A new online company based in Denmark is hoping to assist ticket sellers in avoiding site crashes from user overload.
Queue-it, launched this spring, provides a virtual queue software service to online ticket sellers, moving their customers to a separate site where they are held in line until it is time to make a purchase. This software allows a ticket site to avoid the customer crunch which can accompany high load ticket sales, averting business-disrupting crashes from overuse as well as reducing customer loss.
Once on the Queue-it site, a customer receives a unique place in line and an expected wait time, both of which are counted down dynamically on the screen. While waiting in line, users are exposed to further purchasing opportunities and other seller-generated information, including Twitter and Facebook updates during the sale and permission marketing for email offers, although users do have the option to block this added information while they await their turn.
When customers approach the front of the queue, they receive an email or text to alert them that they may then re-enter the ticket site and complete a ticket purchase. Through the use of cloud computing, Queue-it can handle an infinite number of diverted users, eliminating the risk that a seller’s customers will overwhelm the Queue-it site. Users will re-enter the ticket site only at a pace that the site can handle in order to avoid site crash once users are re-introduced.
Camilla Ley Valentin, chief communications officer and co-founder of Queue-it, believes the model can work in spite of a public often unwilling to wait for long online, or anywhere. In a recent interview with TicketNews, she noted, “Our experience is that ticket buyers will happily wait up to 45 minutes in line for an attractive event.”
A ticket seller initiates a Queue-it account by setting parameters for the company or event’s queuing needs, uploading relevant graphics and, finally, redirecting the selling company’s link to the Queue-it site. Once this is completed, a seller is ready to use the Queue-it service.
The company offers both subscription and per-transaction plans for prospective clients. Its subscription offer includes charges related to the set up and use of one simultaneous queue. The per-transaction offer includes a charge for each new transaction, which occurs each time a new end-user takes a place in the queue.
For those who have one or just a few events to set up, the company offers a combination plan in which the client pays a start-up fee for each new queue set up, with the per-transaction plan kicking in once users show up. The company is currently running a free trial offer in which a seller can receive an event’s first 1,000 queue spots for free.
In her discussion of these different types of offers, Ley Valentin believes they offer an “attractive” variety of options: “Our customers pay for what they get. No more, no less.”
Currently, the company has no plans to work directly with ticket brokers, but Ley Valentin sees possibilities for some work with brokers in the future. “We are convinced that ticket brokers will benefit from the advertisement opportunities Queue-it presents, and are looking into the subject in more detail. However, our focus for now remains on the primaries.”
Other product features include a link which allows end-users to book a later time to be placed back at the originating site, bypassing the Queue-it waiting line at that time in a kind of “appointment-based” set up. While not especially useful in the fast-paced world of online ticket sales, Ley Valentin told TicketNews that this feature has great potential application to public sector customer sales, a segment which the company is also exploring.
The U.S. ticketing industry may not yet have heard of Queue-it, but that will change soon, if the company has anything to do with it. As Ley Valentin explains, Queue-it has big plans for expansion later this year: “We are starting up internationally during the fall, and are targeting the U.S. market as one of the first and most interesting markets for our software service.”
