We have written about the time-sensitive nature of re-starting a past event, now we’ll discuss another time-sensitive aspect of ticket sales - the importance of graceful non-availability prompts once your event has concluded.
Why do we blog this? This post is part of an on-going series of "spotlights". We want to bring examples of how others use their ThunderTix accounts to your attention. We feel strongly that pragmatic, real-world results convey the value of our tools to you in a more meaningful way than press releases and feature descriptions alone.
Yesterday, former president George W. Bush was the keynote speaker at Plumstead Christian School’s 2nd Annual Founder’s Forum fundraiser. Plumstead used ThunderTix to manage advanced ticket sales for the president's visit to Calvary Church's 1,550-seat auditorium in Souderton, Pennsylvania.
We are honored that President Bush will be coming to Bucks County to speak with our students and the larger Plumstead Christian School community,” said PCS Head of School Patrick Fitzpatrick. “We’re especially looking forward to his visit because we know that President Bush’s personal message mirrors our own mission to teach students to think Biblically, serve effectively, and lead Christ-centered lives.
President Bush's keynote was well received and the event has concluded. Although tickets for the event are no longer available, it is important to note the way in which non-availability is conveyed to visitors of the Plumstead web site.
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Graceful non-availability
For several weeks leading up to the event, the Plumstead website landing page displayed a well-worded promotion for Bush's visit. Clicking through to the event’s dedicated page displayed the event description and, of course, the link to buy tickets.
As you can see, where there was once a link to buy tickets, now a polite "Online ticketing is now closed for this event." text is shown. In addition to the text display, Plumstead created a polite notification that ticket sales were closed just a few hours after the keynote had finished.
The final example of graceful non-availability can be seen in a Google search for "Bush Plumstead". Before the event began, that search term combination returned a direct link to Plumstead's ticket purchasing page as page rank result five ( applicable to “performer name + your venue name” too! ). Clicking the link displayed our standard ticket purchasing event display, seen below.
Post event inquiries
Without going into the nerdy details of Search Engine Optimization or how Google keeps a snap shot of each and every web page published, we simply want to encourage you to think in the long term about how your events are found and represented after they are over.
President Bush’s keynote address at Plumstead was a one time event, but inquires by the media, historians, scholars and school kids doing homework will continue on indefinitely. How you display post-event non-availability is important because search results represent you and your business.
If you have questions about how best to display graceful non-availability using your ThunderTix account, you can write us directly, or you can connect to us on Twitter or Facebook.