UX Research on SISTIC.com.sg
This is a UX research case study report on a ticketing agency website, SISTIC.
Introduction
Product Overview
SISTIC is Singapore’s largest ticketing agency and one of the country’s leading e-commerce players, selling over 6 million tickets to-date. A pioneer in the industry, SISTIC manage an extensive portfolio of major events each year. SISTIC are committed in creating a one-stop marketplace dedicated to the arts, culture and entertainment sectors.
Key Objectives
Explore the user experience of Singaporeans discovering and booking local tourism activities and conduct a UX research project with the aim of uncovering good opportunities for design.
Responsibilities
Conduct research, interviewing and understanding the users and apply user experience research methods to gather data, synthesize the data, uncover insights and identify key opportunities for design.
Timeline: 6 Weeks
Tools: Miro
Product Understanding
In this current pandemic and how almost every country is in lockdown, travelling now sits on the very end of the list. Singapore, a small sunny island with such dense population is affected most by the cabin fever. Every single f*ckin time they release a glimpse of good news of a ‘travel bubble’, it bursts almost immediately the next day, making the word a complete jinx. We were given two options to travel, either taking a public transport to nowhere, or play pretend like a tourist and explore Singapore. Most Singaporeans, like me, tend to choose the later.
Booking sites has been buzzing with locals making reservations and I see this as an opportunity to work on a UX research magic. I decided to work on SISTIC website for this reason,
SISTIC is an online booking platform which mainly focuses on events. It does promote attractions however, it was never their main forte. As most physical events are cancelled due to the pandemic, I see this as an opportunity for them to re-work their strategy, and making them stay relevant in today’s state.
How are we going to do that? - By understanding both the user and business needs.
User goals: Find and book the attraction that they might enjoy.
Business Goals: Encourage and entice users to purchase an attraction ticket with SISTIC when they land on the website
For a start, I went on to search for SISTIC main competitors and came back with Ticket Master and Klook. I did a competitor analysis on the three of the businesses and learn about their strengths and weakness.
From this session, I find that Klook gives a better booking experience for me with the following reasons;
Video option/snippets available for a quick preview of the attraction, making me have the slight understanding of what I can expect out of it.
Reviews are shown on every attraction listed, giving the attraction a higher credibility.
Clear and very easy booking.
Both SISTIC and Klook, except Ticket Master, are available on the App Store and Google Play. I proceeded on in reading the reviews for the app to validate my assumptions.
Above are the findings of reviews given by customers to both SISTIC and Klook respectively. It’s clear from the reviews and ratings that SISTIC is not doing too well with their mobile application mainly due to it being buggy and is affecting the experience of their customers. Klook on the other hand is on the leading side with many positive reviews regarding the usability. The bad reviews for Klook are mainly touching on customer service experience and not the application itself.
Interviewing
In this session, I conducted 2 interviews and combined the data with two others in my class. Before the start of the interview, I pre-amped the interviewees that there will be no right or wrong answers given so that they will feel comfortable and give their very honest thoughts on the product. I then proceeded on in asking some of the interview questions below.
What is your go-to booking platform when booking an attraction?
What is it that you like about it?
Do you have a booking platform that you will completely avoid? And why?
Have you booked from SISTIC? Would you book with them if I say they offer attractions now?
I then outlined a simple task which is,
“Book for an attraction on SISTIC.com.sg that is suitable for you and your family on a weekend”
The results from my observations were fascinating and I sure did found good insights from the interview session. This process allows me to understand their struggles, suggestions and identify many pain points.
Affinity Diagram
To have a good amount of data and identify patterns, we have to at least have 5 interviewees. I combined my data with two others in my class, each focusing on other companies they were working on, and sort them into statistics, observation and quotes. I then highlighted the ones that are SISTIC-related and focused on the feedback, both negative and positive experience.
Below are the findings,
What’s the problem here?
Attractions category not being visible enough
Attractions not being given a fair focus compared to events
No listings of attractions on the homepage
What can we improve on?
Homepage
Referring back to the user goals, we want to make users find and book the attraction that they might enjoy. From the interviews I did earlier, it shows that simple problem solving can be done without a full overhaul to improve the website, leading to a better experience for the users.
Currently, the carousel banner is taking up almost whole screen, making forcing important information to display on at the bottom of the banner. My solution to this is to,
Minimize the carousel banner.
Have ‘Events’ and Attractions’ pushed up to the main screen.
Attraction Listings and Checkout
On the website, it seems that the checkout experience seems to be “just alright”, “it works”. However, from the competitor analysis we did earlier, there are features that we can get inspiration from and introduce it to SISTIC to make the booking experience better. My suggestion is to,
1. Add video snippets of the attraction. As mentioned earlier, a quick preview of the attraction makes users understand of what to expect out of it.
2. Add a review section. Displaying reviews could help users understand from customers honest experience, giving the attraction a higher credibility and trust.
My Reflections
Sometimes, the solutions can already be seen and found at the very beginning of the step, but that very first step can also be just an assumption. And that’s why research is important as an assumption is such a disease. The only way to get rid of this biasness is to validate, validate and va-li-date. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog. Till the next one!
