Ticketmaster, a Live Nation Entertainment company, announced in a press release this week that it is planning to make the online ticket purchasing experience more user-friendly. The West Hollywood, California based ticket sales and distributon company is streamlining its online Web site and ultimately making a major change to the way customers verify their purchases.
Ticketmaster has decided to get rid of the conventional integrated letter and number form of CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Humans and Computers Apart). CAPTCHAs have been an essential tool in ensuring that a human response is being generated as opposed to bots. "While an important step in blocking BOTS, we know the current CAPTCHA solution has been a frustrating part of buying tickets for fans", said Nathan Hubbard, CEO of Ticketmaster.
Now, when purchasing tickets, instead of customers being faced with the task of having to decipher a distorted CAPTCHA phrase of odd looking letters and numbers, customers will be asked to solve a puzzle form of CAPTCHA from Solve Media. "We are excited to work with Ticketmaster to make the purchase process as painless and efficient for fans as possible," says Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media. He went on to say that consumers can solve a puzzle CAPTCHA faster than they can discern number and letter CAPTCHA. The puzzle form of security is safe, "Our security platform makes it difficult for BOTS to affect the system, allowing for better user experience and premium branding opportunities." said Jacoby.
For mobile users of the Ticketmaster app, fans can authorize their purchases using the "push" notification feature on mobile phones. This will surely result in a happier ticket buying experience, as mobile users with the innovative us of "push" can bypass the existing CAPTCHA. "Our goal is to improve the fan experience while providing security from BOTS and in the case of our mobile apps, we found a way to remove the type-in step completely," said Hubbard.
Ticketmaster is one of four divisions of the world's leading live entertainment and e-commerce companies, Live Nation Entertainment. It's one of the first major companies to abandon the standard CAPTCHA to help make user experience enjoyable, a change which could potentially boost online sales.
