Do you struggle with high ticketing page abandonment percentages? If so, you’re not alone. The average online ticket page abandonment rate sits at a whopping 69%.
As an event organizer, it’s beyond frustrating to watch this kind of revenue slip away. You might be left wondering why these potential customers left. Are they abandoning you for other, more appealing event pages?
While ticket page abandonment seems vexing, it has been studied at length.
Baymard Institute, the leading research group for e-commerce design, conducted over 110,000 hours of research on UX design and worked with more than 70% of Fortune 500 companies. Their research offers some insight into why ticket page abandonment happens.
Once you understand why shoppers abandon, you can start turning ticket page abandonment into event commitment, and, eventually, event cash!
Below are six of the most common reasons for ticket page abandonment, and what TicketSpice does to prevent it.
# 1 Extra Costs
Have you ever experienced sticker shock before? It’s the gut punch you feel when that concert ticket listed at $100, ends up burning a $160 hole in your wallet. Your customers hate that feeling just as much as you do.
According to the research, extra costs are the number one reason that online shoppers abandon.
Even eager attendees will turn around in their tracks when there’s a glaring mismatch between the ticket price and the checkout price. It’s important to note that high price isn’t the only barrier, 16% of shoppers will also abandon because of an unclear price—i.e., the kind of price tag they can’t see or calculate upfront.
So whether it’s an astronomical venue fee or a vague pricing model, extra costs and hidden costs can hurt sales more than you think.
The TicketSpice Solution
At TicketSpice, we keep our fees fair and simple: 99¢ per ticket + 2.9% for card processing. We also have a dynamic calculator that gives you the ability to itemize fees, separate out sales tax and keep the experience feeling clear and honest for the customer. You can choose to pass on fees to your customers, or not charge a fee at all.
As our competitors continue to squeeze their customers by steadily hiking their rates, we’ve kept the same price for over a decade.
# 2 Being Forced to Create an Account
Your attendees, like all people, have limited bandwidth and attention. If they’re forced to fill out a form and create an account, there’s a good chance they’ll think, ‘Forget it. I’ll do this later.’
Forced account creation is an antiquated approach to accessing customer data and offering buyers the ability to edit their tickets. If you’re still using this approach, your ticket sales are definitely taking a hit. Being forced to create an account is the second most common reason shoppers abandon their order.
Purchasing tickets should require a couple of clicks—not a super-strength password with 8 different characters. When your customers are ready to give you their money, don't stop them!
The TicketSpice Solution
We make it easy on your customers. They’ll have the option to claim an account and edit their tickets later, but account creation will never stand in the way between them and the checkout.
# 3 The Load Time is Too Long
When it comes to loading time, every second matters—literally. According to the research, more than half of buyers will leave the page after a mere 3-second wait.
If you want your customers to hold onto their orders, your pages need to load quickly and have the capacity for a high volume of buyers. That might sound simple, but not all AI can do that.
The TicketSpice Solution
Being a small and agile team allows us to constantly develop game-changing technology and adjust to the needs of our customers. We recently helped launch the sales for a large, globally recognized festival earlier this year, and within the first minute of being on sale, our software supported over 30,000 buyers!
Additionally, we managed the attendee support for this event and we can tell you, first hand each guest had an excellent experience, with little to no assistance needed.
#4 Too Many Form Fields
As we mentioned earlier, your customers have limited time and attention. If your checkout page resembles a comprehensive health intake form, they’re much less likely to stick around.
According to the former head of ticketing at Universal, 22% of people exit the buying process for each additional page.
Considering that the average checkout flow has 23 form elements and 14.8 form fields, this costly mistake is far too common.
The TicketSpice Solution
At TicketSpice, we keep checkout to the necessary information with a single branded page. With our conditional logic, you can change the buying experience and keep your audience engaged by customizing it for them.
# 5 Poor Website Design
Research from Stanford University tells us that 46% of people judge your credibility based on your website. In a separate Baymard study, 17% of people said they have abandoned checkout because they didn’t trust the site.
As an event organizer, this means your website design matters and a webpage that represents your brand (which customers already trust) will lead to higher conversions.
The TicketSpice Solution
At TicketSpice, we believe there should be a consistent experience across the ticketing page and your website. By pointing people directly to the purchase page, there’s one less point of friction and one less reason for them to abandon their order. With TicketSpice, you don’t need to worry about regaining branding; the focus—as it should be—is on your brand.
# 6 - Invalid Discount Code
While every online shopper loves a discount code, few are willing to persist through the inconvenience of an invalid code. These codes often end up doing more harm than good. The stats tell us that almost half (46%) of shoppers have abandoned their order because of an invalid code. This begs the question, are discount codes even necessary?
The TicketSpice Solution
It turns out, you don’t always need traditional discount codes to boost your sales. Of our customers processing over $1 million a year, none of them use discount codes. When we take all of our top farms into consideration, that number only climbs to 1%.
TicketSpice uses conditional logic for demand pricing and discounts. This robust if-then technology is game-changing for buyer experience and alleviates the frustration of having to track down a coupon code additional field to be filled.
Conclusion
Still, questioning whether TicketSpice is right for you? Whether you will benefit from our single-page checkout, our quick loading time, our robust conditional logic, or all of the above, you can expect an increase in conversion—of more than 35%!
Click here to speak with one of our customer success managers and learn more.
— The TicketSpice Team
