Figure 6. There is a timer on the top of the website but no progress bar to let users clearly know how many purchasing steps they need to go through.
Recommendation: Include a progress bar within the ticket purchasing process. Including a progress bar in the ticket purchasing process would be advantageous for the user to see what step of the purchasing process they are on. The current process with the 15 minute timer created a sense of urgency, but including a progress bar would allow the user to go at their speed and understand how many more interactions they will need to go through. Key Finding #6: The order of the ticket purchasing process did not match users’ expectations. Heuristic Violated: “Match Between the System and the Real World” Severity: 3 Typically, in a real life situation, a person would select their items, go to the register to checkout, provide the cashier with any sort of coupons they have as well as membership information for additional discounts if applicable, and then finally pay for their items. On the Michigan Theater website, users are prompted to enter a promotional code and indicate if they are a member during the beginning of the purchasing process, contrary to expectations (Figure 7). Additionally, when purchasing tickets for the State Theater, the user would need to choose their seats before selecting the quantity of tickets, which may not be intuitive.
Figure 7. Users are prompted to enter a promo code and indicate if they are a member or not at the beginning of the purchasing process.
Recommendation: Switching the order of the ticket purchasing process to match how purchasing items occurs in real life. Our recommendation would be to streamline the order process as if it was done in person by requesting the promo code and membership status towards the end of the ticket purchasing process, right before entering payment information. We would also like to recommend switching to having the user pick their quantity of tickets before selecting seats for the State Theater because it’s more intuitive to know how many tickets you want rather the exact seat.
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