How do you build the best website to sell tickets for an event?
Well, you start by taking inspiration from organizations similar to your own. Leading cultural organizations and web agencies have shared their most exciting innovations in online ticket sales to help inspire your own website improvements. Read on to learn how you could take patron experience to another level!
Image: Queens Theatre NY CultureSuite
Queens Theatre: Balancing Brand Identity With Modern, Responsive Design
Queens Theatre is a historic World's Fair venue in Queens, New York, committed to preserving cultural heritage while managing a contemporary event website for today’s audiences.
Working with cultural website partners CultureSuite, Queens Theatre implemented a new website alongside their move to Spektrix in 2024. Now, it’s quick and efficient for the team to manage event information online and through on-site digital signage, using a single content management system. They’ve kept their brand identity front and center, showcasing their heritage, events and nonprofit status. Meanwhile, they’ve enhanced the online experience for patrons with a more responsive site interface for smartphones and tablets.
Ticket sales in 2024 — when Queens Theatre switched to Spektrix and launched their new website — were 40% higher than the previous year. The brand, program and sales journey are working for audiences in Queens!
"What used to take our team days now happens in minutes. This lets us focus on creating exceptional experiences for our diverse Queens community." —Jay Rogers, Director of Operations, Queens Theatre
Image: Discover Children’s Story Centre London Cog Design
Discover Children’s Story Centre: Workshops and Wow Factor
Discover Children’s Story Centre in London is a space for 0-11 year olds and their grown-ups to play, create and discover. Visitors select a date to explore the center, then tailor the day with a selection of workshops and activities, from storytelling to discovery trails and immersive funfairs.
Discover have been working with Cog Design since 2019, starting with workshops and discussions to understand the unique needs of young audiences and busy parents. They prioritized responsive design for easy booking on mobile, cross-team collaboration to promote both ticket income and donations, plus (of course) the wow factor to build excitement for a great day out.
The new website transformed the way that people booked tickets for Discover, growing overall attendance while reducing phone calls to the team. And with greater visibility for philanthropic messaging, online donations grew by 600% — building vital revenue for the future.
Image: Symphony Space NY Eyekiller
Symphony Space: Creating a More Connected Online Journey
Symphony Space, a vibrant performing arts center on Manhattan's Upper West Side, showcases an eclectic mix of theatre, film, literature, music, dance and family entertainment, making it a cultural hub for diverse audiences.
In 2018, Symphony Space partnered with Eyekiller to reimagine their digital presence ahead of the venue’s 40th anniversary. Since then, the partnership has continued to evolve, with Eyekiller acting as a long-term digital partner — delivering a digital platform that reflects the organization’s creative spirit, streamlines the patron experience, and maximizes revenue through a tailored Spektrix integration.
With a packed program of live events, livestreams and a tiered membership scheme ranging from $75 to $10,000, the website plays a central role in ticket sales, philanthropy and supporter engagement — all delivered through an accessible, responsive design that puts user experience first.
With a varied calendar of live events and livestreaming, as well as a multi-tier membership program ranging from $100 to $10,000, the Symphony Space website plays an important role in ticket buying, streaming and philanthropy, all packaged within an attractive, easily navigable, responsive layout.
Symphony Space and Eyekiller collaborated closely to create a digital platform that reflects the vibrancy of the venue — and delivers results. It's a powerful example of how thoughtful digital strategy, strong partnership and technical Spektrix integration can set the stage for long-term success.
Since launch, the site has driven:
41% increase in online sales
75% increase in website traffic
82% increase in mobile traffic
Image: Perelman Performings Arts Center NY Substrakt
Perelman Performing Arts Center: Building an Accessible Booking Experience
PAC NYC (Perelman Performing Arts Center) is a bold new arts space in the heart of New York’s World Trade Center, and accessibility has been central to its mission from the beginning.
In 2023, PAC NYC partnered with digital agency Substrakt to launch a new website to accompany the opening of their building. Soon after, Substrakt implemented Viadukt, their accessible ticketing path integrated with Spektrix, to streamline online purchases.
Substrakt worked closely with PAC NYC to ensure that their new website is not just compliant with accessibility standards, but genuinely usable and welcoming to everyone. From discovery to launch and beyond, accessibility was treated as a core design and development priority, including when accessibility consultants Equal Entry conducted a full audit of the site.
By prioritizing accessibility as a goal rather than a requirement, PAC NYC and Substrakt have created a website that’s better for everyone — faster, clearer and easier to use, regardless of device or ability. PAC NYC’s approach sets a benchmark for cultural organizations aiming to offer genuinely inclusive digital journeys.
“In order to provide and maintain an accessible experience, we partnered with Substrakt and Equal Entry to implement best practices and incorporate accessibility review in our iterative process. By making accessibility an explicit goal, we’ve delivered a better experience for everyone.” —Leo Bowen, Digital Product Manager, PAC NYC
Image: Warwick Arts Centre UK Grandad Digital
Warwick Arts Centre: Data-Driven Improvements and Information Flow
Warwick Arts Centre is one of the U.K.’s largest multi-artform hubs, bringing together people from the University of Warwick and the wider arts community.
A lasting, five-plus year partnership with Grandad Digital has shown them the value of continually improving their website to better meet audiences’ needs. That started with a restructure to create streamlined, accessible user journeys. Later, in response to ongoing research and testing, they added a custom shopping cart — creating a more personalized, on-brand experience, with a focus on clarity of information and targeted upsells.
When the custom cart went live, Warwick Arts Centre saw a 35% increase in revenue via the website within a single quarter — building revenue for the centre and efficiencies for the box office team.
Image: Cheltenham Festivals UK Supercool
Cheltenham Festivals: Bulk-Buy Events From Customer Wishlists
Cheltenham Festivals, in Gloucestershire, England, produce inclusive festivals and projects focusing on music, science, and the spoken and written word.
Their largest festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival, includes over 400 events spread over 10 days, with tickets in high demand. In the past, customers might have circled the events that caught their eye in a paper brochure. Today, they need the digital equivalent — and that’s where the festival has worked with web developers Supercool to create a Wishlist feature.
Customers can "favorite" the events that attract them — and when they’ve curated their list, they can bulk-buy those events, add them to a cart, and complete the transaction with the fewest possible clicks.
After switching to Spektrix and implementing the Wishlist feature in 2023, Cheltenham Festivals more than doubled the proportion of sales completed within the first hour of launch. A robust web journey and intuitive tools meant hardly any customer complaints, and what feedback there was has informed a new, improved version to be rolled out in 2025.
Image: Calgary Philharmonic AB Sland Studios
Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra: Growing Online Merchandise Sales
Calgary Philharmonic is one of Canada’s most celebrated live music ensembles, welcoming over 100,000 annual visitors to events in spaces across the city.
The orchestra worked with web designers Sland Studios — also based in Calgary — to build a website for ticketing, subscriptions and souvenirs from their popular online shop. Customers can choose memorabilia ranging from mugs to gift cards to apparel, creating an important additional revenue stream to support the Philharmonic’s work.
In 2023, Calgary Philharmonic brought in almost $40,000 in merchandise sales — a vital revenue stream. And now that it’s set up on their site, there’s only a little work to keep the money rolling in.
For their boutique range of items, Calgary Philharmonic are successfully managing merchandise sales directly through Spektrix. If merchandise is core to your revenue, Spektrix also supports integrations with point-of-sale systems and online shopping solutions like Shopify or Square — with every transaction recorded against a single customer record.
Image: The Cabot MA Splitpixel
The Cabot: Multi-Tier Memberships and Referrals
The Cabot is a stunning cinema, theater and music venue in Beverley, Massachusetts, that focuses on building community through arts and social gatherings.
When the Cabot overhauled their membership program, they also wanted to present it more clearly on the site. Working with the team from Splitpixel, they designed a page featuring multiple color-coded tier options, with choices to buy individual or joint memberships, set up auto-renewals or select monthly or annual payments — and a “Join Today” button for every tier, taking new members straight to the cart to complete their purchase. Once users are members, they can also access private members-only content and events through the site.
With around 1,500 active members, and philanthropic revenue worth four times the value of ticket sales, the Cabot can fully realize the benefits of its site — demonstrating its importance to supporters and community members on the North Shore and creating premium experiences for its members.
This article was sponsored by Spektrix.