I was initially quite impressed with the London Film Festival website (lff), that was until I tried to buy tickets from their tickets site.
The normal website has a simple and effective planner facility, it works and you can build up a daily list of those films you want to see from the 280 available. You need to register to use it, which is fine, so that they can identify you. A small semblance of worry rises when the planner has no obvious link to buy the tickets on your plan. However the true horror is not apparent until you try to actually buy the tickets on your carefully crafted schedule.
The festival site with the programme and the ticket purchase site are built by two separate companies and there is NO integration between them, save some visual elements. Not only that, but they have different registration systems and do not clearly state this, which given the common visual look is unforgivable. You need to create a separate identity to actually buy tickets from the LFF site and you cannot import the plan you have made.
Each film must be selected again individually, also the ticket selection system tells you that you have selected to book two tickets, you click next and are told that you have selected no tickets, as the drop down at the bottom also needs to be set to two, regardless of the information onscreen.
Lastly, the registration on the non-secure site emails you a password to login with, thus at least verifying that you are who you claim to have the email address for. The secure site just emails you and takes you straight to the entry screen for your credit card details, there is no verification of identity, save billing address for your credit card.
Thus the clever and elegant planner is useless, the simple process of linking planning to purchase was obviously too complex, as they had managed to commission two companies to build their single site. Inept is the word that springs to mind.
I hope the festival does well, it was great fun last year, but they really need to try a bit harder with the website offering.
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