A new study of the Ravinia Festival and Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) ticket Web sites has found that a well-designed Web site can help arts organizations reach new audiences.

The study, co-authored by John R. Olson, assistant management professor at DePaul’s College of Commerce, and Kenneth K. Boyer, associate professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., examined how “e-commerce provides operational efficiencies and improvements that contribute to fundamental changes in business practices.” The researchers examined four years of online ticket sales by the CSO, Chicago’s premier professional orchestra, and the Ravinia Festival, a summer concert series in Highland Park, Ill. “For years organizations such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have relied on word-of-mouth and reputation to sell tickets,” Olson said. “While the bulk of their tickets and merchandise still are sold in that fashion, the Internet opens the doors to new customers that may never have considered attending a CSO performance.”

The study found that Ravinia’s ticket Web site has been “amazingly successful,” doubling or tripling the amount of revenue generated over the Internet every year. Online ticket sales grew to $1.68 million in 2000 from $150,000 in 1997. “This represents 30 percent of overall sales of tickets and is now the biggest single sales channel,” the study found. The site’s easy navigation and efficient integration of Web site ticket ordering and ticket issuing software led to its success, according to the study.

For the CSO, the study found that selling tickets on the Internet allowed the organization to reach a significant number of customers in foreign countries for whom a phone call to order tickets would have been prohibitively expensive.

“The ability to attract customers from various geographic regions with minimal additional effort is one of the elements that attract companies like the CSO to the Internet,” Olson said. “It gives these organizations access to new markets without the large expenditure of capital and labor.”

The study found that, in general, the CSO had less success with its Web site ticket sales than Ravinia did because the CSO’s online purchase order form was not user friendly and its Web ticket orders required more labor than Ravinia’s system did. However, the CSO has updated its Web site since the research was conducted, and the site is much more efficient now, Olson and Boyer said. CSO Web site sales for the 2000-2001 season are projected at $750,000 to $1 million, they said.

Boyer said that the study makes it clear that selling tickets over the Web can be very beneficial to both customers and arts organizations.

“It saves the customer time, while reducing the need for the CSO or Ravinia to have large banks of people to man telephones,” he explained. “However, it is critical that the Web site for ordering tickets be easy to use—customers are looking to save time, not get confused.

“Internet ticketing works well for the CSO and Ravinia for three reasons,” Boyer said. “First, both organizations have invested a fair amount of thought, time and financial resources into developing a Web site for both operational and marketing purposes. Second, both organizations carefully target their market with the realization that their customers are fairly loyal, but also not the majority of the general population. Third, the educational level of the core customers for both organizations is very high, thus facilitating Internet ordering.”