Launching the Royal Court’s new website – with a big anniversary on-sale

Launching a new website is always exciting. But when you add a big season on-sale – celebrating a major anniversary – the whole process is even more exhilarating! If also a tad scary, but we’ll explain later why that 'on-sale fear' isn’t always a bad thing.

At the end of September, we launched a brand new website for the Royal Court. With a fresh look, integration with Spektrix, and improved user experience, the website aims to make ticket booking easy – whilst showcasing the Royal Court’s important work supporting the next generation of writers. 

Just four weeks after the website went live, the Royal Court had their first Members’ on-sale for their star-studded 70th anniversary season. With big names like Tilda Swinton, Gary Oldman, and Nicola Walker, plus brand new shows and revivals of big hits, we knew that demand for tickets would be high. 

The combination of an intimate auditorium (a.k.a. limited capacity), big star names, a very new website, and a history of tricky on-sales made us all a little nervous. 

There's that 'on-sale fear'! 

But rather than going into panic mode, we took those nerves and turned them into actions. We devised processes and plans to support everyone, and allow us all to feel ready for anything. 

As it turned out, the on-sale went perfectly smoothly. It was, as anticipated, hugely popular so tickets sold fast. And the new website achieved some impressive results:

We’ve successfully handled lots of big on-sales before – from the World Snooker Championships to Florence and the Machine; Tom Hiddleston and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet to internationally-renowned cultural festivals. 

From our extensive experience with on-sales, we've learned that the combination of the event itself (especially if it involves well-known people), the venue, its capacity, and the marketing around the event makes each big on-sale unique. 

We've also learned that there are things we can put in place to help keep a website stable, even during large spikes in traffic. This means that the website continues to provide a frustration-free process for ticket buyers. 

As much as it's useful to plan for an on-sale, however, you don't always know when one might creep up on you! So, we also create websites with high traffic in mind. 

This includes building a robust hosting infrastructure that can flex; enabling us to balance load, and upscale capacity as-and-when needed. We also consider things like caching, and the impact of technical integrations, in order to avoid excessive load on web servers. 

Despite all of our experience, know-how, and planning, we still take a hands-on approach for every big on-sale. (Perhaps one of the reasons our clients are so happy with us?!)

Our 5 top tips to ensure your next on-sale runs smoothly:

1. Identify a big on-sale

The first thing to do is to understand what a significant on-sale looks like, from a programming point of view. It can sometimes be difficult to know what warrants an on-sale plan, and what’s just worth keeping an eye on. 

Our advice - if your gut is telling you to be worried about an on-sale, then it’s worth listening! It’s always better to have a plan you don't need, than to ignore your instincts and risk things going wrong. 

2. Tell people about it

Tell your web agency and ticketing system provider as soon as possible that you have a significant on-sale coming up. Even if the artist/event name is embargoed, let us know that something big is going on sale. The more notice you give your partners, the better chances you have of a successful collaboration and a smooth on-sale. 

3. Plan for the worst-case scenario

We never want a website or ticketing system to go down, but it happens. So, plan for that worst-case scenario. Think of all the things that could go wrong and, next to each one, make a note what could be done to fix or address it. This forethought can help to relieve a lot of stress during a tense moment. 

This process also often identifies things you could have ready in advance. Things like pre-writing any 'emergency' messaging, making sure you’ve got customer mailing lists properly segmented (e.g. into different membership levels) and ready to use, and gathering contact details for anyone else you might need to get in touch with at short notice – your digital agency, ticketing system contact etc. 

4. Keep the lines of communication open

Where possible, keep lines of communication open during the on-sale – or ideally a bit beforehand. On-sales move fast, and if things do go wrong, everyone needs to be on-hand to help with their area of expertise. 

We suggest using a shared chat service like Slack or Teams. They're so useful for this, because communication can be quick and efficient. And everyone included in the chat can see what's going on, and who's working on what. 

5. Celebrate success!

Had an online on-sale that went smoothly? No hiccups? Celebrate the win.

If you can share data – e.g amount of income generated, percentage of tickets sold, memberships sold, positive customer feedback – it helps demonstrate that the planning was worth it. And it also gives your whole team a morale boost.

Hope that's helpful – and good luck with your next big on-sale! In the meantime …

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