How to Sell Event Tickets Online with WordPress (and our widgets!)

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world: it's easy to use, quick to set up, and hugely customisable. It also happens to be a great way to advertise events and sell tickets online. Our philosophy at Ticket Tailor is to stand with (rather than between) you and your customers. That's why we offer an alternative to the eventbrite payment model: you can white-label our customisable ticketing service with no commitment to contracts and no commission fees.

We also offer plugins that let you sell tickets online directly from your own website. We figured it might be worth showcasing one of them here: the WordPress plugin. It supports recurring events, has calendar functionality, and takes customer payment via credit/debit card through Stripe or PayPal. How easy is it to set up? All you need to do is copy and paste, but we also have instructions on our documentation pages!

We've got a quick mock-up of basic plugin customisation and embedding in action below. In addition to the WordPress plugin, we also supply a similar widget that works on a host of other sites, including Squarespace. If you take a look further down you'll see examples of what a few of our clients have done with this widget.

[tt-event url='https://www.tickettailor.com/new-order/29329/78e8/ref/website_widget/' minimal='false' bg_fill='true' show_logo='true' ]

Design refresh for event pages and checkout flow

Your feedback helps us decide what to do next to make Ticket Tailor better. One piece of feedback we hear time and time again is that the event and checkout pages look a bit basic and dated. These pages were originally designed over 5 years ago and whilst they are practical and functional across all devices we recognised there were improvements to be made. So today we are releasing our brand new and improved checkout pages. Here’s what’s changed:

New page design

New header and footers

Instead of confining these pages to a small box like we used to, we have now spread things out to use more of the screen (no matter what device).

The header contains the event details, and optionally a header image. The header image is much bigger than on the previous design too so helping you to personalise the look and feel for your event.

The footer contains your help link as before and the “Powered by Ticket Tailor” badge. We have made this more subtle by making it semi-transparent and on certain plans, you now have the option to remove this button altogether from your box office customisation page.

Bigger text, fields and buttons

We often got requests to make the text bigger as it could sometimes be hard to read. We’ve now made the text size bigger across all the pages and it makes everything look a lot clearer and neater.

The small gray “NEXT” buttons from the previous design have now become bigger and green. This will help make it immediately clear to ticket buyers how to proceed with their order and are easier to tap on mobile devices.

Auto-hiding the fee column

As you know, we don’t charge any fees on ticket sales but we let you set your own fees on ticket sales if you want to. On the old design we had a “Fee” column on the ticket form even if you had set all fees to zero. Now, we only show the “Fee” column if you have actually set a fee on any of your tickets.

Easy customisation

You can choose the colours for your event page design and upload a header image from your control panel by clicking “Box office setup” -> “Customisation”. We’ve introduced a number of colour schemes that you can pick from, or you can choose whichever colours you like.

Date drop-downs

Some events which repeat have date selection drop-downs (if you would like this for your event, please email us: hi@tickettailor.com) and we’ve improved these by making the date selection much clearer.

How to get these new designs

These changes will impact your event pages and any widgets you have embedded in to your website. To review the design of your event pages, please login to your account and go to the customisation page by clicking “Box office setup” -> “Customisation”.

Any feedback?

Lastly, we would love to hear any feedback you have got about the new designs so please fire your comments over to hi@tickettailor.com.

How CoLab Theatre Sell Tickets Online

At Ticket Tailor, we aim to provide the best online ticketing service that we can. We want to help our clients sell tickets online and make the experience as simple, yet effective for them as possible. With great features such as MailChimp integration, auto-hiding tickets and Facebook integration, we provide an online ticketing service that works for you.

When it comes to telling you about the benefits of the services that we offer, who is better placed than our clients? Bertie Watkins of CoLab Theatre shared with us why they use TIcket Tailor to sell tickets online.

Bertie, what can we expect from a CoLab Theatre production?

"We want to create completely new, exciting and unique experiences for our audiences to live in. Using technology, our mission is to create fun and engaging experiences for absolutely everyone, utilising locations around London, we strive to bring them alive using old, new and borrowed stories.

We create experiences that people have never gone through before. We push the boundaries, not of people’s inhabitations but how far we can take them into other worlds. We create new and exciting shows with some of the countries most exciting playwrights, producers, directors and actors. Collaboration is key and we are keen to continue to grow with the country's best creative minds and companies. With a growing network of collaboration, CoLab will continue to make the best work possible.

We strive to create experiences you will never forget - this is CoLabs mission."

CoLab Theatre combines technology with theatre for an immersive experience. What was the inspiration behind that?

"It started out by wanting to make audiences into characters within the narrative we're telling them. Audiences are changing with new styles of theatre. They're investing so much more and I thought it would be fantastic to try and create a way to give them more agency within a narrative. It means they can go from being a passive audience member to becoming an active (or passive if they choose) member of the story.

Obviously it's a massive challenge, particularly as you need to have live audiences to really try new things with. Luckily it's an incredibly fun process to have and technology makes it much easier.

Mobile technology is such a fantastic, advanced tool that we are all completely competent at using. We use them every day and they are almost essential to every day life. So why should we turn them off to see a show? Why shouldn't we transform them into weapons to gain more narrative? Our ultimate aim with technology is to seamlessly integrate it into theatre so people don't even necessarily notice when they're being fed narrative live in front of them or through a screen. They should both be working in tandem to compliment each other."

What events have you got coming up?

"We have a lot going on this year.

Unfortunately we've got a lot of shows that we are cannot speak about yet as they're 'top secret' - ironically they're spy shows...

However we are allowed to talk about The Exchange - following on from the Fifth Column, the Exchange reveals to the audiences an invisible war between the ETF and Astra. It pioneers our new form of theatre - Action Theatre. Audience pit themselves against the ETF and try bring them down from within. It's going to be a massive amount of fun."

How has Ticket Tailor helped you sell tickets online?

"Ticket Tailor has been the exact ticketing website I've been looking for ever since becoming a producer. The best thing about it is the customer service. Even if there is a problem, you know it will be solved quickly. It's incredibly easy to use and the dashboard has all the information you need right in front of you. I couldn't be happier with a ticketing system.

Finally, the most important thing it is that it's fair. The pricing means that smaller companies like CoLab can create a show and not sting or be stung by ever increasing booking fees."

Find out more about CoLab Theatre and their unique productions on their website.

We pride ourselves on our customer service so it's great to hear that our clients know how hard we work for them. It's important for us to provide a fair pricing structure for events of all shapes and sizes: from small corporate events to festivals, Ticket Tailor is here for you.

Why not take our two-minute tour to find out more?

How Edinburgh Yarn Festival Sell Tickets Online

At Ticket Tailor, we aim to provide the best ticketing experience that we can. When it comes to telling you about the benefits of the service that we offer, who better to tell than our clients? The Edinburgh Yarn Festival is in its second year, this year it's being held at Edinburgh Corn Exchange on the 14th and 15th March.

Here's what Mica, co-founder of the Edinburgh Yarn Festival has to say:

Tell us about the Edinburgh Yarn Festival

"This is the second Edinburgh Yarn Festival, hosted for the first time in 2015 in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, to accommodate even more exciting exhibitors and visitors for this popular event. Whether it's knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving or felting, there will be something of interest for all yarn and textile enthusiasts.

Come and join our festival of colour and texture. Buy wonderful materials and tools for a timeless craft, learn a new skill and make new friends whilst attending Scotland's biggest urban knitting and crochet event!"

What can we expect from this year's event?

"Our vision for 2015 is to create a 'Yarn-Lovers' Dream Department Store for a Weekend.'Hand-picked exhibitors from all over the UK and beyond, are invited to show-off and sell the most luxurious and interesting products and supplies the Yarn Industry has to offer. The event will be of equal interest for the complete beginner to the internationally recognised knitwear-designer."

How has Ticket Tailor Helped Your Ticket Sales?"

"We like the fact that Ticket Tailor has a predictable pricing structure and highly configurable confirmation emails. Also, the fact that we could integrate Mailchimp and Facebook very easily was a bonus. Exporting the door-lists will make our life easy on the day. The support staff is responsive and helpful. We will certainly use Ticket Tailor again!"

The Ticket Tailor and Facebook integration is, as Mica says, a great feature and a useful marketing tool.

You can buy general admission tickets for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival, workshop tickets and also tickets for the CaBAAret!

Interested in hearing how Ticket Tailor can improve your ticketing? Why not take our two-minute tour?

How The Lisbon Beat Boat Sell Tickets Online

What can we expect from Lisbon Beat Boat?

The Lisbon Beat Boat is a series of curated boat parties, attracting a great crowd of people with renowned international DJ’s on a huge caravel in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities: Lisbon. Their team shares a burning passion for their events and pride themselves on having one goal: to give you the time of your life on their Beat Boat. Beat Boat is organized by three German guys, who claim this is the only time you will meet a group of Germans with the sole task of making you happy. See you on the boat!

How Ticket Tailor Transformed their Ticket Selling

Website Integration

Lisbon Beat Boat are an excellent example of how integrating the Ticket Tailor widget onto your website can maximise ticket sales. It is a smooth and transparent integration that allows you to keep your customers on your website, driving traffic to your pages. The whole buying process is executed in your own website design!

Multiple Ticket Types

Using different ticket types Lisbon Beat Boat are able to sell "Early Bird" tickets, "General Admission" and "Group" tickets. Ticket Tailor allows you to add multiple ticket types easily and swiftly.

Don't just listen to us...

Here’s what the guys from Lisbon Beat Boat had to say about Ticket Tailor:

“Ticket Tailor is with no doubt the best ticketing provider in the world which offers a simple monthly fee and does not try to make more money if your event goes well.”

Check out Lisbon Beat Boat's website for all up and coming events.

Interested in hearing how Ticket Tailor can improve your ticketing? Learn more about selling tickets online with Ticket Tailor.

Showcase: How Regents Park College, Oxford Sell Tickets Online

What's the event?

Regent's Park College, Oxford, plays host to the Ministerial Gaudy and the Henton Davis Memorial Lecture.

Type of Events

At the colleges and halls of the University of Oxford, a gaudy is a college feast and is often a reunion for its alumni. It's a celebratory formal dinner, generally in black tie and academic gowns and can include events such as chapel services, lectures or concerts beforehand. 

How Ticket Tailor transformed their ticket selling:

Switching From Physical to Digital Tickets

Traditionally, tickets to Regent’s Park College’s gaudies were sold physically, which can cause organisational issues - not to mention the prospect of losing paperwork.

 

By switching to selling tickets online with Ticket Tailor, Regents Park College are able to reduce administration costs and time spent managing their ticket sales. They are also still able to sell physical tickets if they wish and house all customer data in their Ticket Tailor account. Some other ticketing platforms do not allow clients to input data from alternative ticket selling routes.

What do they think of their new system?

"Before Ticket Tailor, we were selling tickets via a long and tortuous manual procedure. Since implementing their system, it’s simplified the process and made it much more professional."

Tim Pottle, Development Manager

Interested?

If you would like to find out how Ticket Tailor can improve your ticketing, please email us on hi@tickettailor.com or check out our online tour.

Meet Mr. Ticket Tailor - The Face of Ticket Tailor

No doubt you've seen our fresh faced virtual man around the web. And mum always said it’s rude not to introduce friends, so we thought we’d introduce you to the man himself. He’s a chatty little fella, so stay tuned as he’ll probably be popping up on our blog here and there.

1. Hey, what’s your name?

Mr. Ticket Tailor. Oh yes.

2. What’s your age?

A gentleman never reveals his age...

3. Where are you from?

I’m from the cobbled streets of London town.

4. What else would you be if you weren't a virtuoso?

I would be a ballet dance choreographer,  zookeeper or a suit tailor. I could never figure out which one I liked more. Don’t get me wrong though, I absolutely love being the face of Ticket Tailor.

5. What would be the first thing you would do if today was your last day?

Well as I am a virtual character, I am in fact immortal.

6. What's your vision of a perfect society?

Peace, harmony and 24 hour parties are what I would call my vision of a perfect society.

 7. What were your dreams as a child?

I was created as an adult, but I would imagine I would have dreamed of becoming the face of Ticket Tailor as a child too.

8. If you could meet anyone in the world dead or alive who would it be and what would say to them?

I’m a huge fan of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart so I would pop round to his 18^th century mansion and invite him to participate in a jam session with me on his grand piano. He would probably refuse though as nobody likes to be shown up at their own craft.

9. If you were a biscuit, which would you be?

I would be a hybrid biscuit overlord, comprised of the hobnob, jammy dodger and a chocolate bourbon.

10. What the longest you've gone without a shower?

Do virtual people need to shower?

11. If you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you take with you?

An internet connection, the ticket tailor team and a balloon. With those three, we would be back on the mainland within hours.

12. If you could export your virtual self into a human, which celebrity would you most resemble?

It would have to be Russell Brand and Prince Harry rolled into one. Tall, dashing and considerably handsome. I’m also very smooth and well dressed (not to blow my own trumpet), so perhaps with a sprinkle of John Travolta in the Pulp Fiction.

Have you got any questions you would ask our man, Mr. Ticket Tailor? Tweet them to us!

Top 5: The Best of Our Blog

Now and again in life, it’s good to have a look back on fond memories. We've extended that sentiment to our blog, and decided to bring you the best of our past blogs!

This isn't any an ordinary blast from the past – we’re bringing you the crème de la crème, the funny bits and the downright awesome highlights from our blog posts from the last few years.

1. Our First Ever Blog: Selling tickets online: Our top tips

This was our first ever blog post detailing the best ways to sell tickets online. Since 2010, our mission hasn’t changed – to bring event organisers a smarter, cheaper and fairer way to sell tickets online. Have a little read of the snippet below:

1. Offer incentives to buy early

Unless you event is definitely going to sell out, their should be an incentive for people to buy early. Not many people will buy tickets before hand if they can get in for the same price on the day. A couple of pounds savings or some added extras will give people the incentive they need to buy in advance.

2. List it everywhere with links to tickets

There are loads of free listings websites and you should try and list your event on all the relevant ones. Make sure you include a link to your tickets page so people can click through direct from the listing. You should also contact any websites affiliated with your event and make sure they have the correct ticket links too.

Sound good? Read the full article here.

2. Are you an event virgin?

Another hit from our archives is our meander through what to do if you are organising an event for the first time. The aim here was to give first timers a quick, and useful, low down on how to stay on top of things – especially as organising events can get very stressful. Check out the snippet below:

 You do too much, you’re not superman you know

Getting help in is always great – they’ll be able to advise you on what works and what doesn’t, give ideas on how to advertise your event, who to invite and what to charge. Most importantly, they’ll be able to split the stress with you.

Small and Informal now, Glastonbury late

Things can easily spiral out of control if you don’t have much experience with event planning. Also, starting small means you can learn from any mistakes you might make – without too many dire consequences.

Want to read more? View the full article here.

3. Top Event Tools

One of our most popular blogs was this one: 4 Super Savvy Tools for Event Organisers. In this blog we reviewed some of the best tools to get your event enterprise up and running as easily and quickly as possible. Using a mixture of these tools, you can set up a box office, sell tickets, share your events in one click and build your social media following. Have a peek at what we wrote:

 For Social Network Soldiers: Eventasaurus is every event organisers dream – imagine being able to post your event on several social networks at once and reply to any queries super fast from one platform.

For Event’s Listing Lovers: Using Bullseyehub is the equivalent of personally sending an event invite to the entire online event community – you can list your event once and publish it across the web with a single click.

For Fan Base Fanatics: Fanbridge’s all inclusive software can literally grow your brand fan base by millions.

Ticket Tailor, for Ticket Selling Superhumans: Once you’ve got your event out there, how do you sell tickets online and save your self some cash? Easy, Ticket Tailor! Ticket Tailor is everything a standard (boring) ticketing agency isn’t.

Treat yourself, read the full article here.

4. The OMG List!

A concept thought up by the creatives at Ticket Tailor, the OMG list is defined (tongue in cheek) as; “A list possessed by the coolest socialites onto which event organisers seek to feature their events resulting in eternal glory”. Doesn't that sound fab? We put together a handy list of the quickest ways onto such a list, giving real advice to event organisers who want to boost their guest list numbers. This was a follow up to our blog the week before: top tips on how event organisers should creatively market their events. Check out a little snippet below:

 Style and substance!

There’s no point having sophisticated marketing, great planning and… a flagging event. Think of who you could invite to liven up the event or inject some specialist knowledge. For example, if you were holding a conference on animal care, why not invite a zookeeper? It’s that simple logic that can take you event to the next level. Of course, if you’re hosting a business event and happen to know Richard Branson, we’d recommend you get his RSVP, A.S.A.P.

There's more snippets of wisdom in the full article here.

5. Ticket Tailors Exhibition

Don’t you love it when you see the signs “try before you buy”? We definitely do. So we decided to show exactly what we do best – box office website integration - before you spend a penny. We gave a snapshot of some of our neatest website integrations, ranging from festivals, to comedy shows and business expos. As they say, a picture says a 1000 words – so enough with our chitter chatter, check out a few of our integrations below and view the full exhibition.

SWN Presents: Cardiff’s coolest club night.

The Machynlleth Comedy Festival: Only the best comedy festival in the galaxy.

The Venue Halifax: One of the best live music venues in the UK.

Showcase: How The Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race Sell Tickets Online

In the words of the founders: “2 goats, 1 glorious race. The Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race.”

No doubt you’ve probably heard of the famous Oxbridge boat race. Well this event goes one better – two goats go head to head in a race in front of an adrenaline packed crowd.

This charity event is truly one of its kind. It’s a fun packed day, with lots of events going on aside from the goat race. Want to learn more? Check out the Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race website.

How Ticket Tailor transformed their ticket selling:

Selling Physical and Digital Tickets

Tickets for the Goat Race were previously sold tickets on the door but quickly sold out due to the sheer awesomeness of their event.

Selling physical tickets and digital tickets at the same time can be a complicated process. If you continue to sell tickets on the door, it can be difficult to house all your customer data in one place. Also, some ticketing platforms don’t allow you to input customer information from over the phone or face to face bookings. Not Ticket Tailor. The organisers of the Oxford and Cambridge Goat race are able to input any data from ticket sales – whether they were sold via Ticket Tailor or elsewhere.

 

 What do they think about their new system?

"The box office is working great so far, it was easy to use. The pricing structure and the fact that you have UK specific support made this an easy choice."

Anthony, Organiser

Interested?

If you would like to find out how Ticket Tailor can improve your ticketing, please email us on hi@tickettailor.com or check out our online tour.

Showcase: How UX People Sell Tickets Online

What's the event?

Type of Events

The UX People conference is the creation of Zebra People; Britain’s first ever recruitment consultancy to focus specifically on user experience resourcing solutions. They expect all delegates to come away from their annual conference having gained practical knowledge from the most creative and inspiring speakers and projects from around the country.

How Ticket Tailor transformed their ticket selling:

Colossal Savings & Website Integration

The cost of putting on large conferences like UX People events are often high - therefore ticket prices often reflect this. With most ticketing system providers, the higher the cost of tickets, the larger cut they'll take. Not Ticket Tailor. However expensive the tickets for UX People were, Zebra People (the organisers) only paid one low price - just like all Ticket Tailor customers.

Zebra People also took advantage of the website integration offered by Ticket Tailor. This meant their customers bought tickets from a box office which looked exactly like their website.

Customisation of Confirmation Messages

All customers who successfully purchase a ticket from a Ticket Tailor box office receive a fully customisable message and an instant e-ticket via email. Zebra People, as with many conference organisers, found this feature useful as extra information was able to be sent automatically to each delegate.

Ticket Functionality: Early Bird Tickets

With Ticket Tailor, you are able to set different ticket categories which is useful when  selling different types of tickets. Zebra People utilised this feature to sell early bird tickets and student tickets  in addition to regular tickets. This allowed the tickets to be instantly located and organised, all with up to the minute information.

What do they think of their new system?

"We used Ticket Tailor to sell the tickets for our UX People Conference in November 2011. It proved to be excellent in keeping track of our online orders, totally flexible and very easy to use. We basically didn’t need to worry about tickets at all, Ticket Tailor managed it all for us saving a great amount of time! It was exactly what we needed for managing our online ticket sales. We would not hesitate to recommend Ticket Tailor."

The Zebra People Team

Interested?

If you would like to find out how Ticket Tailor can improve your ticketing, please email us on hi@tickettailor.com or check out our online tour.