This article serves as a simple and concise guide on how to transition from the idea of selling tickets to having a website where they are sold briskly. This guide will help you assemble your solution and organize ticket sales optimally, without unnecessary time and money expenditures. It is tailored for those who have nothing yet for ticket sales and those who have already taken steps in this direction or are actively selling but seeking a reliable backend for creating their ticketing system.
There are many ticket-selling websites, the best of which allow users to quickly select events and seats and easily purchase tickets for them. Despite the apparent simplicity of these sites, they are backed by complex interconnected systems: ticket processing, API gateways, online acquiring, reporting systems, online cash registers, and a multitude of other necessary functions. This “backend” is not visible to ticket buyers, and the apparent simplicity of existing sites often misleads both clients and developers of new solutions.
This guide can be used to organize ticket sales for concerts, shows, sports events, festivals, tours, as well as for selling merchandise, related goods, and services.
A couple of important notes:
1. About the Place of DESIGN on the Road to Sales: We often meet projects where everything started and ended with the discussion and creation of website design. This process often stretched out for months. As a result, there was neither time nor desire to move forward. “Getting creative” with a designer is enjoyable, but it’s better to first go through the “mandatory program” and start selling tickets, and then proceed to design the “best website in the world.”
2. Another Feature of this Guide: It does not provide arguments for why I recommend certain systems (hosting, banks, platforms), as it would significantly increase the size of the article, which is not desirable. Consider the choice of systems as a result of my experience using or creating them (ArenaSoldOut.com and TixGear).
ArenaSoldOut.com – Worldwide representative of TixGear
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Ticket Selling Website:
1. Domain Name for the Website: You may already have a website and its domain name, or you can purchase one from one of the many domain name registration services. When buying a domain, it’s advisable to choose a short, memorable name that reflects your activities. Also, aim for a .com domain as it tends to index better on Google. Avoid free domain offers like .online that might come with unexpected costs after the initial free period.
2. Hosting: Hosting provides resources for hosting your website on a server that has constant access to the internet. It’s where your website resides. How to choose from the multitude of hosting providers? We recommend selecting a hosting service with positive reviews, reliability, and power to ensure your website’s availability in all regions of your operations. Good customer support is also crucial because internet downtime can happen, and responsive support is invaluable during such instances.
3. Payment Processing (Equiring): It’s important to note that having your own equiring allows you to receive money from each ticket sale directly into your account (Equiring) instead of waiting for a ticketing system or platform to transfer the funds to you.
Today, ArenaSoldOut.com is integrated with STRIPE, as well as with banking equirings in Armenia and Uzbekistan. Specific information about the banks with which equirings are implemented in Armenia and Uzbekistan can be obtained upon request.
Stripe is a versatile international payment platform, one of the largest in the world, specializing in payment processing for e-commerce and sales. It works with almost all currencies and companies from over 40 countries. You can quickly open a Stripe account and link it to your sales.
By following these steps, you can lay a strong foundation for your ticket selling website, ensuring smooth transactions and reliable performance.
4. Connect to ArenaSoldOut.com Platform: This platform permits the use of your own payment processing and offers a wide array of tools for organizing sales. Connect your payment processing to your directory on the ArenaSoldOut.com platform. The technical support team at ArenaSoldOut.com can assist you with this process.
5. Generate a free Sold-Out Project Website: All necessary data for the Sold-Out project website is provided upon registration with the ArenaSoldOut.com platform. Download the archive with the Sold-Out website, upload it to the root directory of your hosting website, and deploy it there.
6. Create Necessary Permanent Pages for the Website: These pages include the User Agreement, Personal Data Protection, and a Successful Purchase page. Typically, their examples and texts can be found online and adapted to your needs. If you want them to be as reliable as possible, it’s advisable to consult with a lawyer.
7. Create Events and Sessions for Ticket Sales: Events are created and configured in the Editor application of the ArenaSoldOut.com platform. If venue layouts are not available on the platform, you can create it yourself (with a tutorial) or request layout creation through ArenaSoldOut.com support. Layouts are created free of charge on a first-come, first-served basis.
8. Create Your Own Ticket Template: All tickets sold by you will be created based on this template in PDF format and sent to buyers’ email addresses. The template can include images, texts, schemes, and links. Tickets can be multilingual and of different sizes for each of your events.
9. Set Prices and Open Ticket Sales for Your Created Events: Determine the prices and open ticket sales for the events you have created.
Once you’ve established and configured the entire infrastructure and sales are underway, we recommend considering the DESIGN of your own website. Hiring a designer and initiating discussions with them about the appearance of the new site, which will eventually be created and placed instead of or alongside the Sold-out website, is crucial at this stage.
P.S. The ticketing platform ArenaSoldOut.com operates on a White Label basis. All sales occur on the organizers’ or agents’ websites under their own brands.
P.P.S. ArenaSoldOut.com is a professional ticketing platform designed for various categories of participants in the ticketing market (Organizers, Ticket Systems, Event Listings, Agents, Developers). Therefore, it features a fully functional test zone with open access that you can use to test the content, systems, websites, etc. This speeds up and simplifies the creation of solutions for ticket, product, and service sales.
Alexander Orlov, Software architect and team lead at TixGear — ArenaSoldOut.com
and
Marina Bakanova, Co-founder of ArenaSoldOut.com ticketing platform for event organizers
For more insights into how ticket sales websites are structured, read the following articles:
– “Into the Future: tour sales automation – exploring new frontiers in the travel industry'”
– “Make own ticketing platform for 1000 USD. Myth or reality?”
– “I Want My Own Website for Ticket Sales”
These articles delve deeper into the intricacies of setting up websites for ticket sales and provide valuable insights into the process.
