*the digital strategist, not the hockey player
After nearly twenty years working in the arts, I have a lot of opinions about how the arts should work — particularly when it comes to ticketing and websites.
Sometimes I write about those opinions, sometimes I present them at industry conferences. Here's a selection.
April 28, 2024
Every year, The Stage newspaper puts together their Future of Theatre conference, where they invite industry and political luminaries to…
Read Me and my big ideas: why the theatre industry should publish its sales figuresMarch 19, 2024
Hello! Nice to see you! Thanks for being curious enough to continue down the search results past my LinkedIn profile. Now you can enjoy some…
Read Psst, you! The one Googling me at Ticketing Professionals!At the Ticketing Professionals Conference 2024, I put together a panel discussion about what a ticketing system is and what it should do for your organisation. there are a few things everyone agreed were critical. So if you have a ticketing system at your organisation, here are a few questions you should definitely be asking yourself about how well it's working for you.
Read Four essential questions to ask about your ticketing system (External Link)In 2022, Durham Cathedral launched a brand new website. In 2024, they now have a brand new interactive, self-guided tour, too - thanks to a bit of clever content strategy and just two weeks of extra development.
Read How product thinking helped us build an interactive, self-guided tour for a cathedral, in less than two weeks (External Link)Fancy packaging design comes at a significant cost to the user experience of your pasta box. And if prioritising visual design over UX design can so brutally mess up the relatively simple user journey of pasta, you'd better believe it can do even more damage to the UX of your complicated website.
Read What pasta packaging can teach you about user experience design (External Link)The more advanced our computers get, the more tempting it is to streamline things that maybe shouldn't be streamlined to begin with. Here are five questions to help you decide whether your automation project is actually a good idea, or whether it's going to do more harm than good.
Read Five questions to ask before you automate something on your website (External Link)Cathedral websites, it turns out, face a lot of the same challenges as theatre and other venue websites. But cathedrals have addressed those challenges in some original and often really innovative ways that you almost never see in the arts. So what can cathedrals teach you about your own arts website?
Read What cathedrals can teach you about your venue's ticketing website (External Link)Almost every (British) venue website you look at has a "What's On" page listed prominently in the site navigation. Here's why that might not be the best idea.
Read Why you should get rid of your What's On page (External Link)The Stage
Audience surveys by Indigo, SOLT and YouGov couldn't be clearer - if theatres want audiences to return, they will need social distancing in place.
Read Theatres must get used to social distancing - it's what audiences want (External Link)The Stage
Now that you can buy anything online with just a few clicks, why is booking tickets still so difficult?
Read Theatre's attempts at online ticketing are Kafkaesque - it's time for smarter systems (External Link)Future of Theatre 2024
Why the theatre industry should build a shared, totally transparent repository of granular, week-by-week, up-to-date sales figures for every show and venue, that anyone can access.
Read the article that accompanies "Big ideas: why theatres should publish their sales figures"Ticketing Professionals Conference 2024
You probably use a ticketing system every day, but if your life depended on it could you describe what a ticketing system actually is? "Something that sells tickets" covers everything from Taylor Swift selling her arena tour to the person running the raffle at the village fete, and omits features most modern ticketing systems boast as standard. Yet making the description more complicated raises more questions than it answers. Does a museum need to offer reserved seating? Does an arena need to offer timed entry slots? Does the village raffle need CRM? Does a ticketing system need to do any of this? More importantly, how are we supposed to build better ticketing systems if we can't even agree what a ticketing system is to begin with?
Read the article that accompanies "What is a ticketing system?"Arts Marketing Association Digital Marketing Day 2023
The more advanced our computers get, the more tempting it is to streamline things that maybe shouldn't be streamlined to begin with. Here are five questions to help you decide whether your automation project is actually a good idea, or whether it's going to do more harm than good.
Read the article that accompanies "Why are you automating that?"Ticketing Professionals Conference 2023
Ronnie Scott's, the iconic London jazz club, doesn't have a ticketing system. Yet they still manage to sell out almost every show, every night of the week. In this case study, you'll find out why a well-established venue would choose to work without a ticketing system - and what you can learn from their unusual approach.
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Arts Marketing Association Conference 2022
Almost every (British) venue website you look at has a "What's On" page listed prominently in the site navigation. Here's why that might not be the best idea.
Read the article that accompanies "Why you should get rid of your What's On page"Ticketing Professionals Conference 2022
Like any venue, cathedrals regularly sell admission tickets and host ticketed performances - and the pandemic forced them to find new, digital solutions for doing so. As a result, in the past two years several cathedrals launched new websites that creatively tackle a number of common ticketing problems. This session will look at some of the best examples to draw valuable learnings that any venue or visitor attraction can apply to their own digital operations.
Read the article that accompanies "What cathedrals can teach you about your ticketing system"