ABOUT

Since the pandemic, Universal Studios, a renowned entertainment and theme park company, has seen an increase in ticket sales, but nowhere near our goals.

In 2023, active usage was slowing and threatening the business. I was a part of the effort toward increasing ticket sales and overall revenue streams across our sites.

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OUTCOMES

• Increase in ticket sales boosted from 6.8% to 12%
• User engagement across platforms boosted 15%
• Adaptation and Retention Increased by 25% for the website.

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PROJECT GOALS

1. Create a design that streamlines user purchases and decrease drop off 
2. Increase revenue and ticket sales

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MY ROLE

I led the design strategy and the development of this project by working alongside my internal UX design team and partnering with the marketing and business strategy teams. 

By conducting user research and testing of our previous sites, I was able to find the pain points of our users and create a new design that streamlines user purchases and decreases site drop offs.

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KICKOFF

After Q1, we noticed projected ticket sales were not reaching our goals and when looking into Universal’s site engagement, we saw significant user drop off and lack of retention throughout the ticket purchasing journey. 

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‍COMPETITIVE RESEARCH

After a thorough research we noted that there are 3 types of park goers.

• Leans Disney (park goers who only are in FL or CA for Disney) 
• Seasonal local park goers (ppl who live in FL or CA) 
• General (park goers who set aside time to go to Universal specifically) 

Given we had a good grasp and understanding of our seasonal park goers, we wanted to target the Leans Disney and General park goer population. To understand more of these groups' purchasing decisions, we conducted a competitive analysis of competitor sites and compared them to our own site structure and season pass/ ticket structure. 

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What did we find?

• From our different park goer groups we saw there were different priorities of what each group wanted from their tickets or season passes and we were not pushing and catering enough information to them to make these purchase decisions

• From our competitive analysis of our competitors, we noticed that their information was displayed in a more direct and digestible way with an easy understanding of different tickets and pass structures

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IDENTIFYING OUR PROJECT NORTH STAR

User testing and site analytics showed that users were having trouble navigating our site to purchase tickets, learning more about their existing purchases, and finding information about upcoming events.

Our competitive analysis backed this up, revealing that our competitors had much more user-friendly designs.

So as a design team, we broke down our design system, analyzed the testing results, and focused on improving our components and site structure. 

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The goal was simple: make it easier for users to buy tickets and stay on our site.

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ITERATIVE DESIGNING 

We explored different site structures for various upcoming events that were projected to have high attendance rates, such as Halloween Horror Nights, Mardi Gras, Rock the Universe etc. 

We adjusted our site structure with each iteration and updated our design system to enable these changes. However, it wasn’t streamlined enough since our events are fragmented with differing information, tickets, and activities that take place. 

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USER TESTING AND ACCESSIBILITY

Then we conducted user testing of different site templates and came to a conclusion on a template design for our various ticket pages that not only incorporated our users’ desires and our new design system but also aligned with our business goals of increasing revenue and ticket sales. 

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97% of sites in the US are not accessible to individuals with disabilities and we wanted to ensure accessibility was at the center.

We used testing tools such as Fable and manual testing with assistive technologies, and gathered feedback from users with disabilities. This process identified and addressed potential barriers, improving usability and compliance with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).

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TEMPLATIZATION 

Based on user testing results and competitive analysis, we reconvened and designed a simpler template for our site.

This new layout focused on the key information users sought when making purchases and incorporated features our competitors offered. 

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RESULTS

This effort led to improved user engagement across platforms, leading into increased ticket sales and an uptick in revenue. 

As a result of us streamlining our designs, we also lowered the design decision fatigue of our design team with a templatized page layout that could be applied to similar page types. 

The improved design and templatization of our page layouts resulted in an increase in overall ticket sales over the next quarter from 6.8% to 12%. Our user engagement tests also showed that there was a 15% increase as well. Overall adaptation and retention of our sites across platforms increased by 25%.

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FUTURE STEPS

1. Mobile Integration: Expand the mobile app features to align with the website improvements based on user feedback.
2. Enhanced Analytics: Implement Component Tracking & Hotspotting to track user behavior and preferences more accurately.
3. Additional Features: Introduce new features based on user requests and market trends to continually better the user experience.
4. Increased accessibility: Cater to our sites and components to be more accessibility friendly. 

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REFLECTIONS:

Looking back, I grew significantly as a designer through learning the value of user-centric design and agile methodologies. This experience reinforced the importance of iterative testing and continuous improvement based on user feedback. 

From user testing and interviews, I was able to know my users better but a blindspot that we are still looking to implement is accessibility. Our improved typography hierarchy is significantly better than before but still fails screen reader tests along with other accessibility issues.