The Cardinal Sin

Okay, maybe it's not the worst, but it's pretty bad: your organization provides a contact email on your web site, in an email, or on a brochure, but you don't reply to email sent to the address.

Friends, Romans, arts organizations: don't do this.

It's like lying to your patrons, by implying that the email address is monitored. Your patrons buy tickets and make donations to your organization. They are people you want to keep happy. If they have a question or comment or even a complaint, they deserve an answer from you.

You undermine their trust by not doing this, and you might piss them off enough that they reduce their donations or ticket purchases, or stop entirely. (An organization I donated to for years and years didn't respond to two direct communications I sent them, one of which included a donation. My third letter got a perfunctory apology from its executive director, the addressee of the second letter, and I have not donated since.)

So: if you have a contact email, make sure you read and reply to comments from people who take the time to contact you. It's a great way to earn the trust of the people who care about your organization.

Grist for the Web Site Basics Page

There's an organization in town whose performances I don't attend very often, but this season, there are a couple I'd like to see. I went to buy my tickets and discovered I hadn't saved my password, presuming I have an account there, and there's no guest purchase option.

So I tried the reset process. I clicked the link to request a password change email; I got the email; I copied the link into my preferred browser. I generated a password and typed it in, twice.

And I got a Token Expired error.

SO I tried again. This time, after I got the email from the organization, I just clicked the link and typed in the password I had generated.

I got a Token Expired error again. This means that the org has a time limit set somewhere that is too short for actually changing your password. There's a note to call the box office if you have a problem changing your password, but if I liked to make phone calls, I wouldn't be trying to order on the web site.

I emailed the box office instead, asking them to pass my email to IT so that the problem could be fixed. It's possible that I never had a password for this organization, but if that is the problem, that should be the error message I get: we can't find an account for you, so click this link to create one.

Le sigh. If I find myself in that neighborhood, I will buy at the box office. If not....well, maybe the org will fix this UX issue before the performance I'd like to see.

We Can't Scare People Off

I gotta say, I am discouraged to see concert write-ups like this on the SFS web page:

DVOŘÁK’S CELLO CONCERTO WITH THE SF SYMPHONY

Conductor Krzysztof Urbański leads an exhilarating program of virtuosic showpieces, featuring Dvořák’s celebrated Cello Concerto performed by Sol Gabetta, whose “wit, aristocratic poise, and elegance” (The Herald) lend themselves perfectly to the elaborate grandeur of this romantic work. Then, hear Mozart’s charming overture to his iconic opera, The Magic Flute.

It doesn't even mention the Lutoslawski. Look, consider actually OWNING that there's a recent piece on the program and then get excited about it! It's a wonderful piece! People will enjoy hearing it!

Especially since, you know, there's all this stuff in the email publicity and in the program book about how cool it is to have conductors playing music from their native lands (or whatever phrasing it is that you're using). I look forward to hearing Charles Dutoit conduct some Frank Martin one of these days, y'know?

Ticket Buying Hell

Okay, more evidence of why staff and board members and members of the press should go through exactly what the public goes through to buy tickets.

1. The organization's web site doesn't have a choose-your-own-seat option.
2. The box office's hours are during weekday working hours only.
3. Even if you call during those hours, you get an answering machine (and you hear about how to buy ticket on line - see 1 above).

I'd really like to see this concert, even though it's at a logistically difficult time for me, but my companion has some specific seating needs and the seating software didn't make the right guess in 10 tries. Also, the concert is selling poorly enough that there's a two-for-one offer. Maybe, just maybe, people aren't buying because they are having problems buying - and the first rule of selling tickets is "Make it easy for people to give you their money."

And Even More.

Two additional issues with the new SF Opera web site:

• If there's a season calendar with a month-by-month layout - like a wall calendar, you might remember those - I can't find it. There is a scrolling calendar, but you can't see more than maybe a week at a time.
• The new skin for Tessitura, which handles on-the-web ticket sales, is ghastly. It loads slowly, the seat labels are unreliable for the last row of a section, and the graphical display is much smaller than the old display. This is a serious problem for anyone with poor eyesight, which might be the cases for older audience members, who may be more likely to be using a desktop machine than a smartphone.

More

Okay, I have wandered around the new SFO web site, and can report a couple more things.

• The mobile web site has exactly the same content and layout as the desktop site; that is, they've used responsive design.
• On the good side, this means the type is very large and readable on the desktop. On the down side, this means you scroll an awful lot.
• It's very easy to read on a smartphone, and mine doesn't have an unusually large screen.
• Cast & Creative team is too far down the page. Maybe get that above the trivia, which includes something about....The Barber of Seville? And get it above the place where you're touting subscriptions.

You Might Be a Little Confused.

A recent trend in web site style is to have a home page that scrolls, and scrolls, and scrolls, largely robbing you of any sense of location on the site, and hiding stuff, because you don't know how far you need to scroll. They look splashy, and to my mind they don't actually work very well.

SF Opera has gone and provided us with one of these on their redesigned web site.

I happen to have a rather strong preference for a web site where you see a bunch of links and can tell what will happen when you click one. So....this will take some getting used to.

I can report that the press photo presentation is greatly improved over the old web site, though.

And by the way, that's Brian Mulligan in the blond wig and beard, as Enrico in Lucia. That definitely confused me.