The important stuff first….
Last year we used entryTickets.net to sell the WordCamp tickets. Out of nearly 200 tickets sold we had almost no issues with ticket purchases. The owner of the site Paul Scott provided me with amazing support, which is why I decided to use entryTickets to sell this years’ WordCamp CT tickets again.
Take a look in the navigation of the WordCamp CT for the “Register Now” button and buy your WordCamp Cape Town 2012 tickets now!
Should anyone have any issues with the ticket system feel free to email the organising team – capetown@wordcamp.org
The full story behind using entryTickets…
Outside of WordPress my passion is mountain biking and trail running, as a result I regularly enter for races online. What I can say is that entering a race is usually a painful user experience, I am sure many of you have shared this experience online at some point.
Magnetic South is an events organising company who focuses on sports events and they use the entryTickets system for various of their events. When I used entryTickets the user experience was simple, straight forward and I was not frustrated. As a result I choose entryTickets for WCCT 2011.
The WordCamp websites are powered by a MultiSite system. The WordCamp organisers all have the same themes and plugins to use. Some people would say this is limiting, but I really don’t mind, its a great system and I am able to publish what I need.
This year I wanted to use the built in Event Ticketing system, which is powered by WP Event Ticketing by 9seeds. Last year I did not have a PayPal account, however this year I have a PayPal account and decided to use WP Event Ticketing.
First step… RTFM or read the “getting started” instructions. I quickly realized that using PayPal would not work as the ZAR currency is not supported. This is not something new to me as we deal with this limitation on web development projects. Usually there is a way around it like using the currency converter WooCommerce extension.
With the WordCamp CT website there is no way for me to display ZAR for ticket prices. I have to choose a supported currency USD or Euro. This means that when you land on the ticket sales page you will see something like the WordCamp Edinburugh ticket sales page. This would be confusing to users.
We actually went ahead with configuring PayPal, activating ticket sales and doing some internal testing. The UX feedback was not positive, which made me feel uncomfortable.
Paul Scott from entryTickets mailed me and asked me if I was interested in using his site to sell WCCT 2012 tickets via his site again. I made the tough decision to go for a non-WordPress event ticketing solution. Being a WordPress fan I want to use WP for everything, but in this instance I feel using a South African service will be more suitable.
Thanks for reading!
Ash
