Building a Better Visitor Experience Strategy
While outreach strategies, online marketing, building a presence on social media, and attracting visitors outside of the physical space of your venue are all valuable ways to generate returning guests and memberships, the importance of ensuring and building a better visitor experience shouldn’t be overlooked.
For first-time guests, their visitor experience will be what determines whether they share their experience online, revisit your venue, or tell their friends about what a great time they had. Even if you nail every aspect of your marketing strategy, it’s going to be difficult to retain visitors and generate memberships if you aren’t building a better visitor experience strategy.
From ticketing and your online platform to developing engaging and interactive exhibits, here are some of the best ways you can bolster your visitor experience strategy.
Ticketing/Booking Visitor Experience Strategy
The first thing your guests will see and interact with upon entering your venue will probably be the ticketing booth. And like most things in both life and business, the first impression will set the tone for the rest of your visitors’ day.
It’s crucial that, especially around the main entrance of your venue, you create a welcoming space. This is true not only of your on-site ticketing booths but also for your online ticketing platform.
Here are some instructive ways to build a better ticketing/booking visitor experience.
- Having a well-trained and friendly staff available to answer questions, provide information, and greet guests will instantly provide a sense of comfort and satisfaction for your guests.
- Incorporating a flexible POS system will not only make lines shorter and the transaction process simpler, but it will allow your employees to take the ticketing process outside of the ticket booth and into the lobby. This ensures that you’re taking advantage of all your ticketing opportunities to inform guests on membership incentives and build returning members.
- Utilizing cloud-based technology to run your servers will guarantee that your ticketing software is running 24/7 without any hassles or on-site server issues.
- Staging signs, monitors, and colorful banners at the entrance of your venue can help you showcase events and provide a sense of excitement to arriving guests.
- If your guests are booking their tickets online, it’s important to have a simple, efficient, and easy-to-use online ticketing platform.
Visitor Experience Strategy with Technology
The rise of technology has lead to changes in nearly every industry and sector of business. While some museums and other educational venues have shown resistance to such changes, others are embracing the tech wave and implementing technology into their exhibits.
While it’s understandable why some museums are resistant to such changes–issues of preservation, fraud, and maintaining a placid setting come to mind–there are several ways that exhibits and galleries can utilize technology for building a better visitor experience strategy.
Here are a few ways you can utilize technology to vamp up your venue and follow current museum industry trends.
- Museums and historical sites have been offering sound-based devices so their visitors can take audio tours at their own pace, but what if you offered tablets with sensory wall games to engage visitors? A number of museums are experimenting with video-sensor technology to create a more interactive visitor experience.
- QR codes have made their way into zoos and museums across the world, allowing their viewers to scan the codes in order to learn about the exhibit material and objects.
- Virtual Reality technology has made some huge leaps in the past decades, and incorporating VR into your venue is another way to create excitement around an exhibit or gallery. You can take your guests on digital journeys to their favorite ancient cities or to the earth’s most uninhabited regions.
Building a Better Visitor Experience Strategy with Social Media
Allowing your guests to take photographs, videos, and share their experiences via social media is one of the best ways to allow your venue to market itself. And the more engaging, fun, and technologically interactive you make your venue, the more likely it’s going to show up on your guests’ Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and Instagrams.
[Read more: Museum Marketing Strategies]
While it’s hard to appreciate some galleries with annoying flashes, glaring selfie sticks, and bottleneck traffic caused by swaths of people taking pictures, there might be some viable ways museums and educational sites can allow for smartphones and other digital devices.
You could design specific venues and exhibits that are technology friendly, allowing visitors to utilize not only their phones but the gallery itself. Implementing some of the above-mentioned technological opportunities is a great way to build excitement and allow your guests to spread the word for you.
Building a better visitor experience is what can build long-term growth for your venue. ACME can help you manage all your ticketing and online transactions with our simple and efficient ticketing technology. Utilize a flexible POS to help you sell tickets on the floor, and take advantage of our cloud-based technology that will give you access to data and keep your servers online 24/7. Start building your visitor experience from the ticketing booth, and schedule an ACME demo today.