Horse Of the Year Show is the number one show of the equestrian calendar and is the culmination of the British showing season. The show welcomes 1,600 horses and ponies, 1,500 competitors and 60,000 visitors to the NEC each year. Their website is the hub for the show’s visitors, competitors and service providers. It offers visitor information, event schedules, hospitality and hotel bookings, trade information, and links to important competitor resources.
We were approached by the event organisers, Grandstand Media; to design and develop a web application to provide an interface for the sale of their VIP Experience tickets and accommodation packages. The application would also need to manage the resulting bookings and its users.
To understand their requirements, we gathered feedback about their existing website at the time:
After digesting the previous website’s shortcomings, we surmised that the primary objective was to build a dedicated online ticketing system that allows their customers to book VIP event tickets, accommodation and hospitality passes online. This booking system needed to integrate with their content management system (CMS), to provide a user interface for bookings to be made through the website.
In addition to providing online booking functionality, guiding its customers to the relevant area of the site and providing easy access scheduling information for everyone involved in the show was vital to the success of the project.
Our points of contact throughout the project were their marketing manager and operations manager. Both were familiar with the technologies we use to share files and collaborate on documents.
To build a front-end interface that satisfied all user types, there needed to be a carefully constructed user journey. We considered all the types of users and then planned out the critical paths to get to their desired locations. The types of users for the website were identified to be:
Planning the funnel for online sales required a deeper understanding of the clients offering, so we could guide visitors to their goal. We focused on three distinct user pathways: general admission tickets, which go through to the NEC’s ticketing partner, group booking enquiries, which require speaking to a member of the HOYS team, and VIP Experiences, which are purchased directly through the website.
Clearly understanding a client’s business objective helps us make informed decisions and enables us to build an in-depth strategy for the client.
HOYS’ existing system for taking ticket sales relied heavily on customers booking over the phone while the online sales platform provided a basic system that was not fit for purpose. Taking bookings this way required excessive administration time from the sales team.
Ticket sales made over the phone were manually logged meaning that the likelihood for human error was heightened, while maintaining two separate sets of bookings (online and phone) introduced further potential for error. Both proved to be an expensive and inefficient way to manage the process.
Further to that, the accommodation and hospitality booking system was previously managed through WordPress and WooCommerce. The e-commerce platform for purchasing tickets was significantly out of date and presented a security risk.
We worked with Grandstand Media on developing a web application that integrated with the new website. The application allows full management of the VIP experience tickets, hotel bookings, and hospitality packages from one central location. This provided the client with all the features they needed to:
The functionalities of our custom-built, self-service ticketing system had a significant positive impact on their business, reducing human error, increasing efficiency and providing insights into the sales data.
The integration meant that there was never a chance of double booking a room or overselling the VIP experience tickets. It works seamlessly, providing the stability required for high-volume sales during the period leading up to the show.
The new booking system still allows their customers to book over the phone by providing a MOTO (mail order telephone system) payment interface directly within the app.
When a customer calls, the booking agent can use the system to log their booking details and take payment. The “over the phone” customer experience works in parallel with online bookings to maintain a single source of bookings which has further reduced friction in the administration of bookings.
One of the core requirements of this project was for the booking platform and website to be able to handle periods of significantly increased web traffic. With over 40,000 sessions being recorded on the run up to and during the show, an increase of almost 2000% compared to rest of the year. Analysing and understanding web visitor behaviour gave us a good insight into how we could best structure and serve the content to them.
During the run up to, and during ticket release, there is a huge spike in website demand. Some ticket types sell out in hours due to the popularity of the event so ensuring that the website infrastructure is closely monitored, and sufficient resources are allocated to our servers means that the site can be reliably accessed.
Most attendees at the event access the website with a mobile network (4G/5G) connection or public Wi-Fi; designing and building a solution that enhanced their mobile experience was paramount. We not only ensured the website was optimised for mobile use, but we also created a dedicated “showtime version” of priority pages, scaling back unnecessary content and simplifying the navigation menu.
The intention is to serve the users with the most popular pages most relevant while the show is running including the scheduling, competitor, and results information. This creates a lightweight, fast version of the website putting the crucial information right at the visitors’ fingertips.
We decided to continue using a CMS that the HOYS team were already familiar with to manage content and provide the convenience of a visual page builder. This provided full control of managing, editing and updating the website content to the HOYS marketing team.
We further extended the functionality of the content management with custom post types for some of the core content. A set of fully customisable fields can be added to these content types and styled using dedicated templates. This ensured a consistent look and feel to all pages as well as making content easy and management low maintenance.
We were tasked with taking their existing branding and elevating it to provide a fresh new feel while maintaining brand recognition.
The old website looked dated, so we worked with the marketing team at HOYS to update and modernise their brand. We utilised the existing colour palette to bring brand familiarity but toned down the bolder colours to bring about a cleaner more distraction free feel.
We migrated the existing blog posts and articles and formatted these using the modernised look and feel, breathing new life into the content. Migrating the existing data also secured the positive SEO work that had be carried out on the site to date. This meant they did not lose positions in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords.
Google Analytics and other analytical tools were set up to track user activity across the site.
We ensure the data collected for marketing analysis complies with GDPR requirements. We use a Google Consent Management Platform (CMP) integration, to ensure compliance for the website users.
As standard practice we carried out quality assurance (QA) throughout and especially at key milestones of the development. We additionally carried out a final phase of quality assurance and testing at the end of the project to ensure all aspects of the website met the required criteria and quality expected.
We provided training on how to manage the booking system and content management system.
Our managed hosting takes a proactive approach to monitoring resources, website speed, performance and guaranteed uptime of 99.99%.
The ongoing support provides continued maintenance and patching of the servers, while ensuring that the content management is kept secure and up to date.
The project was a huge success, being launched on time and on budget.
Very efficient and friendly team to work with, from initial meetings through to the ongoing support the service is professional and timely. Highly recommend!
Harry Hoys
Weaving Webs Limited is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 03739247.
Registered office: Weaving Webs Ltd, The Den, Bridge Street, Buckingham, MK18 1EL. VAT reg no: 277 6535 60
