out on grabbing the best deal.

That apart, the system should provide the flexibility to change the pricing of the tickets easily as and when needed.

Works on all devices, Responsive and User-Friendly

A mobile-friendly site is the need of the hour. Be it booking tickets through social media or planning the event together – today’s digital consumers are increasingly relying on their smartphones. The event booking site, therefore, needs to be device-agnostic and cross-browser compatible. What we mean by this is that the attendees could be using a laptop, desktop or a handheld device to book the tickets. There is no way to ascertain this. Which is the reason why you need to be prepared with a responsive, user-friendly website that gives them the best experience from the beginning until checkout – from anywhere, anytime, and through any device.

Easy and Secure Payment Gateway

The thumb rule of online payment on any web application is an impeccably secure payment gateway. At the same time, it should also be convenient and involve as few steps as possible.

To achieve this, make it a point to include several payment options for the attendees. For instance, you can include VISA, Amex, Bank Transfer, PayPal, etc., so that the buyers can take their pick. This can help you enhance conversion rates and bring you benefits like reduced abandonment during the checkout/making the payment.

Here are some more things you can do to reduce cart abandonment and increase checkouts:

• Prompt them to use the coupon codes/early bird discounts
• Use big CTA buttons and easy to fill fields
• Use SSL certification to assure safety while using the payment gateway

Sharing and Check-in Options

Let’s face it. People do like to brag about that big concert they are going to be a part of! So, why not make it easier for them to shout it from the rooftops? In other words, including sharing and check-in features on your platform. This will allow the eventgoers to share the details of the event with their friends, family, and acquaintances on various social media platform or via email along with the ticket booking link.

Nevertheless, the sharing option will also help spread the word about the event, without spending a considerable amount of marketing money. Free publicity anyone?

There can also be an option for sending the tickets to all those whose information is provided as a part of a group ticket purchase. This will provide the buyers with a hassle-free experience as they will not be required to send the tickets to everyone.

For check-ins, you can come up with an app that can be downloaded and help scan the ticket QR codes during the entry. This also doubles up as a way to analyze the success of the event, since the attendees will be using their mobile phones as a tool.

These are some of the key features that your event booking site should include to ensure that every event is a sold out one!

Apart from all such cool features, one of the key features that any event booking system must have is the communication feature. Every event organizer strives for attendee engagement and a sure way to achieve that is by staying in touch with the attendees and connecting with them at an emotional and cognitive level. Email reminders, push notifications, event updates through text messages are some of the easy ways to achieve this. All such things should be possible through the ticket booking system.

Have you used any other cool tactic on your event booking platform that has helped you in increasing the ticket sales? Do share in comments.