culture.gov.au
Connecting you with Australian culture online
Online shops and ticket sales
Selling tickets to a performance or items from a gallery shop via a website is becoming more common-place and more attractive to both the consumer and organisations.
Selling anything online is to engage in ecommerce. Ecommerce is a sub-set of ebusiness, and refers specifically to using the internet for commercial transactions. The term, ebusiness, covers the full range of business activities that can take place, or be assisted, via email or the web.
An ecommerce facility can provide users with the ability to do such things as:
- book tickets for performances
- pay membership subscriptions
- book venues or facilities
- download high-resolution images, video and audio clips.
The benefits to cultural organisations can be considerable:
- saves them time processing over-the-counter sales - for example, no paper-work or banking
- attract more sales because the web is more convenient for the user than lining up at the box-office and because you can up-sell and cross-sell easily once they are on your website
- more effective promotion of special events, sales and last minute deals using such things as membership email alerts for example, sell remaining seats to a performance
- online sales figures and patterns can be easily audited and tracked providing valuable marketing information and statistics
- pleases their members, audiences and consumers because they can buy, book etc when it is convenient to them - and for those in remote and regional areas this is a significant issue.
What to do
Establishing ecommerce solutions on your website, for selling tickets or items in your shop, does not have to be costly nor difficult to do. Experienced web developers will have done it many times. To explore this topic further the NOIE ebusinessguide website has a detailed explanation of ecommerce.
Selling tickets online is a rather specialised area and can be approached in a number of ways. You can purchase a software program off-the-shelf to install on your website, employ a web developer to create a ticketing program for you, or use the services of one of the big commercial operations currently operating in Australia. Click on the links below to see what each has to offer.
The CARP website contains an introductory article about ecommerce and cultural organisations.
The following CARP internet development guides also contain useful information:
Guide 3. What can I do on the internet? - online shops
Guide 9. I’m online. Now what? - ecommerce
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go on to the next section Preparing content for your website
go back to the previous section Putting your database online
return to the eBusiness Guide home
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