How we opened up new online ticket sales opportunities for our client

What was our task?

The intention to expand the business and the desire to sell tickets online. Preparation of functional and non-functional assumptions for the implementation of a new project. Building a ticket sales platform and related products for MTP, improving the quality of MTP’s cooperation with business partners, opening the possibility of creating new commercial services.

Grupa MTP is primarily an organizer of a wide range of fairs and events, but also a supplier of services related to advertising, gastronomy and catering, stand construction and space arrangement, and internet marketing. MTP’s goal was to diversify its activities by creating and providing a tool that would allow people to buy tickets first-hand in a simple, quick and safe way. That’s why we created ToBilet.pl – a modern and customer-friendly online ticket sales platform.

Initial goals

In order for customers to be able to buy tickets for various events in an unlimited way, MTP decided to expand its activities to the online zone. We were faced with the task of creating a ticket selling platform. We wanted to use the best possible engine that would make the client’s work easier.

1. The dynamics of changes in the industry opened up new opportunities for MTP – we started looking for solutions other than the existing ones to expand sales. Platforms intended for selling tickets for all events operate according to a complex, but rather repeatable structure – ticket offices bring together companies that organize various types of events and allow the final customer to buy tickets from a given platform, even for several different events.
2. Typically, however, such platforms absorb all the image benefits related to ticket sales of other companies and organic traffic from digital campaigns, and in addition, due to the forced display of foreign code rendered to the client, they can be dangerous. We wanted to change this and open up the opportunity for customers to sell online in a safe and effective way.

How did we manage to achieve this?

We supported the client by using Magento for business needs and taking into account the fact that its sales volume depends on cooperation with other business entities. We built a ticketing platform on Magento, which significantly accelerated the implementation and eliminated the need to code every elementary function from scratch, fully using the capabilities of this engine and remembering that selling tickets online required meeting specific conditions:

1. Possibility of generating a ticket image that contains the price, number and graphic code (QR code), along with basic information (e.g. name of the event, place of the event, date of the event, ticket expiry date, scope of services included in the ticket, instructions for the ticket holder , graphics/logo) as a pdf file.
2. Integration with the admission control system – the user who has purchased a ticket for a given event does not have to print it, just show the QR code on his smartphone and the gate will read it. This is a simpler, modern solution that does not require shredding paper.

Because more demanding partners selling tickets using ticketing services do not want their online sales to take place only directly through an external platform, i.e. a ticket sales partner, we have expanded ToBilet.pl, built on the basis of Magento, using the native components of this framework. Thanks to this, we have expanded the capabilities and offer of the Tobilet.pl platform to meet additional business requirements. This is a great innovation and the first such project among ticket giants in Poland.

From the very beginning, we ruled out implementing this project in the same way as MTP’s competition, i.e. by embedding iframe components into the ticket office, frames embedded in the website. Instead, we proposed a better solution, fully tailored to our client’s business needs and modern website building practices – i.e. websity.

Why? Because websites, although they are separate subpages of the ToBilet.pl platform, seem to be part of the client’s portal, which along with them gets full tracking with Google Analytics and does not lose organic traffic from its marketing campaigns. Web sites are branded in accordance with the requirements of the business partner, but they are also a form of promotion for ToBilet, and can also be a separate sales channel that can further increase the number of tickets sold – even if tickets are sold through a website built in the layout of a given event, e-mail communication with the customer takes place via the norepy@tobilet.pl mailbox, as a result of which the buyer is constantly informed that he is actually buying from a ticket office.
Additionally, we have created a separate reporting panel for MTP partners – each client, seller or cooperator, has access to data regarding their events directly from the panel, where they can also check and deselect the use of sold tickets if they do not have their own admission control system.

Development?

At Fast White Cat, we work to ensure that our Partners’ stores not only constantly improve their capabilities, but also stay ahead of the competition. Check how we will cope with your challenge!

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