You thought if you built it, they would come. But your event website is as still and quiet as a ghost town. You swear you saw a tumbleweed rolling across the screen the last time you checked it to figure out what gives. Why aren’t people buying tickets? Chances are, you just need a boost in how you optimize your events website. Explore these 11 insights for creating a ticket-selling website for sold-out events that will turn you into an NYC event planning hero.
1. Make Buying Tickets on Your Event Website Breezy
Creating an event website that sells requires making the path from “Buy Tickets” to “Sales Confirmation” short and painless. Visitors who decide to take the plunge and buy event tickets can be easily spooked by a ticket-buying process fraught with friction. Make buying event tickets on your website easy with the following tips.
- Feature a “Buy Tickets” or “Register Now” button prominently on every page.
- Pare down your form fields by only collecting enough information to complete the sale.
- Offer multiple payment options, including those that don’t require the attendee to dig out a credit card.
- Offer the option to purchase add-ons and upgrades later to avoid derailing the sale due to decision fatigue.
2. Let Attendees Feast on Visuals
Eye-catching visuals are a key strategy for how to create a ticket-selling website. If event pics are worth a thousand words, then videos are worth a million. Keep them on your website by giving your visitors eye-candy in the form of photos and videos of your event. By engaging their visual cortex, you’re helping them imagine themselves at your event.
But don’t stop at event photos and videos. Include other visual content, such as:
- Infographics
- Animated GIFs
- Memes
- Quotes
- Branded graphics
3. Focus on the User Experience of Your Event Website
Does your website take too long to load? Is it difficult to find key information about your event? Is it easy to find contact information, and will it lead to a positive customer service experience? Think about every aspect of your website’s user experience and improve annoying elements.
4. Use Strategic Pricing for Event Tickets
Strategic pricing moves attendees along on the buyer’s journey by infusing a shot of joy into the purchase. In other words, strategic pricing makes attendees feel like they are getting a good deal on event tickets, and it includes strategies such as:
- Limited-time offers
- Early-bird pricing
- Multiple ticket tiers
- Discount codes
5. Grab Their Attention With Interactive Elements
“Brain rot” was 2024’s Oxford Word of the Year, and it refers, in part, to our tanking attention spans. In short, it’s harder than ever to keep your website’s visitors on task and engaged because they’re struggling with too many shiny squirrels.
You can drown out the digital hum of notifications and open tabs by using interactive elements for your event website. The interactive elements encourage your visitors to take action and stay on your event site until they’re ready to start the ticket-purchasing process. Examples of interactive elements include:
- Quizzes and polls
- Interactive infographics
- Virtual tours of your event
- Animated graphics that respond to scrolling or clicks
6. Understand Your Target Audience
Your target audience demographics will inform nearly every element of your event website. C-suite executives expect a different user experience than Comic-Con aficionados. So, make sure that your event website accurately reflects the tastes and preferences of your intended audience.
7. Highlight the Benefits of Attending Your Event
With your deep understanding of your event’s target audience, you can highlight the benefits of attending. These benefits speak directly to your target audience’s pain points and desires. They’re also emotionally charged. For example, your event doesn’t just have industry-leading speakers. It’s chock-full of insights and wisdom that will push attendees to the next level of success and solve their most pressing problems.
8. Get Found With SEO & Content
Effective SEO techniques are still the cornerstone of showing up in search results, and high-quality content is still king. Incorporating SEO and content marketing into your event marketing will help users find your site, and that’s half the battle of conversion. Adopt a consistent content-marketing game plan and track the success of your SEO strategy.
9. Provide Social Proof
Social proof is a powerful motivator for event-goers. According to TrustPilot, Positive reviews and ratings made 82% of customers more likely to make a purchase. Testimonials from previous attendees increase your event’s trustworthiness. You can make testimonials even more powerful with video.
10. Make It Mobile-Friendly
Your data may suggest that most event ticket purchases are made on PCs. But don’t let that keep you from making your event website mobile-friendly. Consumers tend to spend the early stages of the buyer journey on their smartphones, researching while on the subway or waiting in the school pick-up lane.
11. Implement a Secure Checkout Process for Your Event Website
Fraud is at an all-time high, and technology allows scammers to adopt techniques that fool even the savviest among us. It’s no wonder that wary consumers are uneasy about sharing their payment information. The Baymard Institute reports that 19% of users say they have abandoned their cart because they didn’t trust the site.
Baymard goes on to say that the elements on your event website that foster a sense of trust don’t necessarily add to the site’s security. So, in addition to implementing important security protocols in your checkout process, add the following elements to put ticket buyers at ease.
- Display trust badges, such as a Norton Secured, BBB, or Google badge.
- Well-designed and branded checkout page.
- Transparent order total that includes line items for fees, etc.
- Visually define the credit card field with borders, frames, and background colors.
- Ensure your site doesn’t have bugs that cause antivirus programs to flag it.
Learn Marketing Insights for Your Event Website at The Event Planner Expo 2025
From design to user experience to secure checkout, now you know how to create a ticket-selling website. However, the best NYC event planners know there’s always more to learn. And you can be in the place where top industry leaders share their know-how and wisdom. The Event Planner Expo is three days of learning, networking, and social events that will level up your event planning game. Buy your tickets today.
The post From Click to Checkout: 11 Tips for Turning Your Event Website Into a Ticket-Selling Machine appeared first on The Event Planner Expo.
