The Vitality Netball World Cup is the pinnacle of world netball. The 2019 Netball World Cup was the 15th edition of the Netball World Cup, contested every four years. The tournament was held from 12–21 July 2019 at the Liverpool Arena in Liverpool, England.
ACC Liverpool won a bid to host not only the competition but the training and warm-up courts as well. It was a massive achievement not only for ACC Liverpool but for the United Kingdom.
The Vitality Netball World Cup team took over not only the arena, but the Exhibition Centre and the on-site Pullman hotel. This was the first World Cup of any kind to be held in Liverpool and it was a privilege to be the sole UX designer overseeing the ticketing journey for this monumental sport event.
I was tasked and briefed by Ticket Quarter’s Creative Director and Head of Digital to create the ticketing journey for customers purchasing tickets for The Vitality Netball World Cup 2019. I knew I would need to obtain some sound research for this as their were multiple ticket options that consisted of three qualifying stages and various hospitality packages. The user flow needed to be as simple as possible as we were expecting over 80,000 tickets to be sold worldwide…so no pressure! Their marketing team also wanted to up-sell the hospitality packages. I needed to make sure the design mimicked The Vitality Netball World Cup website so that a fluid user journey took place.
I began by conducting a qualitative interview with various Ticket Quarter stakeholders as well as The Vitality Netball stakeholders. Using Lean UX techniques we included Ticket Quarters Development team in these interviews. Gathering as much intel and research helped plant the foundation and allowed me, and the development team, to work out our proposed solution.
This model is also allowed me to show the research phase and the design phase together.
It was clear that I needed to define the points along the time continuum, especially as there where tight deadlines for completion ready for the onside date. Producing this double diamond allowed the stakeholders and team members to know where the project was up to at certain points.
There are a number of similar companies around, so I just concentrated on a few for my research. Findings below 👇
I conducted competitor analysis to develop a stronger marketing strategy and identify any opportunities in the market. The analysis helped me understand where the Vitality Netball brand stands in the market which ultimately helped with the design process.
Name: Wembley Stadium
Availability: Android & IOS
Name: Liverpool Football Club
Availability: Android & IOS
See Overview:
Wembley Stadium allow users to purchase sport and concert tickets. Sign in via Google option.
LFC Overview:
LFC offers a variety of ticketing journeys for main fixture matches, women’s matches, hospitality packages and concerts.
Wembley MVP Features:
LFC MVP Features:
Wembley Target Market:
Branded to attract a young market but also retains a lot of features that cater for a wider age bracket.
Wembley Nav Structure
One page site with use of anchor points. No search or filter options but probably due to limited events being on sale.
LFC Target Market:
Definitely attracts sport fans and tourists who may be visiting.
Vitality Netball Nav Structure:
Best seat filters are a nice touch. Nav makes it a little hard to follow the user flow.
Wembley Usability Analysis
Decent usability on responsive version. Important information overlays the top image, making it a little difficult to read. Basic and simple flow.
LFC Nav Structure
No filters, but probably due to limited events being on sale. 6 step checkout process.
LFC Usability Analysis
Busy interface and with different
checkout journeys as mentioned above it could become a little confusing. Lovely use of micro-interactions and visually attractive.
Name: Vitality Netball Superleague
Vitality Netball Overview:
Vitality England Netball’s website allows users to purchase tickets and consumables for the Superleague Grand final in 2020.
Vitality Netball Target Market:
Simple UI interface attracts users of all ages.
Vitality Netball Usability Analysis:
Simple user flow. Nice use of icons, although responsive looks a little like an after-thought.
Vitality Netball MVP Features:
Name: Liverpool Football Club
Availability: Android & IOS
I conducted competitor analysis to develop a stronger marketing strategy and identify any opportunities in the market. The analysis helped me understand where the Vitality Netball brand stands in the market which ultimately helped with the design process.
There are a number of similar companies around, so I just concentrated on a few. Findings below 👇
Name: Wembley Stadium
Availability: Android & IOS
Company Info
Overview
MVP Features
Target Market
Definitely attracts sport fans and tourists who may be visiting.
Simple UI interface attracts users of all ages.
Usability Analysis
Decent usability on responsive version. Important information overlays the top image, making it a little difficult to read. Basic flow.
Busy interface and with different checkout journeys as mentioned above it could become a little confusing. Lovely use of micro-interactions and visually
attractive.
Simple user flow. Nice use of icons, although responsive looks like it needs some more thought.
Navigational
Structure
One page site with use of anchor points. No search or filter options but probably due to limited events being on sale.
No filters, but probably due to limited events being on sale. 6 step checkout process.
Best seat filters are a nice touch. Nav makes it a little hard to follow the user flow.
Branded to attract a young market but also retains a lot of features that cater for a wider audience.
Wembley Stadium allow users to purchase sport and concert tickets. Sign in via Google option.
LFC offers a variety of ticketing journeys for main fixture matches, women’s matches, hospitality packages and concerts.
Vitality England Netball’s website allows users to purchase tickets and consumables for the Superleague Grand final in 2020.
Name: Vitality England Netball 2020
I conducted a simple survey with stakeholders from both Ticket Quarter and The Vitality Netball team to help collect some qualitative data. The purpose of the survey was to find out:
Core features to include during the checkout process.
Age group of past users.
Data of online purchases compared to phone purchases for past users.
What possible pain points have their customers encountered while purchasing tickets previously.
Using this information, as well as research gathered on the common pain points that users experience on e-commerce sites I was able to gather some great intel. From the e-commerce research it became apparent that we needed to:
1. Be transparent with what the user was purchasing
We need to make sure we clearly explain what netball matches are included in the tickets the user is purchasing and whether it’s a warm up or pre-qualifying match. We also need to make it clear what the users would receive as part of the hospitality packages to entice interest.
2. Guest checkout
Not including a quest checkout can be a real bug bearer for some users. We need to be empathetic to the users that are purchasing tickets abroad and flying in to see this event. This may be a one time purchase for them using TQ, so creating an account might not be a necessary step. We need to make it easy for them to purchase these tickets so this is an important feature to include.
3. Hidden fees
It was clear from the survey that users don’t like surprises. No surprise with that one! Hidden admin fees half way through the ticketing process needed addressing? Could we not just include these admin fees in the overall cost? As the tickets would be downloadable via an ticket, we would not need to worry about any delivery costs.
4. Customer service
We need to bear in mind that not all customers feel comfortable purchasing tickets online. Some may prefer to call and speak to a customer service representative? Could we have staff available 24 hours a day when the event goes on-sale for example due to the users wanting to purchase tickets who don’t live in the U.K?
5. Up-selling
It was clear that users may see the charity donation and the up-selling of the hospitality packages as a negative. I had to make sure that it was clear what users would get if they wanted to purchase a hospitality package and that it didn’t interfere or add any extra steps.
After speaking to TQ stakeholders about the CMS used, I needed to bear in mind any limitations that may cause an issue for customers. For example, is there a certain time out period for users? Can this be extended? Do we have the ability to change the language on the site for foreign visitors wanting to purchase tickets?
Discover the users’ needs
Identify project stakeholders to involve, their expectations and relationships
Creating the following problem statement for this project helped me keep focused on the goal and the problem that the stakeholders wanted addressing:
Ticket Quarter provides a full range of ticketing services for clients throughout the UK. Creating bespoke white label ticketing sites, they are able to allow their clients a ticketing solution for their businesses.
We have observed that The Vitality Netball Stakeholders have to sell at least 40,000 tickets across this three day event. They would like to up-sell customers so they purchase hospitality packages as well as making a donation to cancer research.
How might we improve the ticketing journey so we emphasise the hospitality packages and charity donation contribution while keeping the clicks to a minimum to cope with the high level of traffic expected.
Problem Statement
Assumptions Workshop - build, measure, learn.
To help reduce the waste often produced during the design cycle process and instead enhance the UX through multiple iterations, I produced the below user and business assumption guides through a simple Lean UX workshop exercise. These assumptions have been formed out of our above problem statement and are only ‘assumed’ to be true.
The goal of the below assumptions worksheet was to collect statements that really just reflect what I think might be true.
I understood that these assumptions can and most often will prove to be wrong at some time in the future and at that point we will need to refine and update them.
User Assumptions
Business Assumptions
Conclusions
Based on the above priorities of assumptions, it was clear that the biggest risks with the most unknown assumptions were:
Server / Queue itWe believe that investing in the Queue-it software to limit the flow of customers through the site at peak on-sale times will be crucial for maintaining the internal servers. We will know this is true when we see quantitative data of how many people are visiting the site. We could test this assumption by asking Netball Vitality World Cup to include a sign up newsletter so customer can see a schedule for on-sale dates and times. We then would have some valuable data of expected visitors. Maybe we could also recommend a pre-sale date?
Upsell
We believe that including various up-selling features such as hospitality packages or charitable donations to the ticketing journey could detract or leave a negative impression with the users. We could test this by gathering quantitive data by either performing an A/B test, or by sending out marketing emails to subscribers detailing the hospitality packages as an alternative method of advertising these features.
The top left section of the sketch is the name, top right - behavioural demographical information, bottom left - pain points and user needs and the bottom right - potential solutions.
Again, using lean UX research methodology, I created ‘assumption’ based persona’s which could be validated at a later date. These persona’s were our best guess as to who would be using this product and why. As we learnt from our research going forward we would be able to see how accurate these are.
Testing these hypothesesWe will include the option to share any of the specific Netball World Cup match pages via social, email or text etc, so that Megan can invite her Netball team and friends to the matches that they all would like to attend. This will achieve not only greater traction and marketing but hopefully greater sales and group bookings.
We will send pre-booking emails out advertising hospitality features and ‘things to do’ in Liverpool as well as making these hospitality features as understandable and clear as possible. This will give tourists and Netball fans travelling from afar, like Susan, the opportunity to make the most of this, once in a lift time event. This will achieve increased sales to hospitality packages, happy customers and investment in the city, which is also an important factor for The ACC Liverpool Group.
ConclusionEven from these rough sketches, it’s interesting to gain knowledge from our assumptions. Some of the main points raised were:
I would like the ‘share via social’ feature to be included, ideally, at step two, so a user has the ability to share match event information before purchasing. Including the requested charity donation pop up between stages two and three also seemed logical. By then, the user has already chosen their tickets and have started the check out journey.
Task analysis diagrams can often be overlooked at the define stage. Being able to clearly identify problems early on can be of great benefit. I wanted to illustrate the user goal for making a purchase for a match using the current CMS software to see if I could identify any steps that could be reduced / improved.
ConclusionViewing the below process made me question the need to include the promotion box so early in the journey? It seemed odd to ask a user to enter their promo code (if they have one) before they have selected a match 🤔. Could we include the promo box at step three, when they review the dates they've chosen?
With all the initial lean UX tasks completed as well as the competitor analysis gathered and assumptions made, I was in a good position to begin looking at the wireframes. I started off with sketches and a few crazy 8 diagrams to work out the most appropriate way of displaying the charity donation pop up or how the interactive map could look.
I’ve included a selection of the WF which I worked up. The selection is from certain pages of the task analysis diagram. Also to note, I have focused on including the responsive visuals for this case study, but I also designed the shown wireframes for desktop and tablet.
We had to have Netball Vitality Marketing sign off on all of these concepts so I made sure that they were as thorough and precise as possible. The changes raised were minimal and I was in a good position to begin the high fidelity wireframes.
Example of LF wireframes
Preliminary stage (stg 2)
Preliminary stage (stg 1)
Seat select
Payment
The final step after the initial low fidelity wireframes had been signed off by many of the stakeholders was to turn them into working high fidelity wire-frames. Once completed, we performed a lot of user testing.
We made sure we tested two ‘extreme’ users. These are users that are at two ends of the spectrum. We tested it with avid netball fans as well as those that had no interest in sports or had any prior knowledge of match sessions, fixings etc.
Example of HF wireframes
Charity donation
Seat select
Guest checkout
Order review
Working on such an important sporting event for a city I love was a privilege. We had over 80,000 purchases through the website. The Queue-it software helped filter people through on on-sale days which kept the servers running smoothly, and it was a great success. I still wish we could have implemented some more of the features I had discovered, like elaborating more on the hospitality packages and the sharing functionality, but overall, everything ran smoothly and having 80,000 users navigate through this site is testament to the work invested in the discover, define, design and deliver stages.
