Performance capacity display examples?

Hi Patrick

At the National Theatre in London we have added  couple of features to help customers identify performances that they might want to look at, or avoid.

If you go to https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on and do a what and when selection, you see a list of results and in the right-hand column will be 'Book now buttons' with the price range of tickets available and a 'Limited availability' message when there are fewer than 10% of tickets remaining.

If you then select a date; eg, https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/tickets/5982 (NB. this link will not work after 31 August) you will see a performance overview page with the available prices and the seats at each price, plus a recent snapshot of the seating plan. This was generated when the SYOS plan was last visited, which could be a few seconds earlier, or much longer, depending on the popularity of the performance.

So if you are not picky about where you sit and just want a certain price, you can use the key to decide whether to buy tickets for this performance and choose Select your own, or Let us choose (Best Available).

Or if you do have a specific preference for certain seats, you can look at the seating plan image and check whether there was recent availability for them.

If you decide this performance doesn't have the right seats for you, you can click on the Change date link and switch to another performance of the same show relatively easily.

Customer feedback has been universally good, except for the seating plan snapshot, with a sizeable minority complaining about why they can't pick seats off that first 'plan'.

I'll happily answer any other questions, but if you want to know the technical approach to achieving this, then track down Mark Ridley at the Conference.

Thanks, Christopher

Hi Patrick

At the National Theatre in London we have added  couple of features to help customers identify performances that they might want to look at, or avoid.

If you go to https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on and do a what and when selection, you see a list of results and in the right-hand column will be 'Book now buttons' with the price range of tickets available and a 'Limited availability' message when there are fewer than 10% of tickets remaining.

If you then select a date; eg, https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/tickets/5982 (NB. this link will not work after 31 August) you will see a performance overview page with the available prices and the seats at each price, plus a recent snapshot of the seating plan. This was generated when the SYOS plan was last visited, which could be a few seconds earlier, or much longer, depending on the popularity of the performance.

So if you are not picky about where you sit and just want a certain price, you can use the key to decide whether to buy tickets for this performance and choose Select your own, or Let us choose (Best Available).

Or if you do have a specific preference for certain seats, you can look at the seating plan image and check whether there was recent availability for them.

If you decide this performance doesn't have the right seats for you, you can click on the Change date link and switch to another performance of the same show relatively easily.

Customer feedback has been universally good, except for the seating plan snapshot, with a sizeable minority complaining about why they can't pick seats off that first 'plan'.

I'll happily answer any other questions, but if you want to know the technical approach to achieving this, then track down Mark Ridley at the Conference.

Thanks, Christopher

Hi Christopher---

Thanks for sending all the details.  This is extremely helpful. The cached SYOS snapshot is also very interesting. 

I'll track down Mark at the Conference next week with a few questions on this.

Best,

Patrick