Cinema checkout audit

Twenty-five things a cinema checkout has to do

• Finding the film
• Every film has its own page at its own URL
  Not a modal, not an anchor on the programme page. Search engines, social shares and links all need somewhere to point.3 pts
• Showtimes are filterable by day, format, language and subtitles
  A table you scroll is not a filter, and subtitles are the single most common reason a moviegoer picks one screening over another.3 pts
• Accessible screenings are marked and filterable
  Wheelchair spaces, audio description, relaxed and sensory-friendly screenings. If it exists and nobody can find it, it does not exist.2 pts
• The film page carries a trailer that plays without leaving the page
  A link to YouTube sends the buyer to a site designed to keep them.2 pts
• Structured data marks up films and screenings
  Movie and ScreeningEvent JSON-LD on the film page. Free to add and it is what answer engines read.2 pts
• Choosing a seat
• Seat selection works one-handed on a phone
  Most cinema tickets are bought on a phone. If the seat map needs pinch-zoom and two hands, it is losing sales every night.3 pts
• The seat map matches the real hall
  Wheelchair spaces, companion seats, house seats and holds drawn as they actually are, not as a generic grid.2 pts
• Unavailable seats are visually obvious before they are tapped
  Discovering a seat is taken by tapping it is the most common avoidable frustration in cinema checkout.2 pts
• Seats are held while the customer pays, and released if they do not
  Both halves matter. No hold means double sales; no release means phantom unavailability for the rest of the night.3 pts
• Paying
• Checkout happens on your own domain
  Handing the buyer to a ticketing vendor's domain costs completion and destroys your ability to measure the funnel.3 pts
• Guest checkout exists
  Forcing account creation before a first purchase is the single most expensive friction in online ticketing.3 pts
• The local payment methods your audience actually uses are present
  Cards are table stakes. The wallet or local method your market defaults to is what converts.3 pts
• Gift cards can partly pay for an order
  Partial redemption is the normal case in cinema and a common place for checkouts to fail.2 pts
• Four tickets of different types can be bought in one order
  The family purchase is the most common and the most complicated basket you handle.2 pts
• A failed payment returns the customer to the right place with their seats intact
  If a declined card dumps them at the programme page with the seats gone, that sale is gone too.3 pts
• The total, including all fees, is visible before the payment step
  A fee revealed at the last screen is the classic abandonment trigger, and increasingly a regulatory problem.2 pts
• After the sale
• The ticket arrives immediately and works offline
  Signal in a cinema foyer is unreliable. A ticket that needs a live connection to display is not a ticket.3 pts
• The ticket can be added to the phone wallet
  It is where people look, and it survives a dead email app.2 pts
• The confirmation includes the things people actually re-check
  Hall, start time, seat numbers, address and how late they can arrive.1 pt
• Customers can see their booking history
  It is the cheapest reason to build an account, and the foundation of every retention campaign you might run later.2 pts
• Knowing who bought
• Purchases are tied to a moviegoer profile
  Without identity, every ticket sale is anonymous and no retention work is possible at all.3 pts
• Watchlist or favourite signals are captured
  Intent before purchase is the most valuable signal a cinema can collect and almost nobody collects it.2 pts
• Abandoned baskets are recoverable
  Somebody who picked seats and did not pay is the warmest audience you will ever have.2 pts
• You can segment by behaviour, not just by mailing list
  Genre affinity, visit rhythm and format preference are the difference between a campaign and a newsletter.2 pts
• You can export your own customer data in full
  If the answer is no, you do not own your audience, and you will find that out at the worst moment.2 pts

Your score

Weighting is ours and is based on what actually moves completion rate: seat holding, guest checkout, local payment methods and failure recovery are worth more than niceties. Nothing is sent anywhere.