Your website is the first impression people get of your brand. When an audience visits your website, they are looking for two main things; One- to know which movies your theater is currently playing or two- in order to buy tickets and/or make a reservation. But what makes a good movie website?
Does your website help you accomplish your business goals? The goal of every business is to make money. Your website helps you make money by converting the traffic generated by your ads or your marketing campaign(s) into sales, reservations, or leads.
Movie websites should generally be simple, fun, and up-to-date, and highly impactful. To achieve this certain best practices need to be adhered to:
- Simplicity in design and formatting
- Avoid irrelevant content
- Use high-quality visuals
- Mobile responsiveness
- A quick and simple booking process
- Frequently asked questions
Simplicity in Design and Formatting
A movie website’s traffic can vary based on the design you choose for your site. Resist the urge to have too many links and pages. Navigation should ALWAYS be easy.
You never want visitors to have to THINK about what to do next; it should always be obvious either by instruction or, better, visual language.Keep things as simple and clear as much as possible
Avoid irrelevant content
A movie website is no place to start talking about the history of the company, the way of work, or the charity your company does. It’s fine to have such pages on your website, but they are not the focus of the user experience, your sales funnel is.
Remember to keep it simple. Your website visitors have 1 real reason to use your website; you should be enabling them by lowering any friction that keeps them from proceeding through your sales funnel.
First, they scroll through your current showing and coming soon movie list(s). You should keep this list as up-to-date as possible and make sure It’s updated as soon as possible.
Secondly, once they find the movie they want to watch, they’ll check the film summary and trailer which helps them confirm their decision.
Titles are not enough. Not including the movie’s description, rating, and (if available) a few review blurb snippets, is a missed opportunity and a big one. You never want visitors to leave your site looking for more information about movies you’re showing, that is how you end up losing leads. Your sales funnel should always keep users on your website.
All relevant movie information, plot summary, actor information, release date and rating information must all be present. By including all of the relevant movie information, you not only maintain your users on your website, but you also keep them from bouncing away to other websites.
Use High-Quality Visuals
What is a movie website without visuals? People have limited attention spans; you need to capture their attention within the first 5 seconds of their visit. High-quality visuals will greatly help achieve this.
Use a lot of photos and videos. These can be photos of famous actors, actresses, and producers.
Videos are even better. Snippets of some popular movies that are currently showing or trailers are highly engaging. Visitors can see what to expect or still frames from the film itself, which triggers excitement and suspense.
Human beings are emotional buyers, the trick is to trigger the right emotions that will encourage them to stay on your site and end up making a ticket purchase or viewing reservation; which is the goal of your sales funnel.
Always use high-quality, professionally edited pictures, and videos. Choose to stand out from the rest. We don’t allow ourselves to watch the sunrise… We eagerly experience the awe and primal majesty of the sun breaching the horizon, flooding the shadowed world with it’s golden light.
Mobile Responsiveness
In this day and age, mobile responsiveness goes without saying. Visitors should be able to navigate through your website on their mobile devices without experiencing any difficulties.
Your ticket-purchasing or reservation-booking process should be as short and seamless as possible.
Photos and videos should be optimized to load quickly and seamlessly. The mobile version of your website should be even more direct and to the point than your desktop version.
A quick, and simple booking process
Call-to-action buttons should be prominent and the process laid out in such a way that when clients click on a particular call to action, it directs them to the next page/step without any hassles.
Your website visitors e should be able to select a location, movie, date, showtime, seats, food, and drinks.
Frequently Asked Questions section
Any high-performing movie website needs to have a FAQ section to help visitors understand well how everything works. Try to think of any possible objections or challenges that users might experience while progressing through your sales funnel. Use this section of your website to provide answers and overcome objections.
Wrapping Up
You may be tempted to push building a great-looking website to the bottom of your priority list, but doing so will jeopardize your ticket sales. Today’s theatergoers are a technologically savvy group! When they are looking for events to attend, the first place they look is the internet. If they see a shoddy website with bad photos, broken links, and outdated information, they won’t be confident about the quality of movies and are likely to move on to a competitor’s website with a better interface. Your website is your first chance to wow potential audience members! Show visitors that your theater company is vibrant, exciting, and top-quality by investing those same attributes into your website.
Feeling inspired to improve your website, reduce your bounce rate, or improve your SEO, SER, and Conversion Rates? Contact us today! We’ll show you how you can have a great-looking website that gives your customers a reason to come to you instead of your competitors.
