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https://www.roh.org.uk/events/calendar/2019/03/11?_ga=2.210123029.1694789846.1552744106-235432184.1552744106

 

A former Calendar page for a specific day (example being 11 March 2019 --- just change the bold date parameters e.g.

 

https://www.roh.org.uk/events/calendar/2017/11/24?_ga=2.210123029.1694789846.1552744106-235432184.1552744106

and for 24 November 2017

Hardly a user-friendly approach though!

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7 hours ago, Geoff said:

The alternativeFewer but cleverer people, less pre-occupied with corridor politics and their own position, could work wonders. Sadly we can’t hope for this given the current managerialism that is running riot at Covent Garden. This is all not going to end well but will nonetheless be determinedly sold as a “brave new world”. 

 

I'm put in mind of an interesting remark from the soprano Janis Kelly in the Telegraph yesterday: she said, "I used to feel that everyone in the organisation knew about opera and loved it. Not any more." It was about the industry in general, but I think that on present evidence you can apply it to ROH.

 

Of course it's more important for people to be good at their jobs than to want to work in opera or ballet, but...might the two not very often go together?

 

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41 minutes ago, Richard LH said:

https://www.roh.org.uk/events/calendar/2019/03/11?_ga=2.210123029.1694789846.1552744106-235432184.1552744106

 

A former Calendar page for a specific day (example being 11 March 2019 --- just change the bold date parameters e.g.

 

https://www.roh.org.uk/events/calendar/2017/11/24?_ga=2.210123029.1694789846.1552744106-235432184.1552744106

and for 24 November 2017

Hardly a user-friendly approach though!

 

The calendar link is great, Richard .... but when you click on a performance on one of the various dates it takes you back to the NEW AND IMPROVED WEBSITE ... which is, I fear, not so felicitous I find. 

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12 minutes ago, Bruce Wall said:

 

The calendar link is great, Richard .... but when you click on a performance on one of the various dates it takes you back to the NEW AND IMPROVED WEBSITE ... which is, I fear, not so felicitous I find. 

That's strange Bruce...for me, once I get back to an older calendar page that includes performances for a particular day, if I then click on that performance I get all the usual details about it.

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If I click on the links on the old calendar page I do go to the details for that performance.

 

However if you want to check out another date from the calendar it takes you back to

 

https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events  - that lovely page.

 

I have just tried out the filters (Ballet and Dance + Main Stage) from that lovely page -  and I would really like to know why there is a 'Coming soon' button on two productions.  Other productions just have a larger  'More info' button.

 

A really mess.

 

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I was invited to a “Google hangout” by the ROH (seemed to be a cross between a conference call and Facetime) when I renewed my Access membership recently.  I assume the ROH is looking for feedback from disabled ballet and opera-goers and part of the chat was centered around the new website.  I gave my honest feedback about the horrible changes, particularly the disappearance of “What’s On” and the backwards step of having to apply two or three filters just to see what is on the main stage.  The two (very nice) staff members seemed slightly taken aback at my strong dislike of the “improvements” and my vehement wish for the old system to return.  I did emphasise that as the ROH is supposed to be an actual - er - Opera House, my main reason for looking at the website is to find out:

1. what is actually on and 2. who is performing.  Neither of which is really possible at the moment.

 

This led me to mention the lack of accurate and comprehensible casting information as well as the disappearance of the cast change slips and sometimes inconsistent cast change information given by front of house staff.

 

I was promised that my feedback will be passed to the relevant departments, so we can but hope. 

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46 minutes ago, Anna C said:

I was promised that my feedback will be passed to the relevant departments, so we can but hope. 

 

Anna, thank you, it sounds like you gave them a lot to think about. My advice: send it all again to them by email (or if that feels like too much work, why not just send them a link to your post?)

 

That will make it much harder to ignore everything you said or just cherrypick the criticisms they want to engage with.

 

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43 minutes ago, Geoff said:

 

Anna, thank you, it sounds like you gave them a lot to think about. My advice: send it all again to them by email (or if that feels like too much work, why not just send them a link to your post?)

 

That will make it much harder to ignore everything you said or just cherrypick the criticisms they want to engage with.

 

 

Good idea, Geoff.  I’ll email my thoughts. 

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Whilst deeply unimpressed with the new website, I’m not sure I follow bangorballetboy’s point.  The new calendar for 11 June takes me to Romeo & Juliet and then the performance on 11 June.  It just about works but no where near as clearly as the excellent, functional old calendar.

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Just found another problem. Say you try and outsmart the scrolling (a bit) by setting filters. You then eventually find the event you are interested in, check it out, maybe buy something - and then go back a stage in order to choose another show. However there is no way of staying inside the universe you have selected: the filters are automatically reset back to zero, meaning you start your search from scratch.

 

It is as if they want to make it as hard as possible for us to give them our money. Maddening. 

 

Edited by Geoff
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Website comments sent 14 March:

I’m afraid I’m struggling to see what’s happened with the new website and particularly ‘Ticket’s and events’ rather than the very familiar, highly functional ‘What’s on’.
I can’t get an over view of what’s on, I can’t get a calendar display, and I can’t access booking periods.
To me functionality has been completely lost and I wonder how I’ll manage to cope when booking opens for Autumn.
To be honest, I really can’t see any advantage in what’s been done.
Sorry to be so negative and there may well be teething problems etc.  I do hope you’ll be able to sort things.

 

Answer received 18 March:

I will be passing your feedback to our Digital team. I do know they are issuing new pages over the coming weeks and months and will be endeavouring to make the user experience as smooth as possible.

 

I’ll be interested to see what new pages are issued but in many ways I wish the old pages were brought back - I found they gave me exactly what I wanted.

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Gen booking’s going to be an absolute hoot then.  Only a few seats are suitable for my disability, I’ll be using my ipad on a slower wifi connection than usual and now I have to contend with the website “improvements”.  

 

*stocks up on beta blockers* 

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, pf late,I know that at one time I used to find it odd that Sir David Webster who had a professional background in retail and some experience of running concerts during the war had been put in charge of the ROH in 1946 as its General Administrator. Today I can't help thinking that we could do with someone with a similar background running the place rather than the sort of arts apparatchiks who move effortlessly from one arts organisation to the next with generic transferrable skills such as the ability to read a balance sheet and a proven ability to persuade sponsors to part with their money rather than any particular enthusiasm for the artform in question.The arts bureaucrats who have been running the ROH since the resident companies returned to the opera house in 1999 may, for all I know, have been enthusiastic opera and ballet goers but somehow, of late, they have seemed to lack insight and understanding about how the regular opera and ballet goer thinks and what they need by way of customer service. Perhaps this is because they themselves  long ago ceased to have to buy their own tickets and have lost touch with what the customer experience of doing so is like.

 

A friend has told me that in his communications with the "Dear Leader"  and the minions employed in the Marketing Department he has gleaned the information that a significant part of the ROH's customers today are people who only buy tickets for specific dates which mark significant family events such as anniversaries, granny's birthday or the Christmas trip to see Nutcracker rather than people with a compulsive habit which has to be fed.  I am also told by someone who attended the "  Dear Leader's" visit to the Ballet Association that the ROH count patrons who buy as many as six tickets a year as "regulars" which might explain why the website has not been designed to make life easy for anyone who wants to make multiple purchases on one occasion. Of course the website's design could be a cunning plan to make life difficult for people who might want to make multiple purchases for opera  performances with stellar casts. The trouble is I don't think that anyone in a senior management position at the ROH, anyone ;involved in the design of the website or employed to communicate with the potential audience is that clever and of course there are far easier ways of preventing a repeat of the Forza debacle.  So I am forced to the conclusion that the problems with the new website are  yet another example of the utter cluelessness of many employed in senior management positions at Covent Garden.

 

 

Edited by FLOSS
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6 hours ago, JohnS said:

 

Answer received 18 March:

I will be passing your feedback to our Digital team. I do know they are issuing new pages over the coming weeks and months and will be endeavouring to make the user experience as smooth as possible.

 

 

 

Sort of "I will be passing  the buck", John. No commitment to anyone taking any notice  of your concerns or getting back to you thereafter. They should sort out the rough user experience they have  just created, rather than  introducing  any new pages  ( heaven forbid that they try to mess with the actual booking pages). 

 

I sent the following  on 16 March. I don't think I  put things quite as politely as you! I haven't had a reply yet.

I am sure you will be  receiving many complaints about the retrograde and  user-unfriendly changes to the site. I particularly object to the removal of  the previously  helpful "Whats On" and "Upcoming Productions" pages, along with the extremely useful historic Calendar links.

The  replacement "Tickets and Events"  page and  the related links are very poor at showing any comprehensive information relating to either Tickets or Events. The excessively sized pictures  require so much scrolling  to see all the events, that I  imagine many potential  ticket buyers will lose interest  before they get very far. Also the related "filters" are awkward and cannot be saved, so need  re-entering  each time. And they are limited for  narrowing  searches – for example selecting “ballet and dance”  and “talks and insights”  gives you all ballet and dance and all talks and insights, not just talks and insights relating to ballet and dance.

I used to love your website, its usability, and its copious information, but I fear it is rapidly now going downhill. Image over substance and practicality  appears to be the current approach. 

Can you please  simply restore the website to what it was previously, or if  "Tickets and Events" has to be there, at least still also include all the former "Whats On" and "Upcoming Productions" pages  and  “Calendar” links?

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I think they must be using the BBC's model of how to answer complaints which goes something like this:

 

1.  Acknowlege the complaint but make it clear it is the writer's difficulty in not understanding the new model, rather than anything wrong with the system itself.  

2.  Do not answer any specific questions/queries raised - just keep it completely general so as to induce a feeling of helplessness which will deter the person complaining from contacting the organisation again.

3.  Assure the writer that there is lots more of the same to come and that all changes are being made to improve the customer experience

4.  Sign off with regret that 'on this occasion' the customer has been disappointed but assure them that their feedback is extremely valuable.

 

I could supply a translation but I doubt it is necessary. Sigh.

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Anyone who has worked for a large organisation in recent years will know that it is now standard practice to send people on courses to learn how not to respond to your customers  like a human being.....

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27 minutes ago, Mary said:

 

Anyone who has worked for a large organisation in recent years will know that it is now standard practice to send people on courses to learn how not to respond to your customers  like a human being.....

 

I work for the largest law firm in the world and have not been sent on such a course...

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I suspect I'm in a minority of one on this! 

 

First of all I would say that I didn't have any issue with the old site and was perfectly happy with it. I am certainly not keen at all on the new online shop with I think is very poor and hard to navigate and appears to relegate the selling of opera and ballet recordings (as does the shop itself at RoH).

 

I also have to say I have never (or very rarely) used the calendar when booking tickets so I can't really comment on the changes there.

 

However the main part of the ticket section seems reasonably straightforward and no worse than other sites I have seen. It would be better if any applied filters did not automatically re-set but that does only require a couple of clicks to reapply. Having checked the website at work the images for productions do seem rather too large but at home they seem fine. I have the same size monitor at home and work but use different browsers so perhaps that makes a difference?

 

I have to confess that I  have already decided well in advance of booking which production (and when) I want to see and tend not to browse to see what might be on.

 

Perhaps when actually booking for the autumn season on the new site I might change my mind on the above !

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Good to hear an alternative view MJW but I don’t share your optimism.

Like you and no doubt many others when the booking period opens I know what I’m wanting and am waiting for the clock to hit 9:00, hoping broadband will be working out in the sticks.  I can often get my booking complete within 10 minutes.  But with the new website, I can’t see how to move easily from production to production to Insight to Rehearsals etc.

In planning my initial bookings or if I’m wanting to book an extra trip, I like very much to maximise the number of performances/events I can get to so as to make the most of travel and overnight stays.  A functioning calendar is incredibly helpful and ideally one that can quickly provide casting information so ideally on line.  The old calendar was excellent but it’s gone unless you have the IT nous to access the familiar pages which I don’t although I’m very grateful for the links provided by posters above.  Whether they’ll work for Autumn booking we’ll have to see but surely the ROH should fix these problems before then?

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Forgive me if I'm missing something but isn't the quick fix for when booking opens to have a tab ready for each production? Then when you get to the front of the queue you can hit refresh on each of them to enable booking.

 

I agree that things should be easier to find in the first place, but to get through booking that's how I'd play it.

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How does that affect your shopping basket, though?  Do you need to be signed in on each of them?  Will they all "talk" to each other?  I'm sure I tried something like that once and it didn't work - aren't they all regarded as separate entities, with separate places in the queue?

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