The coronavirus pandemic has definitely taken a toll on event organizers. Organizing an event at a time, where the whole world is practicing social distancing seems a big no. And even as the restrictions lift, people will be apprehensive of touching a foreign object such as an event ticket.
As an event organizer, you are definitely facing this issue. One way to attract people to your event is to assure them of their safety and hygiene.
On a personal level, each individual should take the following precautions:
1. Wash hands regularly for at least 20 seconds
2. Use a sanitizer in case soap and water is not available
3. Refrain from touching your face (especially eyes, nose, and mouth)
4. Always wear a mask or a face shield
5. Do temperature check up of guests at event entry
6. Ensure of distance of at least 1 feet between 2 seats
With these precautions, you will definitely keep your guest safety intact. But how would you avoid physical contact with foreign objects such as an event ticket?
Don’t worry, we have a solution. This solution will not only provide contactless tickets, but also make your ticket secure, modern, and tech savvy.
Scroll down to know more.
A. Issues you face with conventional tickets
The conventional paper-based system is not ideal in the current pandemic scenario. As mentioned, people will be wary of physical contact with common objects such as tickets. Hence, not many people will register for your event, resulting in a very low footfall.
Besides, paper tickets are not a sustainable and economical solution. They lead to a lot of paper paper consumption and printing costs.
Another drawback is that paper tickets can easily be duplicated. With so many tools available online, people can easily create a fake ticket. This will result in breach in event security.
Furthermore, it is very difficult to track event performance. Counting the tickets manually is very time and effort consuming.
Here is one step solution to resolve all these challenges—QR Code-based tickets. In the next section, we will detail exactly on this.
B. QR Code-based tickets to your rescue
You must have seen a QR Code. They are generally black-and-white matrices of square. Referred to as 2D barcodes, they can easily be scanned via a smartphone or a dedicated app. Hence, you do not require any physical contact to access the content within. Given this, they are contactless tickets.
You can simply create a QR Code-based ticket for your event. Each ticket will have a QR Code, which will be encoded with a unique ID. On scanning via a dedicated app, you can know whether the ticket is valid, invalid, or duplicate.
With QR Code-based tickets, people will not be apprehensive of a physical contact with the ticket. They can simply show you the ticket on their phone. You can then scan the ticket and validate entry.
Furthermore, you can also get useful information about your event performance. That is, you can know your event attendance, the peak time of your event, amongst other details. This analytical data will help you take important decisions on your next event.
So, QR Code-based tickets are ideal in this trying time of a pandemic. Plus, it is also hard-to-duplicate, keeping event security intact.
Now let us move on to see how to create such tickets.
C. How to create QR Code-based tickets
To create QR Code-based contactless tickets, you need a professional QR Code generator app such as Ticket Generator.
But before you start generating tickets, know how you need tickets. That is, answer the following questions:
a. Do you need tickets on a regular basis?
Say you are an event ticket seller or a theatre company. For this, you will need tickets regularly. For your use case, you can use Ticket Generator API.
With API, you can conveniently create QR Code-based tickets, when required. You simply need to integrate your registration system with our ticketing system. And then generate tickets in real-time.
For your help, here is a step-by-step guide on how to create tickets using API.
b. Do you need tickets as a one-time activity?
This can be for event organizers organizing a single, exclusive event. You can both download the ticket in printable format or email it directly to your guests.
In this section, we will give you a step-by-step guide on how to create a QR Code-based ticket for your use case.
1. Create event
Go to Ticket Generator. Here, create an account. Once you ‘Sign Up’, you will get ten free credits to create ten tickets free of cost.
Once logged in, go to Create Event. Here, select the event from the dropdown box if already created. If not, then create an event by adding details such as event description, time zone, and venue.
2. Design tickets
This is the next step. Here you have two design options. You can choose from either of the two:
i. Upload own design
If you have a ready-made design template, then this option is for you. You can simply upload the design. And then add a QR Code to it as a layer of security.
Plus, you can also add variable/unique information by clicking on the + button.
ii. Default design
In this option, you can use Ticket Generator’s standard design if you want to create tickets from scratch.
Here, you can add a logo, change the background color, or background image to your ticket.
For your help, here is a detailed guide on how to design event tickets.
Once done, you can click on Preview. Here, you can see how your QR Code-based ticket looks. If everything looks fine, proceed to the next step.
3. Choose delivery method
In this option, you can specify how you actually want the tickets to be delivered. Plus, you can upload actual data of variable/unique information here.
You can choose from the following two options:
i. Generate and Download
In this option, you can generate and download the tickets in printable formats (PDF).
ii. Generate and send
Ideally, amidst the pandemic, you should use this mode of delivery. Guests can simply show the tickets on their smartphone at the point of entry, making it contactless.
Here you can choose from the following three options:
- Send tickets by email only
With this option, you can directly mail the tickets to your guests. You can specify up to 1,000 email addresses. You can either upload a data file or manually type/paste in the given grid. Once done, the ticket will automatically be sent to the recipients.
- Send tickets by SMS only
Here, you can send the tickets to your guests via SMS. You can specify up to 1,000 phone numbers. You can either upload a data file or manually type/paste in the given grid. Once done, the ticket will automatically be sent to the recipients.
You guests will receive a ticket link via SMS. Upon clicking, they will be able to see the tickets and even download it.
- Send ticket by both email and SMS
Here, you can send tickets by both email and SMS. Again, you can either manually type the data or upload a data file. the tickets will be send both by email and SMS to your guests.
That’s all. Your QR Code-based tickets will be generated.
Now, let’s move ahead to see how to validate tickets.
D. How to validate tickets
Event security is one of the top things for any event organizer. To ensure guest safety, you take various measures.
Here are the steps of how to validate contactless tickets to allow only authentic entries:
a. Download Ticket Validator
You can scan the QR Code on each ticket by downloading the app—Ticket Validator (Google Play, App Store). Upon scanning you can know whether the ticket is genuine or not.
b. Add coordinators
The next step is to add coordinators. Coordinators will help in scanning the entry tickets.
To add coordinators, go to your Ticket Generator dashboard and click on Manage Events. Here, you will see the details of the event you have created so far.
To go ahead, you can click on the three dots. You will see the option for Add/Edit Coordinator.
On selecting this option, you can specify the email addresses of the coordinators. Each coordinator will then receive an email invite and a password.
They can then use these credentials to login to the Ticket validator app.
c. Start validating ticket
To validate tickets, you need to follow these steps:
i. Login to the app using the credentials, which are emailed to each coordinator.
ii. Select event from the list of events. Note that it will be visible only if ticket scanning has been activated. You can update this date/time by editing event details in the Manage Event section.
iii. Scanner will now launch. You can scan QR Code on each ticket. If for some reason QR Code doesn’t scan, enter ticket code to validate entry.
In case a person wants to leave the movie and wants to enter again after sometime, you can mark her/his ticket for re-entry.
So, this is all you need to do to validate an event ticket. Now, let’s see how you can track event attendance.
E. How to track event attendance
With analytical data, you can get useful insights on your event performance. And then identify areas of improvement to come up with a better event next time.
In order to get analytical data, go to the Manage Event section. Here, on the extreme right of your dashboard, click on View Analytics.
You can get data on following parameters:
- Percentage of people who attended the event
- Number of tickets validated per coordinator
- Attendance on the different time periods (by hours, days) of the movie event
- Number of used, new, expired, and invalid tickets
- Number of duplicate and re-entry allowed tickets
Here is a detailed guide of how event attendance is important.
So, you just read a comprehensive guide on how to create contactless tickets. Create QR Code-based tickets now and keep your guests safe in all aspects.
Create your first contactless ticket
