One of the challenges that we face - in common with most people with a web page I guess - is managing the tricky balance between what we want to say and what our users want to know. It might seem like a strange thing to think until you reflect on how many times you've given up on a website because it tells you all about the company, when it was set up, reviews from customers etc but you can't find the one bit of information that you were looking for in the first place.
And when you are trying to use your own website to share information about a third party who has changed what they told you originally then it really does get even harder!
Why am I worrying about this at the moment? Well for the first time we at Belper Musical Theatre are going to be launching an online booking service for our performances and so we want to get it right.
It starts with little things like what to call it - in the end we decided that Box Office would probably make sense for most people.
Then we had to get a seating plan of the theatre itself - and since the seat ordering didn't work as we'd expected we now have to rebuild the seating plan!
There is then the challenge of making it as easy to use as possible - and trying to find someone who doesn't charge an arm and a leg to process the booking. And finally, since we still have many people who may prefer to phone for their tickets, or order them by paper, we need to find a way to make all of our tickets look a little bit similar at least.
Will it be worth it? Well we hope so. As soon as we press the button, people will be able to start booking their seats. People will have full choice of what seats they want for the shows and the process should be smooth and slick.
We hope that it will reduce the pressure on our volunteer ticket secretary who devotes much time to seating charts, opening post and responding to answer phone messages.
And we hope that people will decide on the spur of the moment to log on the site and just book a ticket!
The facility will be available from our main website at www.belpermusicaltheatre.co.uk although I hope that I will be able to link straight to the box office from this website.
In the meantime I would be really pleased if you shared your thoughts on what you want from a website. Have you got questions that we haven't answered on here, our main page or our facebook pages? Please ask them and we can at least try to find an answer.
And when you are trying to use your own website to share information about a third party who has changed what they told you originally then it really does get even harder!
Why am I worrying about this at the moment? Well for the first time we at Belper Musical Theatre are going to be launching an online booking service for our performances and so we want to get it right.
It starts with little things like what to call it - in the end we decided that Box Office would probably make sense for most people.
Then we had to get a seating plan of the theatre itself - and since the seat ordering didn't work as we'd expected we now have to rebuild the seating plan!
There is then the challenge of making it as easy to use as possible - and trying to find someone who doesn't charge an arm and a leg to process the booking. And finally, since we still have many people who may prefer to phone for their tickets, or order them by paper, we need to find a way to make all of our tickets look a little bit similar at least.
Will it be worth it? Well we hope so. As soon as we press the button, people will be able to start booking their seats. People will have full choice of what seats they want for the shows and the process should be smooth and slick.
We hope that it will reduce the pressure on our volunteer ticket secretary who devotes much time to seating charts, opening post and responding to answer phone messages.
And we hope that people will decide on the spur of the moment to log on the site and just book a ticket!
The facility will be available from our main website at www.belpermusicaltheatre.co.uk although I hope that I will be able to link straight to the box office from this website.
In the meantime I would be really pleased if you shared your thoughts on what you want from a website. Have you got questions that we haven't answered on here, our main page or our facebook pages? Please ask them and we can at least try to find an answer.
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