We built Greenbelt Festivals Ticketing Systems
Working directly with Greenbelt Festivals, we have developed the online systems through which they sell festival tickets, manage their entire customer database and co-ordinate teams that make an annual 20,000 person arts festival a reality.
edgeofmyseat.com were initially approached by Greenbelt to take over the maintenance of their online store; a Java-based application that managed the sales of tickets, accommodation and MP3s throughout the year. After performing that role for a year, it was apparent that the festival's needs had moved beyond the requirements the existing systems had been developed to fulfil, and we were commissioned to start from scratch in developing a more scaleable, robust and flexible system to take the festival forward.
The Requirements
The festival's tickets are sold in price bands throughout the year, with the best discounts to be had by those who book early. With each ticket deadline day comes an influx of sales that the existing system was not able to cope with. During these peak periods the shop application was crashing, that in turn putting extra pressure on the staff already busy with telephone and postal sales. In addition, customers were finding the online shop difficult to use, often resulting in the need to pick up the phone and be guided through a sale. With the majority of ticket sales originating online, these problems needed fixing, and fast.
Our Solutions
"The office was actually a nice place to be yesterday without all the manic phone calls from customers who were having problems with the shop!" - Box Office Manager
We first spoke to the people who used the system every day to process ticket sales, and who were in the front line when people phoned in because they couldn't place an order. We wanted to make sure that the new application really solved problems for them, and didn't give them a whole new set of issues.
We rebuilt Greenbelt's online shop in PHP and MySQL. As Greenbelt needed to move from their existing hosting we advised on hosting for the application and the Greenbelt website and assisted in the move to the new hosting. Before launching the application we ensured that legacy user data from the old application was moved across to the new one - developing a system that would enable people to convert their old Greenbelt accounts to new ones. The new system went live in May 2007, just as ticket sales were increasing towards the busiest ticket deadline of the year on July 31st - the final deadline for a discount ticket. On August 1st we received from following email from the Greenbelt office:
"The office was actually a nice place to be yesterday without all the manic phone calls from customers who were having problems with the shop!" - Box Office Manager
Our involvement with Greenbelt didn't stop at the launch of the site and we are continuing to work with Greenbelt Festivals to develop further online systems that will enable them to more easily manage the many volunteers that enable the festival to run each year. While the festival has a permanent office in London for two weeks prior to the festival the office relocates to Cheltenham in preparation for the weekend so online systems make that transition far easier as the information is available wherever Greenbelt happens to be. With many people involved being spread all over the country, anyone who needs to can log into the system to do what they need to.
Some of our ongoing work with Greenbelt includes:
- Development of a central single sign-on user account login system.
- Online ordering and donation systems.
- Full customer database management.
- Mailing preference and list management systems.
- Online fulfilment of MP3 orders.
- Volunteer teams management systems.
- Online reporting tools.
