Overview

Village Cinemas Australia engaged Profero to redevelop their online ticket purchasing website. Similar to Event Cinema and Hoyts in NSW, Village cinemas is Victoria’s main movie distribution company. Currently villagecinemas.com.au have about 1.6 million visits per month.

 Team

I was part of a team consisted of a digital strategist, creative director, UX designer, technical director, developer and a project manager.

Challenge

The website redevelopment objectives were:

• Improve the look and feel of the whole website

• Improve session finding and ticket purchasing process

• Improve the Village Movie Club image to attract more visitors to sign up

• Social media integration

Approach

I started the discovery phase with analysing the Google Analytics of the exisitng cinema website. This gave me insights such as popular pages of the website, drop-off points, conversion rates (purchasing tickets), etc.

Next I start doing competitor analysis - looking into other Australian mainstream cinema website such as Event Cinema, Reading Cinema and Hoyts and expanded the research to global entertainment providers. For seat booking experience, I research into other industries such as airlines and sporting arenas.

A valuable resource I found for understanding the journey of a moviegoer is Indi Young's Movie Mental Model. This framework explores the thought process involved in going to the cinema, extending beyond merely choosing a movie and buying a ticket. It delves into deeper aspects such as the motivations for watching a film, the decision-making process, the journey to the theater, and more.

I mapped the existing information architecture of the site and made changes to enhance the discoverability of some sections.

Using insights gathered from discovery activities, I began sketching ideas for the new website and progressed to designing all the key templates. I created an interactive prototype using Axure.

The proposed designs were then showcased back to the client for feedback. After several iterations, the designs got signed off.

As part of the scope, I developed a comprehensive 180+ page functional specification outlining each design element and its behaviour.

Conclusion

The website redevelopment was successfully completed and launched in 2012.