Skiddle is crediting a new web design with a focus on user experience as driving festival ticket sales and increasing overall spend.
The Lancashire-based events and ticketing platform decided to relaunch its festival section ahead of the summer, with a plan to make it the most comprehensive guide in Europe.
Terry Banks, Skiddle’s SEO Manager, explained that they made the changes through user testing and feedback and it made a massive impact on search rankings and customer spend.
“From a development perspective, we have rebuilt the festival guide from the ground up and have completely changed the design for user experience. The festival page has moved onto a modern tech stack, using NextJs, React and microservices to deliver greater performance on the page. We’ve also improved query optimisation,” he said.
“We’ve also added new features, which benefit both consumers and our promoter partners, such as an image gallery, a dedicated FAQ section, the ability to add stage splits, and promoters can now highlight headline acts which are linked through to Spotify. These additional features provide our customers with more information to encourage them to purchase from us. They also allow promoters to track how the page performs by offering real time analytics about their festivals.”
Banks added that the launch was supported by a PR outreach campaign, focused on driving awareness from trusted media outlets.
“Skiddle’s dedicated content team has been providing festival tips, recommendations and daily articles to keep customers up to date on the latest festival news,” he explained.
According to the company’s own statistics, the impact of the changes were that customers were 21% more likely to purchase a ticket than before the revamp. Those landing on the new pages are increasing dwell time by 10%.
Comparing the 4 weeks before the new festival guides went live to the 4 weeks after, there’s been a 38% increase in traffic to the festival guide pages, and a 53% increase in ticket sales.
The process, which took 5 months from wireframe and design concept through to AB split testing and the final version going live, has also had a “significant influence” on SEO rankings. Skiddle reported a 23% increase in keyword rankings in the top three positions of Google.
Skiddle now plans to implement the changes site-wide, with a focus on upgrading its event listings in the coming months.
